Vacation, Turkey.

So,
    This past week has been immense. We started off with Teresas 35th birthday. This means that when the treadmill at the YMCA ask her how old she is she no longer has to change anything up or down. She is now the default setting. (I've been this way for the last month and it is super.)

Pics.

The very next day we set out for The Grand Canyon. The drive out there was only 7-ish hours with stops. The kids were mostly pretty ok. The hotel was mostly pretty ok. Teresa had never been here before and I had only been here once before so it was going to be an adventure. We stayed in Williams Arizona which was the last town on Route 66 to be bypassed by I-40 and awfully proud of it. When we woke up on the morning of the 24th to go the Canyon the temp on the rim was 3 degrees. By the time we got there it was probably closer to 15 degrees. We stopped at the visitors center, watched a film about the canyon then walked to Mather point. Then we walked up tot the geology center along the Rim trail. After that the kids were done with walking and we rode the shuttle (which they loved!) to the rest of the western points we hit along the way.
    Instead of captioning all of these pics I'm just going to sort of dump them here since this acts as the 21st century photo album.

Very First Time all of them have ever seen something like that.

What they were looking at.

Whole fam.

The kids soon got bored of looking at things and started climbing rocks.

From there the kids got really tired of walking and we started taking the bus places. The kids loved waiting for the bus and riding the bus. It was one of Aidens favorite things of the day he said. The first stop was lunch. It was just ok but it combined with the bus did wonders for the kids moods. The rest of the trip to the Canyon overlooks went much more smoothly.

Mohave point was Teresa Favorite view of the day. It was beautiful, much less crowded, the sun was starting to get lower in the sky so the shadows were growing across the canyon bringing out the textures and shapes visually and it had a fence.

The last overlook of the day was Powell Point.

 Powell point didn't have a fence so Teresa, who had already been really nervous about the kids near the edges was not particularly fond of this one.  I decided to make her nervous by walking right up the edge and refusing to come back until she took my picture. What she couldn't see since she wouldn't get close is that the drop was only about 7 ft to another ledge and I was nowhere near an actual edge.

 This one really made her mad but you can see the top of a short tree a clue as to the actual drop off.

We retreated back to the hotel exhausted that day and crashed.

The next day we set out for Bearizona an animal park were you could drive around some and see bears, bison, wolves, bighorn sheep etc... We had a HUGE timber wolf follow our car for a bit and bears all over everywhere it was fun.

There was also a walk around part with the baby animals and a Raptor show. A hawk did a fly by on Teresas head during the show.

Bear cubs chasing each other up a tree.

From Bearizona we headed out to Walnut Canyon National Monument to hike around and check out some ancient Cliff Dwellings. The hike down included 258 stairs which we counted on the way back up. The kids really liked everything we did this day. The dwellings and history of the area were really neat.

You can see them carved out and blocked off on the left of this picture.

The walk down.

There was also evidence of ancient row houses up on the canyon rim.

We drove to Flagstaff to check out the town from there. It is a great little mountain town. I've always really liked it. We got some dinner and headed back to williams for the night.
    The next morning we woke up packed the car and headed out to Orange County for a Grover Thanksgiving. We arrived tired ate dinner and settled in for bed. The next day was Thanksgiving. The kids each got to decorate their own gingerbread house.

The turkey was rotisseried on the BBQ and turned out great.

Before.

After.

Thanksgiving was 80 degrees so we went swimming and to the park and spent the day outside enjoying the company of the Grovers.

Friday we drove back to Lancaster and slept in our own beds. Saturday we woke up and headed to LA to see Joe and Heather who are in town from TX for Thanksgiving. We met at travel town and went to the old abandoned LA Zoo to poke around.

Everyone ready to ride the Travel Town Train.

Joe Owen and Heather.

Pretending to run from the train!!!

The old zoo was really cool It's in a quiet area of griffith park. It was shut down in 1965 when the new zoo opened but they left all of the enclosures and cages. It was fun to explore.

It was great to see Joe and Heather and their family. The week was crazy but amazing. Now we are all back to school/ work for the next few weeks until xmas in VA!

Till next time-

RTSZA