Ok. So we went 2751

We're home. More posts tomorrow morning.

Rose Larkins (from G1 phone)

OTB lunch in Amarillo

Yum!

Rose Larkins (from G1 phone)

Pure Excitement!

Just look at that exhilarating landscape!! Ok so we have taken to calculating mileage between radio/cell towers. Ya gotta do something for entertainment.

Rose Larkins (from G1 phone)

We Made It!

Finally we have made it to Albuquerque at about 9:30 New Mexico time. We started in Las Vegas, Neveda, drove through Hoover Dam again (no tour this time), stopped twice for food and gas in Arizona and had dinner in Gallup.We experienced delays at Hoover Dam and along I40 in New Mexico, all of it was construction and a security checkpoint at Hoover. Wow! is that road ever flat and plain on a lot of that drive. It seemed to go on forever and made me thankful we had a car going 75mph and not a covered wagon in 100 degree heat. Time for sleep as we have a long day tomorrow. Good night to all.

Bye, Bye Vegas! Hello Albuquerque!

Aftera long day on the road we should make it Albuquerque. We stopped for a real dinner at Applebee's near I-40 in Gallup. Thanks, TJ, for being a great waiter! On to a hotel room reservation, full speed ahead! Ok I am tired.

Rose Larkins (from G1 phone)

NYNY and Mr. A above the casino floor

We went in looking for that great ice cream plce and only found 2 hagen-daz places. It was a bummer!

Rose Larkins (from G1 phone)

Bellagio garden

We have wandered through Ceazars Palace to the Bellagio and looked at the Chuhuli glass. Wow!

Rose Larkins (from G1 phone)

Circus, circus!

Now that was an eciting show! The kids playing limbo were exciting as the russian bar act. John and the kids walked around last night and caught the outside show at treasure island. John did his morning run as he flew by paris and ran across the brooklyn bridge without even getting his feet wet!

Rose Larkins (from G1 phone)

Just made it through the checkpoint at Hoover Dam.

Apparently trays and carriers get an automatic search.

Rose Larkins (from G1 phone)

Mr. A says good night to the Canyon

We took some sunset pictures from yavapai pt on the rim on our last night here. Tomorrow starts off early for a trip to the Hoov!er Dam before continuing our journey to Las Vegas! Good night everyone.

Rose Larkins (from G1 phone)

Friday! Yes, we have a shower and do laundry!

and catch the Imax show we got tickets for yesterday. Camping has been fun. Our REI Base Camp 6 tent has been doing great as long as you are above 7000 feet or so. I wouldn't to do mummer camping near sea level as the fly covers it up pretty well. Here we near Yavapai in the early sunrise this morning.

The missing Thursday post!

Thursday was a fun day! It started at 5:15 to make it to the airport by 6AM for our vomit comet (oops, I mean nauseatingly turbulent plane ride over the Grand Canyon, Colorado River, the Glen Dam, and lake Powell. It was a dual prop plane that seated 17 with headphones with grandiose music interspersed with canned recordings of the sites as we passed over them. Fortunately nobody had to make use of the souvenir (little white vomit) bags. If you had an iron stomach, you could actually see the sites 0therwise you were busy concentrating on not using the bag. Yes, the plane did jump around and it was not as smooth as a roller coaster. After the plane ride, we were served a lovely breakfast (if your stomach could handle it!)

AFter that lovely plane ride, we rode a jeep out to Antelope Canyon, my favorite of the whole day. One of the tour guides sang us a Navajo song with a drum. It was neat although we couldn't understand a word of it and it came across like a lot of mumbling. Antelope canyon has a lot of undulating waves in the rock and was shaped by water and wind erosion. We have so many pictures of that place, it was hard to choose.

Then it was time for our lazy raft ride on the Colorado River starting at Glen Dam and ending at Harper's Ferry. We got a love bagged lunch served in a small souvenir insulated lunch tote. Did I mention that it gets hotter by the time you get down to the river. By the time we got the dock at the Ferry, it was 113 degrees Farenheit. Rory was our River (rat) guide and we had a lot of fun wven if it was hot. We Dunked our bandannas into the river to help keep cool. We saw a Great Blue Heron, a Peregrine Falcon in additon to petroglyphs and lots of canyon walls. One of the river giudes challenged us to eat a cicada and two took him up on it. Yeah, put that girl on Survivor Man... She said it was kind of like peanut butter.... I wonder what brand she eats? Fortunately the lunches provided were not Survivor Man material, just your basic box lunch with river cool (47 degrees) canned lemonade.

Well, it sounds like the laundry is almost done, so I will log off for right now.

We reallydid make it to the grand canyon!

But I have been using my other camera.

Rose Larkins (from G1 phone)

Another one!

Rose Larkins (from G1 phone)

Told ya Dad couldn't leave his laptop home...

John got up for a sunrise run along the rim this morning. The kids have been cooking. Howmany times can you say grilled cheese? Right now we are enjoying the Canyon Cafe where drinks for four was 11 dollars. It's hard to think of this as rustic camping with RVs everywhere and the souund of cars everywhere.

The canyon is majestic. We walked along Yavapai Point this morning along the Rim Trail. We like the signs the say people die each year by falling, not people may die, people do die... So far we have seen cars from as far as New Jersey and Mexico. I think John and thekids are going to hike along Bright Angel and try to glimpse the condors. A guy at the Black Canyon campsite told us about that. Ho said it was also fun to listen to the folks getting ready to ride the mules and their jokes. Sorry I don't have any pictures of us. Some of us are cranky about having our picture taken.

Rose Larkins (from G1 phone)

Flagstaff

So here we sit in a TacoBell eating a late snack with 1.5 hours still to get to camp, but we have coffee now.. that drive to flagstaff was pretty boring except for the occasional dust devil and a casino every few miles.

Rose Larkins (from G1 phone)

BK in Gallup

What can I say... time for lunch.

Rose Larkins (from G1 phone)

Day 3 what do you mean you forgot the COFFEE?

Well somebody fogot to pack the coffee and needless to say Rose is not funtcioning too well.
  I know what is going on the shopping list.
Rose Larkins (from G1 phone)i

Give Me your Burger!

We stopped at a A&W/Lon John Silver's restaurant for lunch in Tucuncari. Yummy!

Rose Larkins (from G1 phone)

Cadillac Ranch

Meet Mr. Anklyasaurus! We met a family from Frisco traveling to the Grand Canyon also and the told us about a grat local italian restaurant in Vegas called Batista's Hole in the Wall the the Rat Pack (and the mafia) once hung out. One more place to check out. More pictures later. Yesterday we passes a train with windmill blades (60) on it and now we are pasiing a wind farm with too many to count!

Rose Larkins (from G1

Good Morning Amarillo and we r heading out!

Well we stayed in a hotel that was quite nice... back in the 1970's. They allow pets although the yapping coyote snack next door marked the door inside the room next to us judging by the sound. We have 3 dogs and you dog owners know what I am talking about. Well, it's off to the free breakfast and then to cross our first state line!

Made it to Amarillo,,,,

And we decided to have dinner at Pizza Hut. while waiting for the pizza we discovered that one of had aa childhood lacking in the finer points of playing Rock, Paper, Scissors.  Pizza was great. Christina and Robert entertained everybody with their eclectic taste in music.

Time to crawl into the hotel bed, It's the last chance for a civilized shower. I am going to miss that. As I am writing this I am heaaring Primadonna (Phantom ot the Opera) whike the kids sing about Davy Crockett. Fascinating,,

Rose Larkins (from G1 phone)

We got packed! And we're off...

To lunch that is. And then off to the wonderful road to Amarillo!

Rose Larkins (from G1 phone)

day 0 - Packing

or how to stuff more stuff that what you have room for. I figure if one of us stays home everything will fit. We are doing a trial pack at 10:36 PM CST the day before we leave. Never mind that it is the Fourth of July and no stores are open for last minute items... Then there is church tomorrow, lunch and maybe we will get on the road. I understand we finally have a place to stay tomorrow night. Yes! no tent camping in Texas. I graciously offered to stay home with the dogs but for some reason you can't have the family vacation without all family members.

Where we going you ask? Why, the Grand Canyon! I hope to sleep sometime tonight. I am supposed to help at communion tomorrow. Hopefully I won't zonk out face first into the tray of grape juice cups. (It's a Methodist thing. ) Maybe we can get Gary to pray extra hard for all people traveling tomorrow.