The Glorious Gorge

I would imagine when most people in other countries think of America, they think of big guns, Chevy trucks, McDonalds, and Coca-Cola. But I would imagine they also think of Old Faithful at Yellowstone, the Statue of Liberty, the Alamo, and the Golden Gate Bridge. If the tourists who were present in Arizona last week were any indication, they also apparently think of the Grand Canyon. It's the quintessential image of the American west: the wild western landscape, the dramatic cliffs, and the endless open expanse. The place was crowded with visitors from foreign lands, Asia and Europe mostly. I think about the places overseas I'd love to see and I imagine these people thought the same of the Grand Canyon, which is why they probably paid a fortune to fly over to see it.  But for us, it's only ever been a day's drive away, another piece of natural splendor in the vast beauty of America, but one we hadn't made it to see yet. Thankfully, the government - in all the things it seems to try to mess up - has preserved the National Parks for visitors like us. The boys and I had never been to the Grand Canyon before, now we're glad to say we have.  

Cold weather camping for these southern boys...

It almost doesn't look real at times, as if you could reach out and touch the canvas...

Looking around, there were plenty of families with kids like ours, checking out the views, taking the hikes, and waiting in the seemingly endless wait lines for the shuttle buses. I think for the past hundred years or so it's been the thing to do, take the kids to see the Grand Canyon, then tell them when they get older that they were there and show them the pictures to prove it. So we did our part. Here are the photos of when we went to the Grand Canyon, kids. It was incredible!

The Terrified Timber

The first big stop on our journey to Arizona was at Petrified Forest National Park. I'd heard of it, but never thought much about it until I saw it happened to be on the way anyway, so of course we stopped. We were impressed. It wasn't an overly large park, but there were a lot of cool things to see and check out. Apparently, quite some time ago, there was a big forest in this now desolate part of the world. These once massive trees fell to the ground, were buried by the water and dirt, and somehow that I don't fully understand, turned to stone. It was almost unreal, because it literally looked like ancient loggers had been there, cutting down trees, sawing them in chunks, and sometimes scattering pieces about. Parts of it looked like there had been a giant wood chipper sending chunks of rocky wood all over the otherwise smooth, sandy landscape. We took a few short hikes and drove through the whole park. They made sure to tell everyone that it's illegal to take any of the wood, because it was definitely tempting. Back in the day, people apparently used to haul it all off, but the National Park was created to protect it from that. But there's so much of it in the surrounding areas that we were able to find a pretty big petrified wood store outside the park and bought some souvenir, uh, rocks... for ourselves. The pictures online don't do this place justice... check it out:

This old car and some telephone poles is all that remains of the once fabled Route 66 that ran from Chicago to Los Angeles, passing right through the park. Tourists used to roll through Arizona in cars like this... I'll bet it was hot in the summertime without AC. The weather was perfect for us... even after it rained and snowed on the drive up.

Kind of hard to see here, but the dunes were often blue and almost purple in color.

Looks like you could throw it in your campfire... not sure it'd burn though.

 

 

A Long Drive to El Paso...

Spring Break finally arrived! We had been planning out a journey to the Grand Canyon for a while, and the middle of March seemed like an opportune time. The boys got the week off from school, I took off from work, and we all took off on the long drive north. Any drive out of Texas is a long drive though. It took us all of the first day just to get to El Paso. We'd never been that far west in Texas before, so it was all new sites and sounds for us. El Paso sits directly on the U.S. and Mexico border, so rolling into town you can see the river and Cuidado Juarez on the other side. We actually stayed a little farther up in Las Cruces, New Mexico, but we stopped in El Paso for a few minutes and checked out this state park in the Franklin Mountains. Called the Wyler Aerial Tramway, the park had a gondola that took you to the top of Ranger Peak with a great view of the city, Mexico, and three states. It was significantly colder at the top than at the bottom and the winds were a bit high, but it was a cool view of the sunset.

 

Around and About

Things have been going on around here, so I have plenty of photos to post. First off, March came in with a new baseball season and two of the boys decked out in full gear, ready for action. I decided to coach Adam's team, as this will be his last season in coach-pitch before he moves up with the bigger kids again. Nolan is in full T-Ball mode... but unfortunately, he's a member of the Red Sox. Poor kid. But he's having fun nonetheless. Here they are:

We also got to check out the replica Vietnam Memorial that came into town this month. We've seen the real one in DC, but this one is a pretty spot-on model, and much larger than we expected.

And both of these two performed at the school. Adam sang along with his classmates and Paul played in the Ukulele club - here sporting the required Hawaiian uniform - which is also, coincidentally, typical March attire in Corpus Christi.

Paul also won the Science Fair for all of Fifth Grade at his school. This photo was a while back, but he's gearing up for the district round coming up next week!

Adam was Student of the Month again this year. Three years running!

And when it comes to school stuff, Nolan is enjoying his last year of freedom, hanging out with Dexter, Farrah, and mom! Definitely growing too fast...