Road Trip Day 2- Bryce Canyon

I greatly enjoyed the drive up to Bryce with our Guide Along audio tour. The tour warned us that the parking lot by the visitor's center tends to fill up during peak season, and we were braced for huge crowds since it was a Saturday in July. We decided to try the prime parking lot instead of parking in town and taking the shuttle in. Weirdly, the park wasn't busy at all that day! 

The visitor's center was very well done. It had all the informational signs my heart could desire and a kids area with prairie dog tunnels to crawl through. 

My photos are now filled with memes like this that Elliot makes on the fly. I confess to being highly amused. 

The park rangers were very helpful and advised me that the creek I had planned on us playing in was highly contaminated and not safe for swimming. Although the "short walk" to the shuttle they told us about was actually a multi-mile affair. Luckily we realized this and were able to turn back to our car before we made it too far. 

We drove to the far end of the park, Rainbow Point, while listening to some anecdotes on the audio tour. We ate our lunch at some nice shady picnic tables then enjoyed the striking vista views!

What a world we live in!

Annie and Isaac were rather hot and tired. Elliot was in his element and ready to hike the whole canyon. We compromised by stopping at different vistas and doing one short walk to a cool viewpoint. It would be cool to come back in 5 years and actually hike down in the canyon!

Hot, tired, but still always ready to rock a photoshoot!

It's hard to casually lean on something tall when you're a lil 6 year old. 

This guy will never let himself be left out, ever.

Natural Bridge Viewpoint

It was fun picking out rock formation shapes. We saw two groups facing off- one with a rhino and the other with a gopher or something like that. 

How is this tree alive?

This was another place where we were deeply concerned that our easily distracted Isaac would wander off a cliff. Hand holding was enforced. 

It's hard to pose with floppy newborn babies, but we gave it a go!

Heidi had no idea that she was in the presence of nature at its most majestic. 

Harsh review from Annie. The "but was super sweaty and miserable" is quite cutting. 

Elliot's review waws 5 stars, "Amazing views."

After leaving the park, we stopped for dinner at what I had written down was a well reviewed vegetarian restaurant. It turned out to be a delicious burger joint with taxidermy decor in a tiny farm town. We weren't mad.

Road Trip Day 1- Flagstaff (Barefoot Trail & Walnut Canyon)

We decided to be ambitious and attend Alpine with a 1.5 month old baby. We made it even more ambitious by extending it into an 11 day road trip and by leaving less than a week after Aaron and the older kids got home from the cruise.

 

I love a good itinerary, and I was proud of this one! I also found some printable passports for the kids for them to write reviews of all the places we visited. It was a fun addition and interesting to see how the kids differed from each other in what stops they liked best. 

In the past, we have camped along the way on trips like this. We opted for more motels because of lil Heidi, and because I don't think we could have fit all of our camping supplies in our very filled minivan. We had several dinners and breakfasts lovingly prepared in Motel microwaves. 

The first day of the trip was Felix's birthday! It's safe to say he had a stellar day. We started by opening a couple presents in the motel room, then headed to the Barefoot Trail. 

This was a series of obstacles along the trail that are meant to be completed while barefoot. There was an orientation chat at the beginning that told us that we would be absorbing healing electrons through our bare feet and as we connected with the Earth. I'm not so sure about that, but it was a lot of fun! We were also instructed to count the hidden gnomes along the path. 

At the beginning was this grid full of all sorts of stuff to step on.

I'm sold on the idea that outdoor free play is one of the most important thing that a lot of modern kids lack. It felt like we were doing things right while watching Isaac struggle across the wobbly wooden bridge.

Elliot's favorite part was "Washer Me Falls," which was a bunch of washers falling down a piece of rebar in a super satisfying way. I'm sad I didn't get a picture of it!

I think the kids could have played on the ziplines all day

I'm so grateful for these babies

One strange part was that Felix must have stepped on something pokey right before we got to this cute log snake. When we pointed it out to him, he burst into tears and said that the snake bit him. He was absolutely freaking out. We washed off his foot and looked all over for a splinter or wound, but couldn't see anything wrong with it. He kept limping and crying for about a half hour, and then was fine the rest of the day. We never did figure that one out. 

After we completed the trail and washed off our very stimulated feed, we drove 20 minutes to Walnut Canyon National Monument, home of some awesome cliff dwelling ruins. The first order of business was eating the first of our many picnic lunches. 

Our trashy little birthday boy

Heidi briefly woke up to enjoy the view!

I was planning on having us do a short, stroller compatible walk along the rim, but Elliot talked us into doing the much harder hike down into the canyon where you get to actually walk through the cliff dwellings. The stairs were pretty grueling, especially in the heat, and we had to keep a hand clamped on both Felix and Isaac at all times to keep them from falling off cliffs, but I'm glad we did it!

Native Americans built homes all along the canyon in spots where the softer limestone eroded. They would dig out some more, then build walls to close off the area and separate out a few rooms. The trail was awesome because you could walk right through several of the ruins, and see others on the other side of the canyon. 


It is INSANE thinking of people raising children while living on a literal cliff. 

The view out of one of the more scenic  rooms

It was worth doing this hike for this picture alone. Annie rocks. 

Also let the record show that we aren't terrible parents- Aaron spotted her getting into position then hid behind the wall for the picture. 

Isaac felt every bit as awesome during his photoshoot

Annie's review: "looked cool but was sweaty. 3.5 stars."

We drove 2 hours to Page, enjoyed another lovely motel microwave dinner (shoutout to Costco for some food diversity this trip!) and then listened to Felix scream his head off in our motel room for an awful amount of time. I ended up loading him into the car and driving laps around a nearby strip mall until he fell asleep. It was a nice taste of Page night life!