Trippin

We don't take a lot of vacations, so when we do get out and about, it's kind of a big deal!  Every October the kids have a fall break.  My parents came down to hang out with us and we decided to head to the Flagstaff area for a few days to see what we could see.  And what did we happen to see?  Some really awesome stuff!
First stop was Montezuma's Castle and Well....

As we walked around I just kept thinking... how did they build that?  It's so cool!  The well (it looked like a pond) also had cliff dwellings along the edges.  Not sure how they got in our out of their homes (rope ladder from the top, perhaps?), but it was neat to see.  We didn't have a lot of time here.  We arrived about 15-20 minutes before they closed.  We stayed that night in Flagstaff and then spent the next day in Walnut Canyon.

Aw... 3 cute kids ready to hike :)

Can you see the cliff dwellings in the above photo?  All the little dark spots that look like caves... cliff dwellings!  And there were TONS of them in Walnut Canyon!  The thing I loved the most about this area was that we were able to go inside some of the dwellings....

It was a short hike (under a mile, I think!) but we saw so many amazing things!  It was great!  After Walnut Canyon we tried to find Wupatki National Monument.  We stopped by a visitors center where the kids jumped around and made earthquakes...

And then I got us lost.  How fun is that?  I was the navigator who said, "turn left" when I should have said, "turn right"... so, yeah.  Fun times.  We did eventually arrive at our destination and it was pretty awesome!

We couldn't walk up into the ruins, but there was a nice walking path around the whole thing.  We had a laminated card that we had grabbed from the gift shop and we found markers along the way telling us about different things.  It was amazing!  That night we went to Lowell's Observatory and got to look through some really powerful telescopes.  We all enjoyed it!

The next day was the Grand Canyon.  And... I'll admit it.  While I was super impressed by the immensity and size... the color??  Well... I was expecting really dramatic color.  What I saw was pretty much this...

What I thought I would see looked a little more like this...

Okay... so maybe that's a LITTLE over the top of what I expected... but not much.  The reds obviously need to be toned down a bit... but STILL!  I thought the color would be a lot more pronounced.  I went along the way enjoying the day with the family but still feeling this little tug of disappointment.  Imagine my joy when the sun started to set and I saw this... (these are unedited)

 

 

Much better!  It was a great ending to the day!  The only down side - Little Bug had a horrible day.  He was not at all happy about being at the Grand Canyon and Hubby ended up taking him back to the car rather early in the day.  I don't know if he was tired or just as disappointed as I had been ;)  But the next day was better.

And... since the last day of our vacation was my favorite, I'm going to devote an entire post to it in the next couple of days!