Vacation

So our little family decided to take a road trip for our vacation. I had to force myself to clear my days off for vacation. I was supposed to take off this entire week, but that didn't happen. However, I did end up with only two appointments/visits. That was a good thing. My training last Friday had also been cancelled, so we were able to leave earlier than we had planned. So what follows are pictures and captions of what we did on our field trip. Holy cow, did I just type that? I meant vacation, not field trip. Geez, I need another vacation apparently.

The beauty of this entire vacation/roadtrip? Not having a planned agenda. It was so nice to just say, "hey, let's stop here," and not worry about being late for anything else.

First stop:
Fillmore - We stopped and got a free (the lady was so nice, we were so late and close to the closing time, and asked if we could just walk around really fast instead of getting an official tour, that she didn't charge us!) self-guided tour of the historical capital building of Utah. It was VERY interesting. There were SO SO many portraits of people on the wall. We asked who they were, and they were all people who had settled Fillmore. Amazing.

Kiernan was excited to get out of the car.

Our first hotel had some awesome quality artwork posted...(if you can't tell..it's a magazine page...)We stayed in St. George in the Cronoado Inn. It's...cheap and you can tell it's cheap. But we had a kitchenette, a playpen, extra pillows and everything, for HALF the price of the next place we stayed in. So worth it.

He was such a good kid for this entire trip. I seriously couldn't have asked for a better car kid.

We stopped at the Rockville cemetery in Rockville, Utah to take some pictures of Bryan's ancestor's graves.

Then we spent the rest of the day at Zion's National Park. Man...we're not going during shuttle season again, getting that stroller on and off was a pain. Otherwise, it was a beautiful place.

I think this may have been one of...three? tantrums Kiernan had for the entire trip. Yeah, I'm totally counting my blessings.

I just love how happy we both luck, despite the blurry pic

The hotel we stayed in that night was in Page, Az. It was *AWFUL* Travelodge is a place we'd never recommend again. They didn't have a playpen/crib for Kiernan, so we had to share the bed with him. As you can see, he takes up a lot of room.

The captioning didn't work on the tv, and they had no extra pillows, and etc. etc. etc. Fortunately, that was the worst part of our trip. Not bad if I say so myself.

The next day we stopped at the Glen Canyon Dam on our way out. It was cool, but it made me sad to see how much water has dropped at Lake Powell. I really miss Lake Powell.

We wanted to go to the Petrified Forest, but there was a SEVERE dust storm going on I40 and the road was blocked off for basically the entire day and night. So we turned around and went the other direction and went to the Grand Canyon that day instead. See, that's the beauty of having no set agenda. It was awesome!

The pictures REALLY do not show the beauty and the wonder of the canyon. Seriously, it was AMAAZING. Kiernan loved it too :)

See how tiny those people are? We were right on the rim of the grand canyon. (south rim if you're curious).

Kiernan and I got out to see some Hopi ruins at the grand canyon

The watchtower. I was SO disappointed to find out it was a modern day building (1930ish) and not built by the Native Americans. It was still cool though.

A stuffed mountain lion at the general store at the grand canyon. We were buying some much needed excedrin, the sign said that kids were welcome to touch, pet and climb on it. Thank heavens, because Kiernan was getting anxious to do something.

We stayed at the Ramada in Flagstaff that night, found a great deal on Priceline. No pictures for that though.

Next stop, random stop too, Walnut Canyon National Park.

The picture above makes it seem like "so what?" after the grand canyon. But if you look below, you'll see the cool ruins we saw there.

See the piled bricks and such? Yeah, they were living on the SIDE OF THE CLIFF. Amazing!

There were so many stairs (though not nearly as many for Iguazu Falls in Brazil), and the ranger lent Bryan a pack to use for Kiernan. It was a very wise thing to have. Behind them you can see the ruins up close, we're almost halfway down the cliff at this point.

See the black? That's from the smoke that the Native Americans had used...around I believe 1250.

I think this is our ONLY family picture :)

Then we moved onto the Petrified Forest. It was really neat. SOO many logs that were fallen, petrified and broken into pieces. They also had some places with petroglyphs. It was pretty neat.

This was a HUGE petrified trunk.

The Petroglyphs

Ruins at the Petrified Forest

We drove through Native American Reservations. It was amazing how spaced out everyone is! We stopped in Tuba City to try some chinese food (totally did not want to do it, but Bryan said to think of it as an adventure). We couldn't even take more than three bites of it. It was AWFUL. We went to McDonald's to get me some chicken nuggets to get rid of the taste...they were out :( It was very sad. However, the drive was beautiful and really made us both think about civilization, etc.

We then stayed the night again in St. George at the same Cronado Inn. Again, it was cheap, and SO much better than the Travelodge.

We headed over to Bryce Canyon National Park. I honestly didn't expect much, since it was such a small park compared to the other ones we had just been to. Much to my surprise, Bryce Canyon is BY FAR my favorite Place. It was SO beautiful!

Just a preview of what was to come.

How awesome is this? There's more!

I thought the white part looked like a bust of someone.

They called it the natural bridge, when really, it's an Arch.

Seriously, Amazing! Hard to believe it's water, ice and wind that creates all of this.

That was the end of our trip. We drove home that night, and got home around 11:00 PM. It was seriously such a good vacation. I think the key part was that neither one of us brought our laptops, and I did not bring ANY homework or work with me. I checked my e-mails once in awhile on Bryan's iphone, as did he, but...that was it. It was really just us three spending time together getting an eyeful of nature's beauties. It was awesome. I can't wait to do another roadtrip. We're thinking of doing one in July to go to Yellowstone and the Glacier National Park. We bought an annual national park pass for $80, If we hadn't we would've paid about $100 just for this trip, and more for any future trips into other national parks. So worth the money for us. AND it gives us an excuse to go visit more national parks! YAY!

Now it's back to life and reality. I was so not ready, but I do have to get back to it....my Final Comprehensive Presentation outline and printed materials for it are due on Tuesday. Sigh. Just two more months. Then I'm done with it ALL.