On the Road...

The Second Day on the Road!!!!! ALRIGHT!!!!!! Usually we drive at night, so I was already a little tired of the "are we there yet?" parrots in the back seat by the end of the first day. We started off the day taking some beautiful pictures of Escalante Grand Staircase national monument before heading off from the hotel. Of course, there has to be a beautiful fountain where the kids get to almost dunk themselves before getting in the car for the day.... Our original plan to start the day was to visit Moqui Cave, which we had passed on the way into town the night before. I started to get the feeling that maybe it wasn't a hot idea though so I asked the front desk. They told me it was basically a glorified gift shop that had an entrance fee. The proprietors want you to believe its an American Indian settlement relic. Apparently that is a popular scam... more of that to come! And we were off.






On the way out of town we got a picture of the fake cop the city had planted in a real cop car on the road into Kanab. We thought it was pretty funny. People coming over the hill from the desert see this guy and just hit their brakes.




Then it was on to Lake Powell. Benjamin LOVED Lake Powell... it was the first (and only) time all trip where he didn't get in trouble for throwing rocks. I don't know what his facination with throwing rocks is, but he can't help it. These pictures are taken at Wahweap scenic lookout. You can see for about 50 miles across the landscape. Unfortunately, the camera didn't quite capture the beauty and majesty of the place. Right next to Wahweap is the Glen Canyon Dam (insert your own damn joke here). I'm not sure exactly how many hundreds of feet the drop is, but that's my children climbing on the safety fence... yep, we're bound to come back with one less by the end of this thing.






Then it was on to the Grand Canyon. Everybody slept on the way there, but that didn't keep people from starting to get a little grumpy. We first went to Watchout tower on the South Rim, which we thought was on old ancient Indian ruin built on the edge of the painted desert. Nope. It was built in 1930 by some lady architect who apparently hand selected every stone so that it would LOOK like an ancient Indian structure. In reality it's just a tall gift shop with a spectacular view of the Grand Canyon from the top of it. So we got a great shot of B in front of some fake American Indian art. Unfortunately, we did not get a great shot of the canyon.... tempers snapped, and people on the North Rim of the canyon could here B yelling "I DID NOT LOSE MY MOVIE!!!!!!" all the way back to the car. Things calmed down enough for us to eat lunch, and then we were on the road again. This time on to Flagstaff.






Some pictures of Little K in the car. The pictures were taken not 5 seconds apart and that pretty much sums up how the car ride went at the end of the day. To make it better when we got to our hotel in Flagstaff they told us that all the water was turned off for plumbing repairs. When I delivered that news to K her response was "so what are they going to do about it!" with that look on her face like they better make this good... it was a long day in the car. She went inside to smooth things out and we ended up staying there after all. Good thing too, because they had an amazing pool. To end the day we treated ourselves to an AMAZING dinner. I "killed the fatted calf" and ordered veal, which kind of ruined it for K, but I think she still enjoyed the chocolate mousse :).