spring break

Yeah, I'm way behind on posts. Bad me.

Anywho...this year for spring break, Julie and I took our kiddos to Southern Utah and into Arizona. We started our drive at 8am and got to Springdale, Utah at 3am...where NOTHING is open. Not even the hotels with vacancy signs. So we slept in the car until about 6:30, when the cleaning people show up and they were nice enough to let us into our room way earlier than check in time without charging us an extra night. Thank you nice people. We tried to get a little sleep, but the babies were wide awake. So we just got ready for the day and headed to Zion National Park. Very cool, but small and not a lot a room to park anywhere so we could hike around. We got the kids out for a short hike, but mostly drove through the really long tunnel and saw everything from the car.

We spent the afternoon walking around downtown Springdale and let the kids play in the mud. I didn't get many pics from that part of the trip though. It was very fun and we all loved it.

The next morning we got up way, way early...i woke up at around 3 and could not go back to sleep. So i got the car packed and myself ready then woke up Julie to get her stuff done. We left at 5 and drove down to Page, Arizona, my place of birth. It was a GORGEOUS drive into Page. Lake Powell is a little low, but still beautiful. We found the house my parents built... It took us 3 times driving by it to recognize it. It looked nothing like this 30 years ago, or 10 years ago. They moved the front door and painted it some hideous color and the yard looks like crap. I got out to take a picture and the new owner came out to talk to me. I guess he is in the middle of major renovations and hurt his back. He apologized for how the house and yard looked, but was a totally nice guy. He had only lived there 2 years and wasn't thrilled with the color of the house either. If you ever drive through Page, the restaraunts are horrid. Really. We didn't want fast food and stopped at some little italian/mexican restaraunt. It was like 7:30. They closed at 8...what restaraunt closes at 8...we left and went and ate some of the greasiest disgusting food ever. YUCK!

We drove through Page that morning and went straight down to the Grand Canyon, and Grand it is. We also stopped at a Navajo jewelry stand and got a few things on the way.

This place is AMAZINGLY HUGE! Those idiots in the above picture are on the edge of a 400 foot drop. There is no railing and we even saw a few kids. If you ever want to read about some interesting deaths, you need to read the book 'Death in the Grand Canyon'. Most of them are because people are stupid...like the above. We stayed far away from the edge and wouldn't let the kids be on the Canyon side of the walkway. They were okay with that. It is quite the sight to see and makes you think of how tiny we really are. The weather was beautiful, but SO WINDY!!!

We drove back into Page and stayed the night. The next day we headed to Antelope Canyon...MY FAVORITE! Absolutely amazing. It was beyond windy...we had sand in places where it shouldn't have been.

It's worth the money and I suggest not going on the guided tours, just drive out to the place. You still get the guide, but about 1/2 the price.

We were going to head up to Moab that day, but the dang weather was crap, so we headed to St. George. Beautiful city, the people...thats a whole other post. I loved St. George until I got out of the car, thats when every fake blonde/tan/too perfect woman/girl looked Julie and I over about 10 times. Um...we have been in a wind storm and have been driving for 3 days.
We headed back north the next morning, straight into a snow storm. We decided to take a detour and go to Vernal, but I took a wrong turn and we ended up south of Provo...we were bummed, so we just drove home that night. It gave us a few days to relax and prepare for Easter.

I put 2800 miles on my van. Its an awesome van and I love it.