Day 21: July 7th, 2013: Flagstaff, Arizona to the Grand Canyon

  • Jul 10, 2013
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This morning we were greeted back to the world with the sound of galloping horses. After we had cleaned up breakfast, as I was working on Brooke’s hair, the horses and their riders came to visit. They let the kids pet the horses and offered for the kids to get a picture on the horses. The horses from Tucson were named were Lilly and Keta. Brooke caught right away that those are the names of Ed and Kayla’s dogs.   Scott told Brooke to smile for the picture on the horse.  Her smile was already from ear to ear.  A nice surprise to start the day.

We headed to Safeway for some groceries.  It seems like we are shopping a lot, but we can’t carry a lot of refrigerator needy items.  We run out of turkey for sandwiches, milk, yogurt, and meat (chicken, Italian sausage, ground beef) every few days.  We only buy a half gallon of milk at a time to save on space.

Sunset Crater Volcano

Can you spot the kids?  They are on the ground playing with the lava rock.  They never tire of playing on the ground.

Ranger Charlie was very patient with our unfocused and playing shy little ones today.  He taught the kids about Ah-Ah and Pahoe-hoe lava.  You’ll have to excuse the spelling, as I don’t have access to the Internet right now and I have not committed their spellings to memory.  Although I have committed how they feel to memory as have the kids.  Cody accidentally backed into some Ah-Ah lava rocks in the visitor’s center.  His little legs are a mess again.  At least it isn’t his head.  He hit his head twice yesterday: once flying out of the van again and once climbing over a wall at a park.  His head is a little lumpy these days.  The kids loved jumping on the Earthquake machine.  As they jumped, “ low frequency sound waves traveled out in all directions.  The waves were detected by a seismometer and displayed as a graph, or seismogram, on the monitor.”  Cody loved playing “I Spy” with the exhibits at the Visitor’s Center.  He was able to spy bats, a squirrel, and a tarantula.

Wapatki

This area was occupied from 1120 - 1210

collared lizard

We had competing cameras today.  Brooke, Scott, and I all were taking photos.  Above were just a few of Scott’s photos.  He was the first to finally catch a glimpse of collared lizard.

 

 

Brooke’s pictures above. She prided herself on getting Cody to smile since he kept running away from me.  The moment I stepped out of the van from securing the kids in their seat belts the rain began.  I never tire of hearing the rumble of thunder announcing an approaching afternoon storm.

Cody was the perfect size to fit under the entryways.  Scott and I did the limbo to get through the entryways.

 

In order to complete the Junior Ranger badge the kids had to go for a hike and find some items.  It was raining pretty hard so Scott took Brooke out just long enough to snap some pictures.  Notice his wet shirt.  Then Brooke begged to go back out, and since it was a warm enough rain I went.  Although we still couldn’t spy the petroglyph we were supposed to find.  Although that may have had something to do with us running between the raindrops.  Thankfully the ranger showed us a picture from a book.

Junior Ranger Badge Number Two for today – Wupatki.  The last question the kids were asked by the ranger, “if you were to leave your home and travel far away what would you take along?”  (Funny they didn’t know we actually were in the process of said question.) This tied to the fact that the people who lived here packed up and moved away about 800 years ago.  The kids had to first draw their answer in their book and then explain it to the ranger.  Brooke drew a tepee and a clay pot.  Cody first wanted to draw a squirrel.  I explained that the squirrel might not want to come along. I let Cody think on his own, with no prompting from me, honestly. Then he drew a cross.  The ranger was a little taken aback by the cross.  She said, “Stick with your sister.  You’ll have shelter and food to eat.” Scott very seriously chimed in with, “Well, at least Cody will have the Lord.”  I almost died laughing right there.  As I might have mentioned Scott is not very religious, so for him to say something like that perfectly seriously to the rangers was just too much.  Brooke and I parted ways with Scott and Cody after the badge ceremony so I could take Brooke to the bathroom. I laughed all the way into the bathroom and back to the car.  Brooke couldn’t figure out what was so funny.  Scott knew.  “Did you like that?”  he asked when I got back to the car.

Leaving Wupatki the rains brought in the smell of the charred grasslands.  Not far down the road we encountered hail on the ground.

  

We entered the Grand Canyon first through the Desert View.  We climbed the watchtower.  The view was so magnificent that it inspired a quite awe from almost everyone gathered to view it.  That is everyone except my adorable children who were fighting over who could get the best picture of the Grand Canyon.  I’m still wondering how our camera is not at the bottom of the canyon.

As we were leaving the parking lot Scott noticed a family emptying everything out of their vehicle with their hood up.  Scott offered to help give them a jump.  It was a mom, dad, and teenage daughter.  The kids had to hop out of the van to watch.  The family was from Florida and headed to California.  The mom was so happy to have her car running again.  She had left the headlights on accidentally.  She just kept saying thank you over and over.  She even started to go for a hug, but settled on an awkward handshake instead.  I assured her we had been the lucky recipients of other’s kindness in the same situation in very remote areas of Canada and Alaska.

Speaking of kind people… Scott had read about cooking in the crock pot while traveling.  We have an inverter that takes DC from the alternator and converts it to AC power so we can charge the computer, cameras, and in this case the crock pot.  We put together my neighbor Carla’s southwestern chicken recipe early in the morning and let it cook throughout the day.  It was the first time we had southwestern chicken in the southwest.  The recipe includes chicken steaks, a can of black beans, a can of corn, and a cup of salsa.  When it is finished cooking you can put in cream cheese.  We used sour cream.  We served it on tortillas with shredded cheese.  There were a lot of leftovers.  Scott went from campsite to campsite offering some of our leftovers. An extremely kind family from Holland on holiday for three weeks in the southwest took Scott up on his offer.  The mom and dad both happen to be educational resource consultants.  We chatted with them for at least an hour.  Then we all scurried off to clean up our dinners and catch the sunset over the canyon.

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