Spring break week

We had such a great Spring Break. Tory took the week off and we enjoyed lots of time together.
The first few days our friends from back in DC came out to visit. They live in Albuquerque now and they decided to spend some time sightseeing in AZ.

The kids had fun playing outside and playing the Wii and other games.

We then headed up to Northern Arizona.

First stop was Sedona:


Then we headed up to the Grand Canyon. We stayed in the Bright Angel Lodge and had a tiny cabin right on the rim. It was so close to the edge that we actually blocked the door leading to the front little porch closest to the canyon just to be safe. The kids sat in the window and watched people walking along the rim and bird watched.


We went to a ranger talk about fossils and then walked along some trails and then drove out to the the watch tower and lookouts on the east side of the national park.


We had beautiful weather. There was still some snow along the rim, but daytime temperatures were about 60 degrees. We sat out to watch the sunset and it dropped very quickly to about 30 degrees.

After leaving the park we headed south and made a stop at the meteor crater.

Not quite the beauty of the Grand Canyon but some impressive geology and space information that Andrew was interested in.

From there the road trip continued down to historic route 66. We read in a magazine "interesting places to stay in AZ" and decided we would pick one for this trip. With the kids in mind, we picked the Wigwam Motel. This is the motel that the "Cozy Cone Motel" in the movie Cars is based on. We spent our night in a tepee with old cars parked outside in Holbrook, AZ.


Our final day was a trip to the Petrified Forest and Painted Desert National Parks. We figured the 28 miles drive through the park would take us an hour, and then we'd head home. Three hours later we pulled in to the ranger station at the other end. We did several of the shorter hikes and lookout stops and the kids worked on projects in a "junior ranger" book they were given at the visitors center. It was a really great place to see.


We live in a great state!