Another last minute decision: to visit the Grand Canyon!Our day's summary:
- - Breakfast at hotel, pick up sandwiches at Safeway
- - Grand Canyon via I-40/64
- - Took a bazillion pictures at the Grand Canyon
- - Drove back on Route 180 - GORGEOUS
- - Dinner back in Flagstaff at a surprisingly good gourmet pizza place
- - Swimming in the pool
- - Bedtime
Grand Canyon was truly awesome. The last time I was there was when I was a kid, too young to truly appreciate the grandeur. And our kids are still too young to appreciate it. Tobey would kind of look and was generally cooperative. Eli, however, was very high maintenance. I don't even know if he noticed the canyon, all he cared about were the rocks on the ground. He would walk on the ones lining the path (the INSIDE of the path) or he'd try to climb a pile of rocks or he'd pick up gravel and rocks from the ground. And given that Eli is active, we held his hand anytime we were not well inland or in a parking lot. We saw Mather Point, the visitors center (stamped our national park passport), picnicked at Shrine of the Ages, went to Powell Point and walked to Hopi Point (only 0.3 miles) and got a peek at the Colorado River. By the time we got to Hopi, Tom and I basically took turns with Eli while the other enjoyed the view and snapped photos with Tobey. Now I know why we didn't see too many other families with small children there.
Although Tom was the one really wanting to see GC, I must admit, I've now caught what the Chang's call "National Park Fever". It's that feeling that there is so much to see around here in the Colorado Plateau (Zion, Bryce, GC, Arches, Canyonlands, Glen Canyon and on and on) and "the next park is only a 4 hour drive away!". We have to make time on our trip so I know we're not going to veer off to find any more national parks. But it does make me excited that one day we would come back when we don't have to hold our kids' hands all the time, maybe we'd come back with cousins and have a big trip together, and we could ALL truly enjoy the park.
ROUTE 180 - GPS (which I am starting to believe is NOT always right, at least on this trip) kept telling us to go back to Flagstaff the same way we came, on the interstate. But the paper map showed a slightly diagonal route that seemed to go through some mountains straight into Flagstaff. And I kept seeing this one mountain peak still with snow on it! So we ignored Mr. GPS and went on Route 180 on a beautiful drive. Part of it was beautiful because Eli slept the whole way and Tobey either amused himself with a pair of binoculars or slept himself. I took a million (not a bazillion, like at the canyon) pictures because we actually kept getting closer to the snow capped mountain and the views kept getting better and better. It finally climaxed at this open field with a newly built log cabin and the snow capped mountain in the background. I've been struggling with ISO settings all vacation so I hope these turn out okay.
SWIMMING - We got back to town, almost ate at another Chinese restaurant but ended up going to the gourmet pizza place next door instead. A quickish trip to Target and back to the hotel for some swimming! Although it was already 8:00PM by the time we started swimming, I really wanted to do it hoping it would get some energy out of the kids and make bedtime a little smoother. Boy was I wrong. Swimming was fun - Tobey is gaining more confidence swimming by himself, although he still depends on floaties. Eli just loves jumping in. But when we got back upstairs, they still had a good half an hour of bounciness after we put them to bed before they would finally calm down and sleep. I think the smoothest night of sleeping so far has been Disneyland when we really wore them out. Too bad not everyday is a Disneyland day.
Tomorrow we tackle Sedona. Back on the road on Monday.
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