Our 10-day road trip, Part II: Grand Canyon

Our drive south from Moab was blessed with great weather also.  Sunny skies and clear, dry roads.  After the outing in Arches, most of the people in the car were quite sleepy, and dozed off for the afternoon as we headed out of Utah and into northern Arizona.

Around that part of the drive, as most of the car was asleep, we could see a large area of fog up ahead.  It was a neat sight, because it was clear we were pretty at fairly high elevation and the fog was ahead in a big valley.  Sure enough, we descended down quite a bit of elevation and slowly it grew closer and then we were in it.  I was a little nervous it was going to slow down the rest of our drive, but we kept descending and soon we were below it!  And once we got far enough south and into Arizona, we were out of it entirely.

As the sun set and our tummies grew hungry, we were still in fairly rural northern Arizona, but we found a town with some fast food joints and got some "quick" eats (nothing is ever fast with two young kids though!) and kept on our way to the Grand Canyon.  As we got to the east entrance road, we had to slow down a lot because it was mostly icy and snow covered!  So the last ~20 miles or so seemed to take forever!  As a result, we got there after the kids' bedtime and they had fallen asleep in the car. They were pretty scared to be woken up and quickly carried into this strange new place (i.e. our lodge room) and so both cried pretty hysterically for at least 30 minutes, while John unloaded the car and until we got them ready and into bed.  Eeks!

Day 3

The next morning, Sarah and Louise awoke early to get out to the canyon to see sunrise.  Luckily, sunrise is not that early since it's winter (I think it was between 7-7:30am), but it was cold before the sun came up so they both said they were awfully cold while they waited for it.  Either way, they got some great photos of the dimly lit canyon while they took their first glimpses of it.



We met them for breakfast, loaded the car, and then headed over to the canyon as a group for John and the kids' first sights of it too.  We kept the kids in their strollers, to avoid them running off somewhere they shouldn't be (i.e. too close to the edge!  my heart races every time I think of that possibility!), so they didn't get to see as much of it as us (the rock wall probably blocked most of their view).  It was also still quite cold with the wind that morning, so we didn't stay out too long, but took in some great sights and got some nice photos.

Evan's first sights of the Grand Canyon

Like brother, like sister...

Then we drove back out along the east entrance road to take in a few more quick sights from the road, before heading south to Flagstaff.  We had dinner there at a Cracker Barrel (we needed some "home cooked" food after all the fast food of the past couple days), and then finished the drive to Phoenix.  Our arrival at the hotel in Phoenix was much smoother than it was at the Grand Canyon, and it was good to know we'd be staying in one place for several days now.  But the drive to get there did give us some great sights to see and the weather cooperated perfectly so we couldn't complain.