Road Trip Diary / Day 10 & 11

Day 10

We woke up and had continental breakfast at the hotel. I'm sorry, but I love continental breakfast. Its never really that great, but I think its always fun to see what surprises you get. Cereal? Pancakes? And when there's bacon you score! And I love that everyone is doing "healthy" choices now like yogurt and fruit. I, of course never eat that stuff, but its pretty much all my girls eat.....hmm. You think maybe they were deprived in the womb? They had a little bit of fun playing in the hotel room while we packed up...

Someone found the AC.

Big sister of course has to get in on the action.

After that we headed up to Zion National Park.

Its pretty amazing. I imagine it is kind of what the Grand Canyon would look like from the bottom looking up. There are so many amazing rock formations there; its incredible. (Shoving up my nerd glasses now).

These ones were called the Archangels.

Cuties, riding the bus

This was called The Weeping Rock. Water was literally gushing out of it.

Way back there was called The Narrows. Because it gets REEALLY narrow in the canyon.

Curious little 3 year old

We spent almost all day there. It was kind of annoying because we couldn't drive through the whole place. There are so many people that visit in the Summer, you have to take a bus so that the road doesn't get all congested. So consequently, we had to drag the girls and their 2 strollers on and off..... every single stop at Zion. And of course it was about 90 degrees as well.  We left there about 4:30pm and then headed to Bryce Canyon. Another place with cool rock formations and such.

A cool looking tree that was struck by lightning.

I mean, how is it that just snow and rain did this? Its crazy!

It was very cool. Since it was getting late and we were running out of daylight; by the end my husband and I were locking the girls in the car at each viewpoint, running out to glance at the view for a second, taking a quick picture and then running back to the car. It was pretty comical.

One of or speedy stops.

We were speed touring!  We finished around 9pm, then drove late into night as far as we could.

Day 11

We woke up in another hotel, showered and then packed for the last time, had another surprising continental breakfast, then hit the road. We were North of Salt Lake City, but we still had a long way to go. We crossed through Idaho, Oregon and then finally made it back to Washington.

Somehow we managed to get a picture of each state's welcome sign.

We arrived home around midnight. The girls were so happy to be placed in their own beds that night. And the next day they played with their toys (the same ones we had on the road trip the whole time that they acted so bored with in the car) like they had never seen them before.

Really? Little stinkers.

Princess's mood especially changed as soon as we got home and there were considerably less tantrums. They were glad to be home and so were we. It was an amazing vacation, but it is always good to be home sweet home. And that was end of our family road trip. 

Next`week the projects and crafts will be back and get ready......the big party reveal is coming!!

Road Trip Diary / Day 9

Day 9

We got up fairly early and packed up the car to get on the road again. It was time to start making our way North towards home. Our big stop of the day was going to be the Grand Canyon. I had seen it quite a few times on our family road trips over the years, but my husband had never seen it before and he was really excited. We were getting close to it when we drove by signs for a place called "Bearizona", which is basically a drive through zoo.

This is not a real bear, by the way.

We were kind of in a hurry, but we thought if it wasn't too far out of the way, we would give it a try. It happened to be right on the way and it was awesome! It was literally a drive through zoo. Like Jurassic Park without dinosaurs. You just follow a road that leads you through several different enclosures (that were all wide open. Crazy!) and you just drive through at your own pace and look at the animals. And you are driving INto the enclosures, so that means you could have a bear or a buffalo, right next to your car. Kind of like a safari. We unbuckled the Princess and had her sit on my lap so she could see better. 

Such a stinker. She never smiles for pictures anymore.

  We saw mountain goats and buffalo (my favorite) in 2 colors. Who knew there were blonde buffalo?

This guy was right outside our car.

As you can see this huge guy was right outside my door. I think buffalo are so cute, but I was getting a little nervous at how close we were to him. They are HUGE! After watching them on the discovery channel, I learned that they are definitely scarier than they look. And he was like snorting and scratching his horns on the tree....I was afraid he was gonna start charging our car. So I told my husband to keep moving!
Here is a blonde one. So weird looking! I think the brunettes are definitely cuter.

Look ALL the way back. See the white?

You can barely see it, but way back there in the picture above, there is a baby blonde buffalo that was born on July 4th of this year. So it was a week old when we saw it. It was kind of weird that it was off by itself, but a person at the park told us that its normal behavior for the baby to stay away from the rest of the herd when its young.
Then we saw wolves, which FYI are incredibly hard to spot (and we were in a small enclosed area where there were supposedly 14 of them). So keep that in mind next time you are in the woods. They are really good at not being seen.

Can you spot the sleeping wolf?

Then bears. Oh My Gosh! They are so freaking adorable. Princess and I were squealing, ooing and awing at how freaking cute they are. I know, I know they are dangerous. But my gosh they look so cuddly! That was probably the best part of Bearizona; because you could get closer to these bears than you probably ever would otherwise. Whenever I have seen bears in regular zoos, they are always so far away and usually sleeping so they are even more hard to see. Many of the ones we saw that day were just a few feet from our car door.

This guy was my favorite. Look at that face!

So, after that cool little detour, we continued onto the Grand Canyon and spent most of the day there. There is just so much to see.

His first view of the canyon.

Do you think they even had a clue?

There are tons of viewpoints all along the canyon; so many that you can't possibly stop at them all in one day. There were hotels, visitors centers, gift shops and campsites. Its crazy. And if you did stay out there, there are a ton of cool activities to do. You can hike, horseback ride, white water raft, bike. You could almost stay for a whole week. It made me want to look into the hotel and see if it was a good place to go visit again sometime (meaning is it nice enough for my vacation standards). The sun was just setting as we left the park, and we barely made it in time for me to swing by some of the Indian (Navajo) jewelery stands that are lined up on the road exiting the Grand Canyon.

They have such beautiful jewelery and I'm sad I didn't get more time to shop. But I did get a really cute polar bear pendant (I have to find a chain for it) that is carved stone and the woman who sold it to me said that it symbolizes strength and protection. Sweet. They had so many beautiful (all handmade) things. Copper bracelets and turquoise. Cedar bead necklaces and hand beaded head wraps. I loved it all.

We drove a little more and stopped at a trading post in Cameron for dinner. The food was surprisingly good. I had an Indian fry bread french dip sandwich and it was so yummy! It was basically a french dip sandwiched between two doughnuts. Holy deliciousness!  The hubby had a taco, enchilada and tamale with salsa that was even too spicy for him. And that's saying a lot. He loves his spice. Then we drove a few more hours until we were too sleepy to go any further and we checked into a hotel for the night.

To Be Continued...

Road Trip Diary / Day 8

Day 8
A group of us got up early to go golfing at one of the local golf courses the next morning. There are tons of courses down there; everyone is retired and rich down there so I think they golf a lot. If you've never gone before, its actually really fun. I think the guys are onto something ladies. Although they are going to have to do something about the dress code. Collared shirts and knee length shorts? Not so cute. I hadn't played in awhile, (since before Peanut was born) so I was really excited to play again. And I don't think I played too terrible. I was always 1 point behind my husband and he is good.

Love his hot scruff.

So that was pretty cool. There were bunnies, road- runners (meep meep) and quail (love their cute little plumes!) all over the course. And since they are so used to golfers being around them, you could actually get pretty close.

Can you see the baby quail running away in the background? I may have gotten too close for comfort.

The funny (or I guess scary) thing is that they told us before we started, that if your ball goes out of bounds, to leave it.....Can you guess why? Yeah, because if you do go in those bushes, you will probably get bitten by a snake! Yikes! My husband braved the bushes for me one time (I somehow kept the same ball the whole time) and this road-runner was really curious about him and followed him around. It was pretty cute. 

We stopped at home briefly for a little dip in the pool, then after that is was girl time! I was pretty lucky, I got to go on guy's day out and girl's day out. For our girl's outing, we went to get pedicures. Ugh! Heaven! Especially after being in sweaty shoes playing golf all morning. I may have been drinking a little while we golfed....and maybe had a little wine at the pool, so by the time pedicures rolled around, I was all for taking our wine with us to the salon. I think everyone was just as excited about it as I was and the ladies at the salon didn't seem to have a problem with it. Cheers! Talk about some relaxing, fun girl time. There were a few little boutiques right next to the nail salon, so we may have done a little drunk shopping as well. Maybe...

That night we went to a little cowboy restaurant called Pinnacle Peak Patio. Ties covered the ceiling. Like, literally, the entire ceiling was covered with ties. I guess whenever a guy goes in there with a tie on, they cut it off and it becomes part of the decor. Random? Yes. Interesting? Ok. They had a little horse out front that Princess rode on over and over and over again. And of course her grandma couldn't resist spoiling her when she asked for, "One more?".

Yee-Haw!

It was our last dinner together and it was sad to be saying goodbye. The kids had so much fun playing with their little cousin that they never get to see.

But our adventures in Arizona were not over yet. 

That night, we of course had to say our goodbyes to the beloved pool. So my sister, sister in-law and I all got suited up and started getting in the pool. There is a large shallow area in the pool and I decided to sit down there before getting completely into the pool. I sat down and.... OUCH! Got stung by a freaking scorpion!!! I kid you not. I got stung, yes on the ass, by a freaking scorpion. In the pool! If none of you have been lucky enough to experience it; it hurts really bad......to say the least. I of course was freaking out saying, "I need to go to the hospital NOW!" But I think everyone was not quite sober enough to do anything but laugh. One of my sisters called and talked to a nurse, who was apparently not too worried by it and said it happens more often than not. She said the only things I needed to look out for was blurry vision, (peachy) swelling and pain in the area, (duh) a lump in my throat or body shivers like small convulsions (lovely). Apparently it affects your nerves......wonderful. I am obviously ok now and the stinging only lasted on and off for a few days. I'm sure there was so much....ahem, flesh back there, that it wasn't as bad as it could have been. My brothers and husband took the liberty of catching the thing and got it into a little plastic toothpick jar. I sat there shaking the jar violently all night to be sure of my revenge. And oh yes, I am keeping the stupid thing and making it into a necklace as a keepsake. Hey, I got stung my a scorpion and lived! How awesome is that!? I went to sleep that night wondering if it was my last night on earth.

To Be Continued....

Road Trip Diary / Day 7

Day 7
More shopping that day. You can never do enough of that. Scottsdale has the best mall ever, Fashion Square. Its HUGE! And of course I think its perfect because it has an Anthropologie and a Free People store. No mall is complete without both of those. Then we had lunch at this great restaurant called, "True Food" which featured natural and organic foods that were inspired by dishes all over the world. My sister and I had to convince everyone that it was going to be good and I'm pretty sure everyone thanked us by the time we left.

Peanut loving on her uncle at the restaurant.

The food was incredible. Butternut squash, tomato and mozzarella bake, Chicken sausage, fennel and fontina pizza, Red chili shrimp dish, curry and my personal favorite; the blueberry acai mojito. Princess had an almond butter, strawberry and banana sandwich, which I thought was complete genius. What a great idea; making food that kids actually eat. She loved it and I plan on making it for her at home. In the afternoon we had more pool time.

Splish, Splash.

Seeing these pictures is making me want to be in a pool again. Right. Now!

And remember, the temperature was in the 100's daily, so the pool temperature was like 80's. Are you kidding? We couldn't get out of that pool. Later that night we went to a local cowboy bar (line dancing and all) that claims to be a Pittsburgh Steelers bar. Virtual rolling of the eyes here. So funny. We make a point to go there every time we visit because it is so entertaining. The people watching, the cheap beer and the chill attitude. We had already eaten dinner, but for some reason we decided it was mandatory that we try the all you can eat ribs, wings and stuffed pizza bread sticks. I don't know, the vacation mindset I guess. Everyone was pretty exhausted from the day so after that we went home and crashed for the night.

To Be Continued...