Grand Canyon

In November, our brother and sister-in-law blessed their baby boy in St. George, UT. So, we made an adventure out of it and stopped at the Grand Canyon on our way.

Guess who we found just roaming around outside the canyon? Ha! This guy!

Actually, I happened to be driving and saw this Flintstone park place about 20 miles outside the Grand Canyon and I just had to turn the car around and pull in to take this picture. I LOVE having the wheel and getting to say when we stop. Hehe! I think I have learned this from my dad. I can remember getting in so much trouble because we would be late getting ready on Sunday mornings and making Dad late for church meetings, but then, on the way to church (45 minute-drive), he would see some wild turkeys in the field or a herd of deer or a dead vulture on the side of the road or whatever other interesting sight and he'd have to turn the car around to go see it again. Hehe. I love my dad. There's always time to experience life with him.



When we finally made it to the Grand Canyon, we really only had about 2.5 hours to visit it before we had to hurry on to St. George for the blessing and FYI: that's not enough time. We did get to ride a bus along the ridge for a half hour or so, then we got out and walked back along the ridge for about an hour and then rode the bus back to our car. In a nut shell, the majority of our time at the Canyon was spent on a bus and I think you really have to hike down it to truly experience the grandeur. So, we'll go back sometime soon I hope.





Also, Yes, it was quite chilly and windy. November isn't the best outdoor touristy time but there wasn't much traffic so that was nice. We did meet some people from Asia though. I can't remember which country, but one guy lived in CA and had brought his friends from Asia to visit the Grand Canyon. He said he'd been there four times and this is a must-see for any of his visitors to the U.S. Isn't that interesting? How many of us have seen the Grand Canyon and we live here?



If you are very observant, you will notice that these pictures are not the same format as our pictures usually are. We forgot our camera on this trip at home. Devastating, I know. Fortunately, James has a phone with a nice camera on it so all these pics and many pics from the last few posts are from James' camera. So sadly, I have no pictures of the baby blessing. As I remember it, there were about six cameras at that event as it was and so I know there are pictures... I just need family to volunteer a few... Anyone? :D

On the way home the next day, James pulled into another National Park called Sunset Crater Volcano National Monument in AZ and we got to hike around and see some really cool rocks! The amazing thing about this volcano is that it erupted so recently that it is very valuable to science. At least, that's what the signs said.

This is some really cool volcanic rock behind me. Unfortunately you can't take any with you (National Park rule) and you're not supposed to really touch anything but since the path went on top of some of these rocks, I figured it was ok to lift a small rock up and see if it was light like it's supposed to be. It wasn't as light as I expected - in fact, it was fairly heavy, but I'm not sure if it would have floated. Probably. Volcanic rocks are very shocking like that.

Here's James in front of the volcano!

And another view of the volcano. That whole side is just black sand basically. Cool, huh?

This tree is the coolest! The main trunk died at some point (Maybe the volcano had something to do with that?) and so it just started focusing it's growth on this random branch that became the new trunk. Smart tree! I'm quite amazed that it's still standing...