Isn't Life Grand?

We were only a few hours away from Grand Canyon, so we figured we would get our money's worth (we bought the Annual Interagency Pass for National Parks and such) so many of us from the group went to there when our time at Zion was done.  A little history would be enlightening--my mom worked at Grand Canyon cleaning cabins during the summers of her college years. It was her favorite vacation when she was a kid, and it continues to be one of her favorite spots. She is always trying to talk someone into going to Grand Canyon with her. We were glad that it worked out this time, and she knew of some great lookout points and simple hikes to go on.

We had to get the obligatory photo underneath the Grand Canyon Lodge sign.

I love Sophia's expression in the photo above!

We drove and hiked and looked and oohed and aah-ed and took lots of photos. The sun was bright so our expressions were kind of goofy in most of the photos, but we had a good time. We drank lots of water too. It was hot.

Our last stop was an old Native American Granary. It was a 1/2 mile hike (or so?) and we wanted to hurry, so we half-way ran down and back up the trail. I learned again where I get my "we need to hurry!" from (my mom was hurrying us all along) and Coleman and Olivia kept asking me why we needed to run. Poor kids.

We saw variations of this view on our way out of the park as we drove to Jacob Lake (which actually doesn't have much of a lake, did you know?).  It was late and we were tired and hungry and Sophia was cranky, so we kept telling the kids to give her snacks (Teddy Grahams, cereal, pretzels, etc. from the best trail mix ever that Lauren made). The road was so curvy and windy and Sophia didn't feel so well. About 30 minutes away from Jacob Lake Liv told us she thought Sophia was going to be sick. Sure enough, there was vomiting. A lot of it. Yucky and smelly. We pulled off to the side of the road and waved as all of the other cars in our group passed us. My mom said she was sure we had stopped to photograph the beautiful sunset :). Lindsey was kind enough to stop and check on us, but there wasn't much we could do. We cleaned her up the best that we could and made our way to Jacob Lake where we promptly bathed Sophia and all of the parts of her car seat. Good times on the family vacation!

We decided that Grand Canyon is amazing... and it is good to visit there every 10 or 15 years or so. We might be tempted to get to the South Rim sometime soon though (we need to make good use of our interagency pass!).

**What's your favorite national park?
**We aren't the only ones with throw-up stories while on vacation, are we? What's yours?