Road Trip 2016!

The day after Scott's graduation, we were off early the next day on a road trip to the Grand Canyon in Arizona.  Our first two nights we spent at Coral Springs Resort in Hurricane, Utah, swimming and relaxing, recovering from the last CRAZY few weeks of trips, end of semester stuff like finals, graduation, packing, music recitals and competitions, and lots more!

On our way and eating breakfast muffins in the car

{that's a van full- 6 kids, 2 adults, camping gear, and  week's worth of food and clothing!}

 We got to the resort right at check in time as planned, had a delay getting our room since they were still cleaning it, but as soon as we were in, we were off to the pool!

Landon LOVED the door to our patio that had a speak easy!  We bbq'd and played some games and relaxed in the evening.

Landon and Audrey played gate keeper, Audrey and I enjoyed the fireplace on the patio.

 

Day 2 we did a lot of swimming and HGTV watching :)

Day 3 we continued on in the road trip.  We drove through Zion's Canyon on the way to AZ.   We had been planning to go to Antelope Canyon instead, but when we went to purchase the tickets for our family which we thought would cost $64, the cheapest tickets we could find were $246 for our family to get in, so we scratched that and add Zion's.  It was a last minute switch to go through Zion's and I hadn't done my research.  I didn't know the parking lot is usually full by 10 and private vehicles aren't allowed past a certain point (shuttle buses only).  We searched and searched for a parking spot; every time we could see one open, another car was closer and got it.  We were never in the right spot and the right time so we gave up and just drove on out through a 1.5 mile tunnel the kids thought was cool.  Someday we'll go back to see more of Zion's.

Zion's National Park

Next stop was at Cave Dwellers in AZ- ancient ruins to explore.

 Scott and I were taking pictures of Audrey and then realized that Lexi, Layla, and Landon were ALONG ways up the mountain.  The arrow above points to the little dots that are our children!

Next stop, Navajo Bridge.  We drove across then stopped to walk across the foot bridge.

We finally made it to the Grand Canyon National Park.  We drove in, getting glimpses of the canyon but didn't stop to look and went straight to Mather's Campground, anxious to get camp set up and dinner made before dark.

  After dinner, we left for a little walk.  It was still day light, but I did grab a flash light (just in case) and we took off down a path which led us to a shuttle stop which we decided on a whim to hop on the shuttle bus that was just arriving.  It took us to the visitor's center and we walked a short way to the look out at Mather Point, very excited to see into the canyon.  By this point, the sun had set and it was getting dark.  We saw what we could in a little light, then got a shuttle back and THEN, we had a little adventure :)  It was really dark by this point and I mean really dark... a long long ways from any city lights it gets really dark!  The moon was small and we were under trees which blocked any moon light there was and that flash light I grabbed "just in case" was really small and rather dim and only lit the path for the leader not for all 8 of us and the path was rocky and bumpy and we stumbled along until we got back to our camp site, laughing at what our unprepared spontaneousness got us into :)