It’s a Grand Canyon
Welcome to Arizona!!!
(and New Mexico, and Colorado, and Utah!) The four corners might be a tourist trap but you just have to stop on your way through. You can snap a few picts and in the stands surrounding it there are native Americans selling their crafts. The girls got some jewelry there and then we were off!
The girls were excited to strike a gymnastics pose.
In this pic below… I attempted to do pushups in all 4 states with the girls on top. Squished!
We made it to the GRAND Canyon!
Everyone says it but until you’ve been, it’s impossible to comprehend. It’s just enormous. It’s not just deep but very wide.
We were lucky enough to stay at El Tovar an incredible hotel on the south rim of the park.
This upscale iconic lodge was such a great place to spend a couple nights. We decided to shower up and look presentable and enjoy a nice dinner in the incredible dining room. Lauren ordered broiled fish and is really eating more and more different types of foods. One interesting thing is that with the drought that they are experiencing the park was trying to cut down on water so instead of washing the dishes, they were using paper plates. Our waiter had been there for 30 years and bringing a steak on a paper plate and a glass of wine in a plastic cup wasn’t to the standard he wanted to present us. I just love seeing when someone takes their craft seriously. Such amazing staff.
As dinner was ending the girls went ahead of me up to where there was a piano player above the lobby. When I came out, Shannon was playing the piano and the actual musician was sitting there as the audience. Pretty funny stuff.
It turns out it’s his dream to just play every night in these iconic national park lodges. There is a lot of history of musicians really providing lively entertainment and it is great to see it preserved. He took our requests and really could play any song we you could think of. He played “Here Comes the Sun” for us as we’d been singing that a bunch lately. And no we didn’t ask him to sing “Girl on Fire” … we didn’t want it to get to rowdy! :)
Out for a (grand) sunrise run! See what I did there!?
We new we wanted to do something special while here and a hike was kind of the obvious thing. We asked a bunch of people what to do and ended up on a trail with constant magnificent views. It’s called the South Kaibab Trail.
As we hiked down in, we came upon Ooh Aah Point. The views really make you stop and… say it!
When I was looking through our pictures I found this unintentionally funny pic. I laughed out loud and if I had a drink in my mouth I would have spit it out.
We weren’t sure how far we were going to go since we knew we had to go back up and weren’t sure how hard and taxing that would be. (it was super steep in some places…) After we had hiked down about 2 miles there was an incredible perch with a few rocks to sit on. It was obvious that this was where we should stop.
The beauty and power of the place was striking. The girls felt it too as they immediately climbed onto the rocks and started meditating.
We hung out on those rocks peering over the cliff and ate lunch. What an outstanding place to sit, eat, and just be grateful.
The Hike back up actually wasn’t bad.
Back at El Tovar we spent some time relaxing after our hike. This is what it’s all about. Sitting on a magnificent porch in a rocker!
That night at dinner we had an incredible waiter from Turkey. He was spending the summer in America and was so happy to talk to us and talk about his home country.
It turns out that he is finishing up his studies to be a language teacher. We decided that perhaps it would help him to fly if he could practice on us! So we asked him to teach us a few words. Such a fun time!
On our final day in the Grand Canyon, I woke up and caught the sunrise. I can’t help but feel closer to a higher power.
As we headed north out of the Grand Canyon we came upon Horseshoe Bend. It was hot up on the rim and it made us want to go down and jump in!
See you next time Arizona! We have a few more stops to make as we continue this incredible journey!
