7-24 Arizona to NM

We drove through Petrified Forest National Park first thing in the morning. We went to the visitor center and learned that this area was once a forest and wet swamps. We stopped at some scenic lookouts, saw lots of petrified wood, big and small, and the site of a Puebloan village from about 900 years ago. 

By the village ruins...

Petroglyphs...

The Painted Desert...

The boys did not find this park terribly exciting. Karl turned to me as we were in the visitor center and said,  "Mom, I want to go home." I think we are all feeling ready to go home now. 

We drove the rest of the day, across New Mexico. Outside of Albuquerque we stopped in a western mercantile and got the boys belts to go with their silver belt buckles. In the car, they read books most of the day. We stayed at a motel in Tucumcari, NM. Dinner was a bucket of KFC and a bottle of wine from a convenience store. Hey, we were tired and it was all we could find... 

7-23 Grand Canyon

We walked on the Rim Trail in the morning, about 3 miles from the main visitor center to the old Grand Canyon Village. Lots of great views and we saw a big female elk (we think, might've been a mule deer) right in front of us by the trail. 

We had a breakfast snack and then caught the park shuttle back to where we started. The Grand Canyon was great to see, beautiful, and a little hard to take in. But it feels different from the other parks we've been to, in that you look at it but don't feel as much that you're part of it or IN it. There are a couple of trails that go down into the canyon, and people raft the river, but it's just felt different to us. Around the rim it's very developed with visitor services (gift shops, food, etc). We were ready to go after our morning walk. 

We packed up our camp for the last time, and started our drive. We went south out of the park and drove to Flagstaff, where we found a bookstore and a magic card store. The boys had finished their books and each got the next in the series (Jay points out that his series is called Fablehaven, not whatever I wrote previously).

From Flagstaff we officially turned east to head homeward! We stopped for the night in Holbrook, Arizona. 

7-22 drive to Arizona

Leaving Zion, we drove through the park and through a 1 mile tunnel that goes through the canyon walls. On the way out of the park, four bighorn sheep crossed the road right in front of our car. We didn't get a picture, but a few minutes later, we saw several more of them on the rocks by the roadside!

That's was our first sighting on the trip of bighorn sheep!

From there we drive south into Arizona, along the base of the VermillionCliffs. We stopped for lunch at a restaurant that seemed to be in the middle of nowhere. 

After that we drove through the Navajo Indian reservation on our way to the Grand Canyon. Along the way we found silver belt buckles for each of the boys. We also noticed the temperature reached a new high for our trip - 106!!!

We reached the Grand Canyon (south rim, east entrance) in late afternoon, stopping for a bit at the first visitor center and old re-created Indian tower with views of the canyon. 

We were hot and thirsty so we got a snack, and the boys (all three) went crazy over orange soda. There were free refills which proved to be dangerous! Karl burped while drinking and orange soda came out his nose! You'd think we would've learned from the malt incident...

 

We proceeded to our campground which was within the park. The park is a maze of various visitor facilities and it was a big campground, but a nice one. Sites were spread out so it didn't feel crowded and it was pretty quiet. This was our last night of camping on the trip. It cooked off and the temperature was good for sleeping.