Day 3: Grand Junction, CO to Tusayan, AZ

We left Grand Junction with eager anticipation of visiting our first National Park of the trip:  Arches National Park in Moab, UT.  Eric was excited for this park, as the scenery was very similar to that in the first Star Wars movie, specifically the pod racing scenes.

 The kids had more climbing opportunities at this park.

 Don indicated I was being too protective of their climbing, and said something along the lines of "they're growing up"....or something like that.  So, I backed off and let them climb.  Please note that to Eric's right, just around the corner of where he was heading was a straight, 90 degree drop off with major distance between where he is positioned and where the bottom is.  Plummeting distance.  I used passive aggressive parenting at that point, and instead of telling Eric he couldn't climb, I told him that if kept going that direction, the rock ledge ended and there would be a straight drop off.  I'm sure Don rolled his eyes.

 After hanging out in the park for a bit, we drove into Moab for a picnic lunch.  We found a nice park, and the kids played for a bit on the playground while Don and I played frisbee.  It was in the mid 90s.  We then headed on to our hotel in Tusayan, AZ, which is located just outside the south entrance of the Grand Canyon.  We drove through some very scenic as well as very desolate desert in Northern Arizona within the Navajo Nation.  As we turned on to the road that would take us into Tusayan, we learned that we would actually have to enter Grand Canyon park to get there.  So....we got our fist glimpse of the Canyon Monday evening instead of Tuesday morning as we planned.  It was a great relief to arrive after a long day of driving!

 Eric was VERY excited to see the Grand Canyon!  This is him skipping to the viewing area.  I really wanted to see the kids' expressions when they got their first views, but they were too fast for me.

 The boys love annoying me with these puppets.    It became an inside joke throughout the trip, as they were at every stinkin' gift shop, and they asked to buy them every time.  The answer was always the same.