Vacation Part One

After the kids spent a fabulous week at Nana and Papa’s, David and I drove to ABQ to pick them up and head on to our summer vacation. Nana prepared a yummy brunch for us to enjoy together before we left. We ate out on their patio on the new patio furniture. It was perfect!

Then it was time for some serious car time. Thank goodness we have a suburban---we were packed even with just the four of us!

David was a beast---he drove nearly the whole trip. Yay for 5 hour energy drinks!

Entering Arizona! It was their first time in that state! We made a few stops along the way. Our first stop was to the Petrified National Forest. We only got out of the car a couple of times because it rained on us a lot of the time.

While passing through Holbrook, AZ we came across this cool motel. Recognize it from Cars, the Disney movie??

It’s Mater!

We stayed the night in Flagstaff and got up early the next morning to head to the Grand Canyon. On the way there, it was 59* and rainy! (And this ill-prepared mom didn’t pack jackets for us all. Oops!)

And—you guessed it! When we finally got into the Grand Canyon, it was cloudy, foggy and rainy! This was a lookout over the canyon. The clouds completely obscured our view!! What the heck!

Thankfully, the clouds would break and we got beautiful glimpses of the canyon. Of course, we had to have some fun, too!

When the clouds cleared, the view was breathtaking. So pretty and enormous it almost looked fake!

After spending some time on the rim, we found a nice spot to have a picnic. Is the captain in you? The squirrels at one overlook were insane! There was a snack bar and restaurant near there and I guess the squirrels were used to getting food. They were SO bold---if you were sitting on the ledge they would walk up to your hand looking for a snack. Hadley took these pictures of squirrels trying to get into people’s bags! This was a great part of our trip! I loved spending the day at the Grand Canyon. David is the only one of us who had been there, and that had been many years ago. So thankful we were able to go this year, but sad that Tyler couldn’t go with us!