CANMT Trip: The Drive Home

 Melodie had a difficult time sleeping that night. She knew it was snowing outside, and that was just too exciting. She woke up several times asking if it was still snowing and when she could play. At a semi-decent hour in the morning, we finally bundled her up and let her out.

She loved helping Rocky scrape the car and she also tried to build a snowman.

A lack of toys didn't stop her. She found that the scrapper was fun to play with in the snow.

When it was time to eat breakfast and get dressed she was afraid to miss out on anything. She asked daddy not to finish the car so she could still help. She was also disappointed that the motel didn't have a breakfast. We had breakfast food since we had actually planned to camp that night.

 We had a long drive home ahead of us, so we left pretty early. We didn't have anything planned for the drive home, but we ended up stopping in Kingman, AZ. We actually had more time to stop than we originally thought we would because 1) Melodie woke up so early and 2) we were an hour closer to home because we didn't actually stay at the Grand Canyon. We ended up liking Kingman. First we stopped at the Locomotive Park where we played on a train.

After that we went to the Route 66 Museum.

It was almost impossible to pull Melodie away from these lights

Melodie bought her last souvenir in the gift shop. She spent the rest of her money on a blinged out Route 66 shirt. It was a great souvenir. She loves wearing it.

Wearing her shirt at home

 And we continued our long drive home. California here we come!

It was a welcome sight. I wonder why California doesn't have pretty welcome signs like other states? We were glad to be in our home state with our actual home not too far away. Rocky and Mel stopped at a McDonald's for lunch (I went somewhere else). This McDonald's had some fun things inside.

While I wasn't thrilled with the video games, at least you had to stand to use them. And they were free. We made it home shortly before 5pm.
 This was such a great road trip. We saw great friends and some amazing things in nature. We are so glad we had the opportunity to travel to all the places we did.

CANMT Trip: Snow Fun

 Our motel that night was not great. But it was just a last minute place to sleep, so it was fine. With all the snow outside, Melodie just wanted to play in it.

There was a pretty big patch of snow in front of our room in the parking lot, so we bundled her up and let her play. She was in heaven.

Melodie has wanted to make snow angels for a long time. That's why at White Sands earlier in the trip she made sand angels. When she first saw the snow she asked if she could make a snow angel, but she either wasn't dressed for it, or there wasn't an area where she could. When I told her she could make one now, she didn't hesitate.

 

I thought it was especially funny when she couldn't get up.

Then she started throwing snowballs again.

She threw a couple at the car, and then turned on Rocky.

Rocky played with her for a little while, but not having gloves hindered his offense. Soon I was out there throwing snowballs with Mel instead.

I couldn't help it though; I had to get Rocky a few times.

I ended up covered in my fair share of snow.

After a while we put Melodie in a warm bath, which she loved after playing in the snow.

CANMT Trip: The Grand Canyon

 It was lunch time and there wasn't any fast food or restaurants along the road. We ended up getting food at a gas station. In a little over an hour we were at the east entrance to the Grand Canyon National Park. As we entered we were told there was good weather here, but as we got closer to the main Visitors Center by Mather Point, the worse the road conditions would get.
 First we went to Desert View. We stopped at the Visitors Center there, where we picked up Melodie's Jr. Ranger Packet. The ranger told us that one of the requirements was to go to a ranger program. Since we were so late in the day, there weren't very many left. We chose Geo-Glimpse, which was the closest one without having to wait at Desert View for hours (which we probably should have done). But we didn't know just how bad the weather was further west. We knew we would be cutting it close as far as time. We walked to the Grand Canyon passing by the watchtower on the way.

The Grand Canyon was beautiful.

Rocky and Melodie wanted to go up the watchtower. I was still traumatized from Walnut Canyon and wasn't about to do anything that had to do with heights. Some of the fences by the Grand Canyon were bad enough.

I went part of they way up, and this was the view.

 We drove to Yavapai Point and Geology Museum, stopping at a couple of the points/views along the way. If one looked close to the road, we would get out and quickly take a look and take a few pictures.

We didn't get any pictures of me because we were in a hurry, it was so cold it was easier to just keep the camera, and we thought we'd have a lot more time after the ranger program.

 As we were driving, the snow got worse. By the time we got to Yavapai Point we couldn't even see the Grand Canyon. We watched the ranger program, which was very interesting at was even great for Melodie. We learned about DUDE (how the Grand Canyon was formed).

See that big window behind the ranger? That's suppose to be a view of the Grand Canyon. You couldn't see a thing. We kept going outside to check, but it didn't change. We talked with one of the rangers. He asked if we were going to be there tomorrow because tomorrow it wouldn't be snowing. It hadn't been snowing yesterday either. Just the day we were there.
 This is when we were very thankful that we went off-plan and entered the Grand Canyon National Park on the east side. If we hadn't, we wouldn't have seen the Grand Canyon at all. I was a little sad that I didn't get a picture of me in front of the Grand Canyon, but we actually decided that we'll just have to go back. There was so much more to do there than we thought and we have the America the Beautiful annual pass. We're going to try our best to make it back before it expires.
 We still wanted to go to the Mather Point Visitors Center. The weather was terrible by the time we got there. The bathrooms weren't actually in the VC, you had to walk to another building (same to get to the gift shop) and we didn't want to even go outside to walk those short distances (we did though). The wind was so hard that with the snow it was actually hard to keep your eyes open. We loved the new Visitors Center.

I almost had a heart attack watching the movie there. What are those people thinking standing on the edge like that? They must be crazy. (There's a short version of the movie here so you can see what I mean). We also watched Science On a Sphere and Melodie got her ranger badge.

It was dinner time, so we got ready to leave. It took some time to get to the car. First, I wanted a picture of me and anything just to show I had been there.

Then Melodie discovered icicles.

They were just at her level and she loved them. And we still couldn't get her to walk where there wasn't snow.

After finally making it to the car, we drove out of the national park and picked up dinner which we ate on the way to our motel.

CANMT Trip: Sunset Crater and Wupatki

 We woke up the next morning to this:

Looking out from the door

Our van

We threw on some jackets so we could take pictures and look at the snow.

Melodie was very excited about the snow. Rocky and I knew this was a problem though. We were suppose to camp at the Grand Canyon that night. I was not going to camp in the snow. So during breakfast I spent time looking at the weather conditions at the Grand Canyon. After confirming that it was snowing at our campsite I found a cheap hotel to stay in Williams. We were kind of bummed not to be staying the night at the Grand Canyon anymore. Then we started thinking about how we were not dressed for snow. We had our thick jackets and hand warmers (I had prepared for a cold night at the Grand Canyon) soRocky and I would be fine. However, we realized that there was no way we were going to keep Melodie out of the snow. All she wanted to do was walk in the snow, touch the snow and play in the snow. This would make for a very cold and wet (which would then turn into an unhappy) Melodie. So we went to WalMart after checking out (it was just down the street). We all got snow boots for about $20. We knew we were going to be walking on trails and we might need them. Most of their gloves and hats were on sale for $0.25 to $1.00 each. This was good because it was cheap, but bad because there wasn't a huge selection. We found a hat for Melodie and snow gloves that were a little to big. I got a headband thing for my ears and gloves too. Unfortunately, there weren't any gloves for Rocky (I had brought cloth gloves for all of us, but not snow gloves). Then we saw snow pants for Mel were only $7, so we picked up a pair of those for her. We also needed an ice scrapper from the car (we used a cardboard box that morning) so we bought a couple of those. We were now ready for the snow!
 Our original plan was to drive to the 64, stop by Flinstones Bedrock City in Valle, AZ, and go to the Grand Canyon Village. We knew we weren't going to the Flinstones place in the snow, so we decided to go to Sunset Crater Volcano National Park (on the 89) instead. Then we'd go back to the 40 to take the 64 to the Grand Canyon. The drive there was a little scary at first.

But soon it wasn't so bad and was actually very beautiful.

It wasn't a very long drive, only about 30 min.

It was still snowing and windy. When we walked into the Visitor's Center they were very happy to see us. They said they weren't sure anyone was going to show up that day. We talked to them for a while and found out we had to drive further north on the 89 for the trail. So, we asked how long it would take us to drive from there to the Grand Canyon. The time was still a little longer than going back to the 64. Then they mentioned that Wupatki National Monument wasfurther north on the 89. They said if we wanted, Melodie could turn in the packet from here at Wupatiki and get both badges there instead of driving back to the Sunset Crater Visitor Center. Plus, they said it wasn't snowing at Wupatiki. I didn't quite believe them, since I knew it was snowing at the Grand Canyon, but we thought we might as well just drive to the Grand Canyon on the 89 even if it would take a little longer and stop at Wupatiki (this turned out to be the BEST choice we made our whole trip, but more about that later).
 We drove to the 1 mile Lava Flow Trail. This was a nice trail to walk. We were thankful for the snow boots, especially for Melodie who looked for all the snow she could walk in on the trail (since she couldn't walk in the snow off the trail).

Sometimes it was a little cold, but nice

and other times it would start snowing and get really windy

Those times were a little difficult. Melodie would walk backwards with her face in my stomach. Along the trail we saw the volcanic formations (which I think were beautiful with a covering of snow) and we had a great view of the volcano.

Then we drove to Wupatki National Monument. I could barely believe it when, as we were driving, it stopped snowing and then suddenly there wasn't any snow on the ground. It was still cold and windy, but there wasn't any snow.

Since we wanted to have plenty of time at the Grand Canyon, we chose to only see the Wupatki Pueblo Ruins (I think there were five at the monument). It was the closest one to the Visitors Center.

It was only a half mile trail to walk to and around it. This was one of the most informative self guided trails we had been on. Everything was numbered and we had a guide book that told us what was at each number. Melodie's Jr. Ranger packet had things to look for at some of the numbers. We enjoyed this one a lot.

Melodie turned in both of her packets and received both badges. Now we were on our way to the Grand Canyon.