Grand Canyon

If one thing was a given on this trip, it was that we were going to make every effort to visit the Grand Canyon.

We woke up early and packed up like it was our purpose in life.  Yeah – we were that good.

Of our eight hotel nights, this is the only one that did not include a hot breakfast.  We went to McDonald’s and it cost a ridiculous amount of money.  And it was gross.

We drove through town, filled up with gas, and drove one hour north to the Grand Canyon.

Five hours and almost 300 photos later, we realized our camera was on some whacky setting that made all the photos black, white and pink.

We discovered this problem with our late lunch and incredibly enough, I did not fall into tears.  Now, this is most likely because I had already had every fiber of my anxious being tormented by the harrowing edges and the six children I was keeping my eyes on.  Seriously, this is not the place for an anxiety-plagued person to visit.  At one point I had to speak tersely to my less-anxious offspring.  While their enjoyment of the canyon might, in fact, increase, say 10% by going past the trails and barriers, my enjoyment drops no less than 100% with every move they make past these markers.

Once we discovered the problem, over that standby Grand Canyon meal of – pizza – John determined the best option was to go out to the one trail we had not yet investigated and take more photos there.  Nan opted to stay in Grand Canyon Village and we thought we’d be about 45-60  minutes. 

Almost two hours later we met up with her again.  We couldn’t catch one of the buses that came by because it couldn’t stop; a van was parked in the bus drop-off/pick-up lane and it sped right by.    We waited close to 30 minutes for our ride back.

We headed to our hotel in Kingman, which was “only” a Best Western motel. Well, it turned out to be a rocking good choice.

We enjoyed a swim under an Arizona sunset.

And the hot tub was so welcoming.

 

We walked over to a restaurant a few doors down where we were welcomed in… and warned they only  had a few items on their menu.

Given it was after 8PM on a Sunday night, we had little choice but to just find something to eat.

It’s too funny how places have not had food twice on our trip.  Who knew that was a thing?