This is Summer.

I am riding in the back seat of a Jeep Cherokee with the windows down and my 18-year-old nephew Zach and my not-so-Little-anymore Brother, Jamie, are in the front. The three of us are en route to this stunningly beautiful new river area in northwest Arizona called Fossil Creek. How can a river be "new"? As my good friend Shaun McKinnon of the Arizona Republic reports, they decommissioned a dam recently and look what they ended up making...


Anyhow, I'm in the backseat, trying to let Norah Jones on my iPod drown out whatever crapola the guys are blaring on the car radio but nonetheless thinking how idyllic it all is. It's summer, I'm spending time with the only two teenage boys I can stand -- OK, who I know -- and we're on our way to swim in some remote watering hole on a hot day. The scents of juniper trees, campout fires and ATV vehicle fumes mingle and all thoughts of deadlines, interviews, mortgages and bills are miles away. Nice.

Here are the guys - that's Jamie and Zach...


...and here they are when they were little, for comparison's sake...


You can see me in the middle of this shot below, but that's about as close as you're going to get to seeing my sad excuse for a 35-year-old, pasty, moob-overrun body. I also make a bit of an odd cameo at about 2:58 of the video.


As the 4-minute YouTube video I made shows, this nook of Fossil Creek was great for jumping and swimming. Here are some of the still shots...






Of course, once we were done with the Great Outdoors, the guys were right back where you might have expected to find them...