Grand Canyon

On the day after Christmas, Boxing day if you will, my family and I embarked on a journey around Arizona. We drove straight from Phoenix to the Grand Canyon stopping only to have a picnic in Flagstaff. The car ride was filled with the family rotating their CD choices. Lovely. Andy chose some old Folky guy with weird lyrics that nobody particularly enjoyed except for him. I made a playlist on my iPod that I thought everyone would approve of, but that was indeed wishful thinking. We did have some great sing-a-longs to The Funeral by Band of Horses and Mykonos by Fleet Foxes. It was nice. Charlie played some electronica and everyone pretended to like it. Love family. Every time we would stop for a bathroom break of a food break, Lola would get comfortable in our seat and every time we started driving again, Charlie would have to throw her back in the backseat. She would instantly turn into a noodle dog and squirm until Charlie got her in the backseat.

We got to The Grand Canyon Village which is basically hotels and restaurants and dropped our luggage off at our hotel and entered Grand Canyon National park. We walked around the rim for a while and stopped at Bright Angel Lodge on the South Rim. The Grand Canyon is ridiculously beautiful. It makes you feel so small and insignificant when you are standing on the edge of this billion year old thousand acre wide beast of a monument. We listened in on a 45 minute lecture by a ranger about the formation of the canyon. Basically, a tiny river carved out solid rock with patient erosion and friction. The canyon becomes the depth of a paper deeper every year. When you look at the canyon and how deep it is, you get a ridiculous sense of how old it is. With every step you take into the canyon, you are stepping over thousands of years of the canyon's life. Crazy. After it got too cold to be on the rim we drove back into town and stopped and ate at a pretty bad mexican restaurant called The Mexican Restaurant. Then we settled into our hotel room. It was a tiny room with two queen size beds and there are 5 Boyds in the room. I slept with mom on a bed, dad got a bed to himself, and Charlie and Andy were both on separate cots. Sucks to suck. My dad snores like a fog horn and has sleep apnea so he has a loud machine called a CPAP. Needless to say nobody except dad got any sleep.The next morning, mom and dad left to get breakfast and the kids stayed in and got a solid 15 minutes of sleep. Then we headed back to the Grand Canyon for some hiking. Mom and Dad dropped us off at this road on the way to the South Kaibab Trailhead with way more water than we needed and way more clothing than was necessary. We walked to the trailhead and then began the trail. We stopped nearly every twenty feet so as to capture the beauty of the canyon sufficiently. We did not succeed, but we ended up with some fun pictures. We hiked all the way down to Cedar Ridge and enjoyed some granola bars and cheese. While we were at the Grand Canyon in 2004 we took a picture that is one of my favorite pictures we have ever taken.

We tried to recreate this picture, but we were in a different part of the canyon and had to use a timer. I still love the picture. We are so freaking cool.

After recreating pictures, eating food, doing a bunch more poses, and relieving our bladders, we began our ascent to the rim. The Grand Canyon is odd because usually when hiking, you start out going up and when you get tired you can turn around and easily go down. But when hiking the Grand Canyon, you do the easy part first and then you have to hike up when you're already pretty tired. It was rough especially because I had gotten my wisdom teeth taken out a few days prior to our hike and my mouth was swollen and in quite a bit of pain. But we finally got to the top and took the shuttle back to the lodge and watched a very educational video about the canyon and its history. Mom had prepared a lovely picnic at a table near our car and dad took the sleeping bag out of the car and was sleeping on the pavement when we got to the picnic. Classic. After packing up our trash, we checked out another museum and headed back on the road to Flagstaff. We ate dinner at a wonderful chinese restaurant and then hot tubbed in our hotel. Dad make awkward comments about the girls around us that were my age. Classic. We had two rooms at this hotel, so mom and dad were in one and the kids were in another with me on the cot and the boys each in beds. We crashed hard because of the lack of sleep and woke up to cheese sandwiches and hot cocoa provided by the wonderful momma.

The next morning, Charlie and I went to Snowbowl for a day of snowboarding. It was so much fun. The snow wasn't the best and there were cones around rocks that we were to avoid and the snow was pretty slushy, but I had a fantastic time. We had some major brother sister bonding and I even got some air on some jumps! Rad. Mom didn't give us enough money for food so we were stuck with rumblies in our tumblies but we enjoyed some chili cheese fries at the end of the day. Then we stopped at Chipotle for a burrito and of course Andy knew 5 people. We were in Flagstaff and he still has friends. Ridiculous. On the way home, we listened to a CD I made sometime last year and everyone enjoyed it. Even Lola.

All in all, it was a great trip. It was the first family vacation we have had since I can remember and I was reminded of how much my family rocks. They are all so funny and they think I am funny and I enjoy their company and they enjoy mine. Friends will fade but family is there to stay. I've always been more of a person to rely on my friends, but recently I have realized how important family is and that corny quote is the only way I can think to express how that feels. I love my family. I love Arizona. I love life.