The Grand Canyon

The Grand Canyon

What a gorgeous sight to see!

There was a fire in Flagstaff, so the air was a bit smokey.

It's amazing to look down, look across and see

the immensity of this natural wonder.

Dad and Ryan climbing up the watch tower.

It was quite the amazing view from on top.

From a different location...you can

see the watch tower in the upper right corner.

Happy Birthday, Bob.

He was pretty happy to spend his birthday enjoying

this view for the first time.

It was still a couple of hours until sunset, but

the lighting was gorgeous. We had to leave since we still had to

drive to Clarkdale, AZ that night. We could understand why

there was such a long line of cars waiting to enter the park...the sunset

must be amazing!

It's a girl!

We interrupt this tour to introduce the newest member of our family.

Sandy, age three, was adopted from the Humane Society today.

The kids are ecstatic!

Bryce Canyon

~~

What a beautiful country we live in!

On June 23rd, we left for Arizona to attend my brother Matt's wedding.

Mom and Dad were with us, with Dad (the truck driver) the designated

driver. About an hour after leaving town, Dad asked if wanted to make a slight detour and see the Shoshone Ice Caves and/or the Craters of the Moon Monument. We ended up not seeing the ice caves. We stopped there and discovered that there was quite a wait for the 2-hour tour. We decided instead to save that for a weekend trip and head on to Craters of the Moon.

(Mom, Dad, Emmalee and Ryan)
Many, many years ago, when I was in the fourth grade, our class
took a three-day, two-night bus trip around the state. One of the stops was
Craters of the Moon. I remember being amazed by the vast quantity of
lava there. As we were entering the monument, there's quite a bit of vegitation. It's amazing that the plants would grow with little or no dirt.

The ground at this point was made up of little lava pebbles.

It was covered with the white flowers above and the pink

flowers below. Gorgeous!

Pink flowers everywhere

This was at an inferno cone overlook.

Ryan and Emmalee asked if they could climb this...they went all

of the way to the top. It was quite the climb.

Nice workout!

Once we were in the park, it was lava as far as the eye could see.

There are over 1/2 million acres of lava here.

Our family

We discovered that there were caves out along this pathway.

Luckily, the summer has been mild. During a normal (hot) summer, the surface temperature at the monument can be 150 degrees!

We found "Indian Tunnel." You have to climb down into the cave and then travel 800 feet under ground to the exit. Bob, the kids and I went though.

It was amazing how cool it was inside. Some people believe that

the local Indian tribes would travel to this tunnel to escape the heat.

As we were leaving, we tried to imagine walking across miles of

hot lava while barefoot...we were pretty glad that we live when we do.

the exit

next stop::Bryce Canyon

Gone again...Home again

Since my last very short post, we've been gone again. We're all glad to be back at home tonight...with no more trips planned in the near future.

Here come the photos...bear with me.