Day 6: Arches National Park

I was really excited to spend some time in Moab.  I rented a 2 bedroom condo and this was supposed to be the relaxing part of our vacation.  The condo was really nice, but expensive.  It took me awhile to figure out what was going on.



Something called Jeep Week?  We were lucky that other than dinner on our second night here, we didn't get stuck in any traffic, but these jeeps were everywhere!  However the kids did enjoy our condo, and so did their sleepy pets.



We got up earlish and headed to Arches National Park.  It was a short drive and we went to the Delicate Arch hiking trail.  They were doing construction in this area so you have to get there early to get a spot.  We were lucky!  The trail was part trail, part rock scrambling and we ended up here:



It probably would have been fine but I wouldn't let anyone move from this spot!  Look, the trail here was like a 2 foot wide strip off a cliff and James would turn around and say hey mom look at this.  TURN AROUND AND WATCH WHERE YOU ARE GOING JAMES!!!



Haha.  Mark and the boys liked to tease me.



The hike down.





Other rock formations:



Double arch:



Forshadowing:



This was at Sun Dune Arch.  It was in this canyon formation.



The wind from the Grand Canyon and Monument Valley had followed us here so it was a lot colder than it was supposed to be.  But in this formation, all the wind funneled in here and blew sand.  It was terrible.  There was a bunch of people who ran from here yelling.  Sand got everywhere.  It was like living in Lubbock.  No, Andy, you don't need to get dirtier.



After this, we weren't sure what to do.  We had planned to stay longer, but with the wind we didn't want to stay in Arches.  We decided to drive about 45 minutes to Canyonlands National Park.  We didn't do a lot of hiking, but still got to see a lot.  We drove to the edge of the canyon.



See, still windy.

 

Then we drove to Mesa Arch where there was a little hike, and you could see the canyon through the arch.



This was my favorite picture from the whole trip:



From there we drove back to the condo after a full day!

Day 5: Monument Valley

After spending our second night at the Grand Canyon, it was time to move on.  Yeah, I guess we were about done with the Grand Canyon.  I'd love to hike to the bottom, but not this trip, and not these kids.  We were up earlish, had breakfast (big, yum) and then headed out.  It was quite a drive to our next stop in Moab, Utah and I was anxious to get going.  Oh Mark...



He made us stop at ANOTHER overlook heading out.  And it was a different angle and a different view, and yes, it was still cool, but gee wiz, lets go.



Ugh, and another visitor center.  Are we never getting out of here?  One thing that was on the itinerary was a stop at Monument Valley.  We planned to pay and go in and enjoy the area a little bit.  I was interested in this during planning, but like I said, I kind of wanted to get to Moab.  But it was pretty cool.



And bright.  We immediately went into the gift shop and bought the kids sunglasses.  The desert sun is no joke!



Something else happened right after this picture was taken.  It actually started at the Grand Canyon where the wind picked up and it got a bit colder.  But it hit riiiight about now and the wind started blowing all that sand and dust.  Really, everyone ran for shelter.  We ran for our car.

Part of Monument Valley is that you can drive down in the valley.  And that was our plan, so we headed down in our little SUV.  We got to one of the monuments.



Oh kids...



But with the wind and me being anxious, we didn't go very far.  It was a neat area and I'm glad we stopped though!

Day 4: Grand Canyon!

We stayed in the Bright Angel Lodge which was CHEAP and right on the edge of the canyon.



We actually had to get two rooms because they only allow up to three people in a room.  I did some searching to see if we could sneak in an extra kid but I came to the conclusion that it would be a tight fit.  We got two rooms.  Got up, dressed, and walked to the lodge and had breakfast.  I do want to say that I got in the habit of having a big breakfast everyone morning. YUM!  Then we headed out.

The national park doesn't want hordes of people driving all over the park so they actually have a semi-decent bus system to get you around.  It worked ok.  We took it to the visitor center and then to another overlook on the rim.  We heavily bribed Andy for a good picture with the promise of a souvenir!



James really had a ball.  He said "in shout to the lord when they say the mountains bow down to the sea at your name, I think they were talking about the Grand Canyon"  Its a little cheesy but still cute.



That got James a souvenir.  He picked a hiking hat:



From there we took the "Trail of Time" which was perfect for our family.



We started Andy on a heavy dose of snacks to improve his mood:



We went back to the rooms for lunch (sandwiches!)  and took the shuttles to Hermits Rest, getting out periodically on the way.  I do have the say, that this sounded lame to me at the time, and writing it now, still sounds lame, but but going through it, every angle of the canyons was cool and amazing.  Apparently I didn't take any pictures, but James got the selfie of us at Hermits Rest:



After this Andy was kind of done.  He needs to recharge so I stayed back at the room with him:



James went and got a junior ranger badge!



Mark tried to get away for a bit and hit the Bright Angel Trail, but James was so into it he really wanted to go to.  They didn't make it very far before it got hot and well, had to come back.  I think about this point someone noticed James's Clemson Z Run shirt and said, "hey, I went to Clemson"  They were another family of 4 from Charlotte, but had an 18 month old.  I don't think they slept as well and had to worried about the baby toddling over the side.  Andy is grumpy, but he isn't that bad!

Day 3: Hoover Dam

Everyone slept great our second night in Las Vegas.  Whew!  As an aside, going to Vegas with kids, was fine, maybe a little awkward, but at no time did I think I would actually gamble.  Turns out, Mark intended to gamble.  He stayed in the casinos and the rest of us East Coasters went to bed.

As another aside, I just so happened to travel to the West Coast a couple of times in the past year.  The first night you are there you are so tired and jet lagged, you go to bed at 8:30.  Annnnnndddd, sleep until 6:30 local time.  Seriously, I feel like a million bucks after that.  That's 10 hours of sleep.  Its awesome!  Now, coming back to the East Coast is significantly less awesome, but you get what I'm saying.  Day 3 I woke up and felt great!

We had a pretty big breakfast...packed up and headed out of town.  In hindsight, Mark was trying to tell me we should leave earlier, but I didn't get it. On to the rest of our trip!



This is when the real trip began!  We got to the Hoover Dam about 11, which was too late to do any sort of tour.  The kids have to be a certain age to do one tour and we would have had to wait hours.  I hear it is cool, but it just didn't work out for us.  But the Hoover Dam was so cool!  I don't know if it was the scenery or the size of it, but I loved it!



Really, by this time, Andy started breaking down.



He didn't want to be there, he didn't care, he just wanted to go home.  Oh well.



There was a small museum that told about how and why they built the dam.  Turns out politics was just a terrible as it is now!  Woohoo!!  We took a group shot.



Andy wasn't into it.  For lunch we drove back up the road a little bit more to an overlook of Lake Mead.  I was in awe of this, which is funny considering where we were going!!  But again, loved it.  We ate lunch in our rental car



And then took another group shot



It was really bright.  Really bright.  It was about an hour from Vegas to the Hoover Dam, then about 3.5 hours to the Grand Canyon.  I'm not STEM coordinator, but James immediately started building a Hoover Dam in mine craft.  #winning



We got to the Grand Canyon about 4pm local time I think.  We stayed in the Bright Angel Lodge and had to get two rooms.  We were right by the top though.  Another group picture and again, Andy wasn't into it...



James is my 1950s boy and loved it!



Here is a not too awful picture of Andy (finally)

Day 2: Vegas

So, we had a bad digestive night.  All of us were jet lagging and pretty tired on day 2.  We didn't have any grand plans in Vegas, but they all got pulled back juuuuuust a bit.  We got up and had breakfast at the Starbucks in the hotel and then I had this tremendous urge to go OUTSIDE.  Everything was inside and artificial lights, and I wanted out.  We just stepped outside our hotel and:



I don't know if you can see it, but James is standing in front of our bag of gross laundry.  A trip to the laundry mat occurred later in the day.  Not pictured.



We stayed at the Planet Hollywood Hotel.  It was in a pretty good location.  It was attached to a mall and we spend the morning walking around inside.  Yes, we had to go back inside.  Here was the magic shop.  It was a favorite.



When we told the kids we were going to a place called Las Vegas, we explained that Las Vegas was where a lot of grown ups went to go crazy.  Andy asked, " you mean eat ice cream at the wrong time?"  When in Vegas...





My poor kids though.  It was a bad digestive night and I'm afraid they weren't into being so crazy.  After walking around, we headed to do some errands (including laundry).  We came back and I took the kids to the pool.  Has anyone been to a pool in Vegas?  It was very MTV.  I felt very uncomfortable, but the kids didn't seem to notice:





Yes, they were feeling better.  The one thing we had planned was a magic show.  The number one rated thing to do is the Armando Vera up close magic show.  Signing up for it was weird.  You had to sign up for the Nate Burton show and then got it for free.  We weren't really sure if the kids could handle it, but decided to try it out.  It was AMAZING!  So glad we went.  For this show, it was about 30 people and the magic was all slight of hand tricks.  The kids really wanted to get picked to help out but they didn't.  After it was over, onto the Nate Burton show.  This was more of a Vegas show.  And again it was pretty cool, more over the top stuff.  About this time Andy got kind of tired and crawled on my lap.  He wanted to leave even though I bought him a $9 ginger ale I kid you not.  The cup flashed different colors so I guess that is something.  They mention they are going to pick a kid from the audience.  James went CRAZY.  I whisper to him to calm down and hold his hand up thinking it would make him more appealing.  They pick Andy.  Andy who was sitting on my lap goes in front of this audience of like 500 people.  On to the stage.   Here is the trick.  They were going to read his mind.  They put a blank chalkboard hanging from some rope and cover it with a sheet.  Andy is on stage.  Says his name.  They ask him to pick between 2 show girls to go on a date with: a blond and a brunette.  He picked the blond.  There you go, Andy has a type.  He picked the blonde.  No hesitation.  Have you seen his 2nd teacher?  Yeah, he has a type.  They ask where he would take her to dinner.  Again, no hesitation.  Pizza Huuuuuuut.  Said just like that.  At this point, Andy realized that there were a lot of people watching him and he started to loose it just bit.  They asked what move he would take her to see.  I think he didn't want to take her to see a movie.  He would rather play Wii Lego Star Wars.  At the very end they asked if she asked him to get married, what would he say? well, he would say "yes".  They dropped the sheet and it had all the answers he said.



The show was almost over at this point and then both the kids kind of lost it.  James because he didn't get picked, and Andy because he did.  We did kind of take a vow never to speak of this again, but I had to record it.  It was too funny.  And I can't believe they picked Andy.  I mean, he was sitting on my lap!

After the show we walked the strip a bit and got dinner, then back to bed.  Gosh, for taking it easy, we sure did a lot!