Arizona Vacation

Wow... been a long time since either one of us posted so we've got lots to share!

In a couple days we'll have another CT scan, ears to knees this time to see how stable things are or not, then review with the Dr. ; Pray for no surprises!

So, where have we been? Our whole family headed out for a huge family trip to Arizona... Maria took the best parts and wrote below; It's a long one, but Maria did an excellent job and well worth the read!

I'm also trying to get some of our awesome pictures on here soon.

-Gavin & Family
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Day 1(June 26th): Fly to Phoenix
Up bright and early for a 7:45 a.m. flight. Lucky to have Grant around to take us to the airport, save us some moolah. Mackenzie had been a little nervous to fly but once we got going she was fine. She liked getting a drink and snack on the plane. We went through Alamo for the rental and got a sweet mini-van. Can you say sweet and mini-van in the same sentence? It’s a Chrysler Town and Country and has the stow and go seats. It’s worked well putting down 1 of the middle seats so we have room for the cooler and back packs. Once we left the airport we headed over to Chase Field. We ate at Friday’s Front Row Sports Bar (similar menu to the regular Friday’s) and had an awesome view of the field. I’m pretty sure Drew was speechless which is saying a lot. Next we took a tour of the baseball field. If you like baseball and ever have a chance to see behind the scenes, it is well worth the time and money. While we didn’t see any Arizona players (just the manager Bob Melvin), we did get to see Nomar Garciaparra of the Dodgers. That night we went to a Diamondback/Dodgers game. It was a great game even though Arizona lost by 1 run in the 10th. One of the coolest things was watching the retractable roof open up.

Day 2:
We started off at the Goldfield Mine and Ghost tour. Next time I will do some more research because it was pretty lame. Actually it’s just that Arizonians are wimps or think tourists are wimps. They don’t have much open during the summer months due to the heat. Let me tell you, I have sat out at baseball games in Charlotte the same temperature as it was that day! We ended up stopping for lunch at a cute old fashioned soda shop (yes, we took pictures for you Jimmie) and headed to the pool for a bit of down time. That night we ate at Rustler’s Roost, a cowboy steakhouse that has a slide from the entrance into the dining room. That was a hit with the kids and the food was a hit with all of us. Our booth gave us a great mountain-side view of Phoenix at night as well.

Day 3:
Left Phoenix today for the Page/Lake Powell area. On the way decided to stop at Sunset Crater. This was scheduled later on in the vacation but in the end we are glad we stopped when we did. It opened up some time to add a few things later. Driving up to it, you can see it in the distance; it looks different than any other landform around. Gavin and I noticed the difference before we realized what it was. While visiting we decided to take this ½ mile hike to look at the cinder hills. Oh my, it was definitely more than a moderately rated hiking trail. It was steep and the path was lava rock pebbles which made for uneven footing. We have some great pictures of Mackenzie in her hot pink skort and Hollywood-like sunglasses having a Paris Hilton moment on the way up! While looking at Sunset Crater we realized we could see part of the Painted Desert in the far distance. It was so pretty that we decided to add that to our itinerary. Thankful that we stopped here when we did so we have time for that later. We arrived in Page and headed for dinner at a great Mexican restaurant called Fiesta Mexicana. I was the only adventurous one and ordered mole enchiladas and they were yummy. I haven’t had mole since I was a little girl visiting my dad’s relatives in Colorado.

Day 4:
Up bright and early to catch a boat to take a tour of Lake Powell and Rainbow Bridge. It took 3 hours to get to the site to hike to the bridge and 3 hours to boat back. Needless to say it was a long day but it was totally worth it. The natural bridge is awesome and you feel like you are in the middle of God’s country. The kids were troopers, I know looking at pretty rocks, mesas, and buttes aren’t the most exciting thing in the world. Impressively, after spending 7.5 hours in the sun, no one got sun burnt. Not even pink! Headed to dinner that night to a great Italian restaurant called Stromboli's for pizza (a cold salad for me!).

Day 5:
Another early morning. After seeing some pictures we decided we needed to take a tour of Antelope Canyon. By far the most impressive site we’ve been to. I don’t thing I can put into words how absolutely beautiful it was. You will just have to wait for pictures. Not sure if Drew and Austin liked the canyon better or the ride in the tour truck. It was a big truck with big wheels for driving through sand. After some thought, I think Austin liked the ride better since he let out a “woo hoo” after one bump that gave us some airtime from our seats! After that tour we headed in the direction of Flagstaff which will be our next base for a few days. On the way, we stopped near Tuba City to see some dinosaur tracks. Way cool! We got to see tracks, fossilized dino bones, and fossilized dino poop! We brought home some of the poop, can you guess who is going to get it for a gift? After checking-in at a very nice Embassy Suites (Gavin was able to get us an executive suite!), we headed to a local restaurant in downtown Flagstaff called Mountain Oasis. I’m not sure what I expected of Flagstaff but downtown reminds me a lot of the little towns in the mountains like Hendersonville and Black Mountain. Of course there is more urban sprawl around it and all that comes with that, like Starbucks and any fast food restaurant imaginable. In the middle of downtown Flagstaff there was an American Indian arts and crafts festival going on. We are hoping to get back there tomorrow to peruse the wares. After dinner we headed up to Lowell Observatory which is where Pluto was discovered. We got to look through a small portable telescope (still bigger then you can buy in the stores) and see Venus and Saturn up close. You could actually see a ring around Saturn, very cool. Then we were able to take a look through the big, main telescope. We got a great look at Jupiter, its bands (no red spot, bummer) and 4 of its moons or satellites – definitely very cool. Reflecting upon the day, I find it quite amazing that in one day we saw footprints of dinosaurs made years ago and also planets and stars that God made years and years ago. Life is good.


Day 6:
A slower start today after 2 early mornings. Got some laundry out of the way and some studying too. After a huge complimentary breakfast (gotta love Embassy Suites), we made our way out I-40 to Meteor Crater. It is the first proven meteor crater and the best preserved. Some of the interactive exhibits in the museum really brought the movie “Deep Impact” to life! It is by far the neatest hole in the ground I’ve ever seen. The next stop is the Petrified Forest and Painted Desert. We arrived at about 4 p.m. and had about 3 hours until the park closed to see everything. I never would have imagined we could use more time then that but we definitely could have. We saw lots of petrified wood with quartz and jasper in them, they were gorgeous. Too bad it’s protected, they would make great tables! To end the day we took in the vistas of the Painted Desert right before sunset. Absolutely awesome, I can’t wait to show you the pictures. Tomorrow we are off to the Grand Canyon!

Day 7:
Finally, the Grand Canyon! Actually we started the day a little differently than we had planned. My trip itinerary had Mackenzie and me going horseback riding in Sedona the last day of the trip. While driving up to the G.C. we heard the forecast on Saturday is calling for rain, which would be no horseback riding as promised. I happened to have a brochure for Apache Trails which is located right outside the G.C. It was decided we better take her now just in case it does rain in Sedona. Drew, Mackenzie, and I took a 1 hour ride on Sundance, Cedar, and 6 Gun respectively. Of course Mackenzie loved every minute of it; she would have stayed out there all day! While we rode, Gavin and Austin checked out the G.C. and scoped out what we would do first. We ended up parking at the Market Place and taking the free shuttle around. I think all in all we hiked about 3 miles. It was in the 90s so that was probably a reasonable amount. Mackenzie and Austin became junior rangers at the park and during a ranger talk we discovered a cool game we can take back to VBS, youth group, or Tekoa. We stayed and watched the sunset and took some amazing pictures. It was a long and tiring day but worth every second – the G.C. is as amazing as everyone has told us. Both Mackenzie and Austin chose the G.C. as their favorite so far. Drew of course chose the D-backs game. Gavin and I, while loving the expansive vistas of the G.C., chose Antelope Canyon as our favorite so far. As a side note, we have put over 1300 miles on the van so far!

Day 8:
On to Las Vegas via the Hoover Dam. It looks like they are building a new road that will cross over the existing road that is on the dam. Hopefully that will cut down traffic in the future. Now if you don’t want to see the dam, too bad. You just have to suck it up and deal with the traffic jam due to all of the people who do want to see Hoover Dam. The crowds were pretty bad here so we just hopped out and took a quick look at the dam and moved on. It might be interesting to take the tour if there isn’t hundreds and hundreds of other people trying to do the same thing. Ended up getting to Vegas around 4 p.m. which left plenty of time to check out the city. We took a quick look around Excalibur, where we were staying. The kids decided the arcade area looked pretty cool. There was a 4D theater, video games, games you could play for tickets, and midway-style games. We then headed over to check-out the New York, New York hotel/casino. What an awesome place. The facade is a cool representation of downtown NY along with the Statue of Liberty and a tugboat in a bay. I told Gavin that when we come back next time, I want to stay here because the inside is just as cool as the outside. The food court area looks just like a NY street. We then walked over to the MGM Grand. The lion habitat there is pretty neat, actually got to see the lion’s at a very playful time. We had some time to kill before our reservations at the Rainforest Café so we walked over to M and M World. Definitely a chocolate lover’ dream store! It was nice and we let the kids grab some M and M’s for a snack. Back to the Rainforest Café for a delicious, if not a bit overpriced, dinner. It was worth the price to get caught in a rainforest thunderstorm! Since we had such a late dinner, it was dark when we left the MGM. We walked down to the Bellagio to catch a fountain show. Wow. A truly awesome sight to see, I could have stayed there all night. I’m sure many people feel that way which is the reason why there aren’t any benches to sit on!

Day 9: Happy Birthday Drew!
After a quick breakfast of Krispy Kremes and Starbucks (breakfast of champions!), we headed out to see some more casinos. If you haven’t been following the news, it was really hot in Vegas the entire time we were there, record breaking hot. Since the Luxor is right next to the Excalibur, we walked over and checked it out first. Mackenzie and Austin did this cute magic carpet ride. Their image was projected on a green screen then it was digitally added in to a pre-made movie backdrop. We decided it would be just as easy to take taxis everywhere instead of trying to fight traffic. I really wanted to see Caesars, so we headed there first. It was just as fantastic as Gavin had described. We actually ate lunch there in the food court. I had the best lobster roll ever (I know you northeasterners are going to disagree, but I don’t care)! In the shops next to Caesars we saw a show at one of the fountains. We got to hear the mythological version as to why Atlantis was buried beneath the sea. Cool stage show but would have been better with real actors and not just machinated mannequins. Next stop was the Venetian for a gondola ride, or what was supposed to be a gondola ride. The line was so long and it was just pricey enough for us to decide it wasn’t worth the wait. Despite Austin’s reservations (putting it lightly) we toured Madame Tussuad's Wax Museum. It only took him about 5 minutes to admit that it was cooler than he expected. I think it helped when we got to the sports room and there, larger than life, was Babe Ruth! All of us enjoyed the wax museum. I got to marry George Clooney, Gavin got to ride a motorcycle, Drew got to have his picture taken with cute girls he’ll never be in the same league to date, Austin got to meet the greatest NYY ever, and Mackenzie got to stand next to Siegfried and Roy and one of their white tigers. Another cool thing they had there was an American Idol stage with figures of Simon Cowell and Ryan Seacrest. There was a worker up on stage singing (actually a Billy Joel song, when we entered the room). When asked, he said anyone was welcome to take the stage and with no prodding Drew hopped up. He sang “The Entertainer” by Billy Joel and actually sang the worker under the table! According to wax Simon, Drew was told he had made it through to the next round, Hollywood! Drew’s birthday dinner was the next stop. We splurged and took everyone to the Bellagio dinner buffet. It was great, although the kids decided the desserts were too fancy. Mackenzie was only in it for the crab legs anyway! After dinner we went back to NY, NY to the arcade and let the kids waste some money there.

Day 10:
Even though we have taken a cab for the long distances, we still have walked tons. I think we are all starting to feel it so we did sleep in a bit today. We didn’t get hot Krispy Kreme’s yesterday so that was the first order of business. Then we walked over to Mandalay Bay thinking we were going to take a tour of the shark reef. Once we got over there we decided it wasn’t different enough from the multitude of other aquariums we have been to. I had been told to take the kids to Circus Circus so we headed down to the other end of the strip. The kids had such a blast there, seeing some circus acts, but mostly playing midway games. They won so many stuffed animals that we are going to probably end up shipping them back! We looked into the Adventure Dome but didn’t see any unique rides the kids wanted to go on, so we just headed back to the carnival area. On the way there we noticed a place where you can get an old timey picture taken. We had seen it before on the trip but it was really pricey. This was still a little pricey but Gavin and I really wanted one done of the family. It’s a great picture (Drew reprised his role as Sky Masterson). I can’t wait to frame and hang up at home. Also while at Circus, Circus, I tried my hand at a $5 blackjack table. What a blast! I walked away $12.50 ahead, not too bad for my first time and probably only playing 15-20 minutes. It was decided to walk over to Treasure Island to look at the ships outside (not the show though, heard it definitely isn’t PG rated). Looks cool but not much to it w/o a show so we just went inside to eat. Yes, we decided to eat at another buffet (weight watchers when I get back!). A unanimous vote showed that the dinner part was better at the Bellagio (more options for the kids) but the dessert part was better overall at TI. While the Bellagio desserts were fancy, the desserts at TI were down home goodness (homemade donuts, mini pies, éclairs, crème brulee, cookies, hard ice cream, and best of all for the kids – cotton candy!). It was still too light to catch the volcano eruption at the Mirage so we just had to settle for looking at it in an inactive state. Grabbed a cab back to the hotel and let the kids go crazy in the Excalibur arcade. Gavin went to take a nap so he and I could go out for a bit later. The kids and I went on a couple of the 4D rides. The first one was Spongebob and is the same thing as the 3D at Carowinds with added special effects such as water, bubbles, and air blown at you. The second one was called “Extreme Log Ride” and was amazing. Even Drew, the cynic that he was being, enjoyed it. Gavin and I headed out after putting the kids to bed in searching for more $5 blackjack tables. Those of you who have been to Vegas probably already know that they are few and far between. We ended up not playing anything, just enjoying a drink amidst the sound of slot machines.

Day 11:
Our last morning in Vegas…I figured we had had enough K.K. so we skipped breakfast in lieu of an early lunch. Gavin and I wanted to play a few more hands of blackjack so we dropped off the kids at the Luxor arcade (with Drew in charge) and headed to the tables. Alas, no $5 so we settled on a $10 table. Notice the lack of a winning report here…A quick lunch at the Pyramid Café and we headed back to the Excalibur to collect the van and luggage and head to Sedona. Some idle thoughts about Vegas: Saw a few brides in full dress, didn’t see any women I could easily identify as ladies of the night, really smoky everywhere, saw an Indian woman (from country of India) in full dress getting her picture taken next to a topless lady statue, wondered why people with infants would come to Vegas and bring them, security wasn’t as prominent as I would have thought, Bellagio casino smelled the best (no smoke smell), Excalibur casino smelled the worst (of course, our luck). We arrived in Sedona around dinner time. The first thing I have to say is that our hotel is awesome! We opened the hotel room door to see a view out the patio of the red rocks of Oak Creek Canyon! Could not have asked for a better first impression. Unfortunately in my excitement, I called everyone to see the view and the kids left Gavin stuck in the hotel room door with the luggage cart! After a bit of oohs and ahs we headed out for a Mexican meal at Oaxaca. Once again we totally lucked out, they sat us on the patio with a terrific view of the red rocks at sunset (the food was also excellent).

Day 12:
Gavin and I decided to set the alarm and get up to see the sunrise. Mackenzie was the only one of the kids who joined us. Sunrise was definitely not as spectacular as sunset and after a bit we all went back to bed for a few hours. Once we got going again we headed out to V – V (vee bar vee) to see some petroglyphs. It was an amazing site and the volunteer tour guide was able to point out a lot of interesting points to us. Mackenzie enjoyed taking a notebook and copying down some of the petroglyphs she saw. Since we were so close, we headed to Montezuma’s Castle next. This is a National Park that contains the ruins of an ancient Sinagua Indian village that had been built into the mountainside. Another amazing site to see. Interesting to note that the site was deserted and the Sinaguan tribe just disappeared and no one has figured out why yet. According to a sign, the closest guess they have is that they assimilated into the Hopi tribe once they deserted Montezuma’s Castle. And why the name Montezuma? The first discoverers erroneously thought that it was built by the Aztecs. Next headed back to Sedona for some lunch, more Mexican…yummy! A little shopping on the way back to the hotel so the kids could go swimming. We ate dinner at the Cowboy Club that night and all ate some yummy steaks.

Day 13 (July 8th):
Hard to believe it is time to go home. The kids are ready to get home to Dakota, the cats too I think. We saw the coolest site on the way out of town…a real live coyote just standing at the side of the road. A great ending to the best vacation ever. O.k. so we aren’t officially back in Charlotte yet and we still have to get through airport security and hope our plane is on time. I am being positive about all of that though!

Thanks for reading the vacation blog and we will see you soon!