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A Trip to Phoenix

Ted and I took an extended weekend and drove to Phoenix to see Ted's daughter Randi, her husband Joe and to see our grandkiddos Aedynn and Lydia.  We left Thursday night, after Ted got off work and drove to Springdale, Utah.  Springdale is right outside of Zion Park.

We got up at 4:00 in the morning on Friday to drive through Zion Park in the dark so we could get to a spot Ted remembered seeing years ago on another drive.  He wanted to hit it at sunrise - like he had before.   I have to say, it was a lovely sight.  We figure it's the very east end of the Grand Canyon, where it just starts to crack open the earth.  We took some beautiful pictures there.  From there, we drove through the Indian reservation.  It's a very vast and barren area.  The houses are long distances from each other.

We made our way into Cameron, AZ.  It's a small trading post, hotel and restaurant.  We had breakfast there.  It was a lovely little outpost.  We were not in a real hurry, because we knew we would be getting to Phoenix in really good time - so we kind of took our time and sauntered through.  We found Waptaki National Monument that had 800 year old ruins.  We walked to one of the ruins and Ted's knee was bothering him - so I walked to the other one on our own.  Interesting fact:  even though I've lived and traveled this area for many years, I have never seen a coyote.  As we entered the park, we noticed something crossing the road.  When we got a good look, we realized it was a coyote.  It was kind of cool.

We got to Phoenix, checked into the hotel and went to Joe and Randi's house to catch up with Randi and the kids.  We were greeted with Lydia sitting outside and when we pulled in, Lydia started to shout, "they're here, they're here".  Ted thought that was adorable and keeps repeating that even now.  We spent the evening with them and ate pizza.  We were able to spend a moment with Joe when he got home from work before we left to go back to the hotel.

On Saturday, Ted and I made arrangements to rent a minivan, so we got up early to run to the airport to pick it up.  We needed it to take a drive with all of us up to Meteor Crater.  It's quite a drive, about two hours - but what an amazing site.  This HUGE hole in the ground where a meteor hit 50,000 years ago.  They have an amazing museum and we spent quite a bit of time there.  We drove back down to Phoenix and had dinner at Cracker Barrel.  Ted and Aedynn played two games of checkers outside on a big checkerboard while sitting in huge wooden rocking chairs. It was quite fun to watch Ted and Aedynn interact.  I think they each won one game and I was pretty sad I didn't think to take a picture of that!!

We spent Sunday just hanging out with Randi, Joe and the kids.  Ted, Joe and Aedynn went to Fry's for a bit.  Randi made us an amazing dinner.  I bawled my eyes out when it was time to go - we had not seen them since they left our house October 31 three years ago.  Now that they are closer than Alabama, we hope to see them more often.  But, it was very hard to say goodbye.  I adore all of my grandkiddos so much and wish I could spend more time with the ones who are out of state.

Monday morning,  Ted and I went the other way - up through Vegas - to go home.  We stopped and got pictures by the huge cactus' and made our way through Hoover Dam.  I am afraid of bridges and that Pat Tillman Bridge is huge.  That one, though you know you are on a bridge, is not nearly as terrifying as the one right before it though.

We stopped and ate dinner in Mesquite and played a little longer in the casino than we should have.  We didn't get home until about 11:00 and Ted had to work the next day.  Poor guy.

Posting pictures after this post - it's kind of hard to mix them all in.

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