National Park Vacation - Day Three . . part 2

We left the Grand Canyon sometime around noon the third day and made our way through the Navajo Reservation and drove through Monument Valley (John Ford's favorite movie background).

On the north side of Monument Valley is a little town called Mexican Hat (named after a rock formation that apparently resembles a Mexican sombrero).

Here we ate lunch and continued on to our evening destination of Arches National Park: where we were supposed to meet up with Grandpa and Grandma Bevans.

We arrived at Arches and waited at the visitor center until it closed. The kids looked at the fun stuff inside the visitor's center and then enjoyed climbing on the statues of animals outside.

Eventually, we were tired of waiting so we headed out to Delicate Arch to see if we could climb to it before we ran out of daylight.

We made it to Delicate Arch and back before it became too dark to see.

The funny thing is that Grandpa Bevans was taking pictures of Delicate Arch from a different lookout and ended up taking pictures of our family at Delicate Arch. Weird.

National Park Vacation - Day Three . . part 1

Day Three we woke up on the South Rim of the Grand Canyon and spent the early morning cleaning up camp and eating before we made our way to the rim. Tricia and the kids had never been to the Grand Canyon before and Shirl had not been to the South Rim, so they all had something great to look forward to.

We spent the Morning driving along the South Rim and stopping at all the overlooks. The kids particularly liked the "tower."

Tricia and Shirl were able to use their command of the Spanish language to visit with some people they met from Colombia.

On our trip the family decided to see how many different state license plates we could see. By the end of the trip we saw every state except Hawaii and Rhode Island.

One of the rules for the kids at the Grand Canyon was that they had to stay behind the rock barrier. As you can see from the pictures, we had a struggle getting Kyle to obey. Tricia lost some hair that day.

National Park Vacation - Day Two

Day two started with breakfast in Woodland Hills, CA with Grandpa and Grandma Jorgensen.

Grandpa and Grandma love fresh citrus and have many citrus trees in their yard. As you can see from the photo, the trees were full of fresh fruit.

After leaving the Jorgensens, we headed out East toward our first National Park destination: Death Valley. 90 degrees was all we endured in "the Valley" and we were able to see some great scenery with very little traffic.

One of my favorite pictures shows how independent Johanna was on the trip. She always wanted to do what Charlotte and Kyle were doing and wouldn't be held back.









Death valley was very interesting, but I can't imagine visiting there in the summer.










After Death Valley we headed further East through Parhump, NV and then on to Las Vegas, with the goal of visiting Hoover Dam. Visiting the Dam was fun - It's HUGE! The kids all loved running around and before we knew it all three were climbing a steep culvert (So of course I joined them).












After the Hoover Dam we stopped at the side of the road in Arizona and Tricia & Shirl made dinner while the kids and I played (as per usual). Our final destination for the day was going to be the South Rim of the Grand Canyon. We finally made it to the Grand Canyon sometime before midnight. We sent up our tent and put the kids to sleep and called it a day!

2009 Family Vacation to National Parks

Recently our family returned from a 10 day vacation through several states and multiple national parks and monuments. I'm in the process of compiling some of the pictures to show you a day-by-day photo log of our "incredible" journey.

Day 1 was spent traveling from Eugene, OR to Los Angeles, CA. Shirl Hendrickson (Tricia's Dad) wanted to go on the trip so we rented a mini-van.

We ate lunch at a rest stop and the kids played around in the grass and California sunshine.
My father agreed to lend me his spare camera, so I was able to take some quality pictures.