Spring Break Part 2

So here it is finally ... the rest of Spring Break. Yes, spring break was the week after Easter ... I'm really that far behind. :)

After the Grand Canyon, we headed to Little America Hotel in Flagstaff, where the general manager is Fred Reese, a friend/past neighbor of ours. We stayed in a GREAT suite - it was perfect. From there, we headed to Sunset Crater, which is a volcanic crater. We took a short hike to the top of the old crater. The girls, especially Alyssa, thought it was pretty cool.

This is the top of the old cone of the volcano.

This shows some of the volcanic rock behind us where it flowed down from the cone.

After Sunset Crater, we went to a very different crater - Meteor Crater. One of the largest meteor craters on earth. There is a space display at the crater since the meteor came from space... Steve has always loved space, wanted to be an astronaut. Check it out, he made the famous astronaut wall of fame!! Look close, it really says Steven Lindsey!! Ok, so it says Steven W Lindsey, not Steven R ... but hey, we can pretend right?

This is Alyssa in front of a picture of the crater!

Most of the meteor was imbedded deep into the earth and/or shattered into tiny pieces upon impact. This is one of the biggest pieces found from the meteor.

Here is Alyssa sitting on a rock at the top edge of the crater (not a picture of the crater).

Brrrrrr its cold!

After the craters, we headed to the Painted Dessert and Petrified Forest. Unfortunately, we arrived rather late so we didn't get to do much hiking or walking around. Mostly we drove through and took some pictures of the sun, clouds and colors.

Alyssa did brave the cold wind to jump out and take a picture or two before we headed to our WorldMark condo at Bison Ranch.

And she took one of Steve and I too. This is the condo at Bison Ranch. The girls always feel so at home at the WorldMark Condos. Its definitely our FAVORITE way to travel! The condos are situated above some retail stores.

This is how we found Taylor and Jessica sleeping ... this is a queen size murphy bed in the condo. The girls snuggled up onto one pillow and slept the night like this.

The next morning rather than head straigt to Phoenix, we went back into the Petrified Forest so we could enjoy it a little bit more. The wind and cold were no different though, so we all stayed bundled up and the little girls didn't get out of the car much. But we did capture a few pictures of them with some petrified wood. Alyssa, was throwing a bit of a fit because we were making her stay on the path and not move the wood, so she's not in these. She was sitting at the beginning of the trail pouting.

This is a petrified log that was preserved as the water washed the ground out from under it. To prevent it from breaking, they built a cement support under it (this was before the National Forest's policy was to let nature take its course). The funny thing to us was that this bridge was designed to preserve the petrified wood which was made with cement and petrified wood chunks as the "rocks" in the cement.

This is a better shot of the bridge, showing the size of it.

A view of the Painted Dessert.

We also did our first geocaching ... before we left we bought a GPS device and we found our first 5 or 6 caches while we were in Arizona! See other posts for more information and some pictures.

After the Painted Desert and Petrified Forest we headed to Phoenix to visit Steve's sister Laurie and her family and enjoy the sun we had hoped to find in Arizona! We stayed 2 nights in warm, sunny Phoenix, one of which Alyssa got to sleepover at their house with Bethany. We enjoyed our time with Laurie, Ray, Braden, Jordan and Bethany including dinner with both families, breakfast out, a little geocaching with Bethany and then swimming. Alyssa loved the swimming, Taylor and Jessica weren't quite as sure. They played quite a bit though. They both took rides on a blowup dolphin. Only our girls and Bethany were in the pool at first. Braden commented that he was going to go change his clothes, just in case ... he trained as a lifeguard for awhile. Not long after that, Jessica was sitting on a blow-up dolphin. We all saw it happen at the same time, except Braden and he was just a second faster than us. He was already in the water going after her when I got to my feet. She was a little shook up but was soon quite content playing in the hot tub where it wasn't deep. The adults got in the water and Taylor and Jessica even got back in the pool and put their heads under water.

After swimming, the adults went out leaving Braden to babysit the girls. It made for a perfect way to end the trip ... unfortunately, I didn't take pictures in Phoenix except a few with my phone when Ray ran out of gas and we had to pick them up. Oh... but wait, the best part was when he locked the keys in the car. Nope, it gets better. After spending quite a bit of time stretching his arm to try to reach the keys out of the ignition, Laurie reached in and rolled down the window and then unlocked the door. The pics are still on my phone, but I'll have to add them at some point. It gave us all quite a laugh.

And what trip to Arizona would be complete without pictures of a cactus!

And then we headed home -all the way home in one day. It was a long drive. But the girls did really well. The Easter Bunny brought about 10 new movies which really helped along the road trip. We found a fun litlte Mexican restaurant in Beaver, near a little campground and it was a great stop on the way home.