The Grand Canyon

Usually the 4th grade gets to take a field trip up to the Grand Canyon, but due to budget cuts, Ellie's class missed out this year.  I've been promising to take her up ever since.

We decided to leave for Utah a night early and make a detour through the Grand Canyon since it only added an hour to our trip and we were taking our time getting up there anyway.

Dustin and I have each been to the Grand Canyon once before.  He was 6 or 7 and I was 23.  My dad took my sister and me up for the day and splurged for a helicopter ride.  It then made him so sick (he has inner ear issues) that he spent the rest of the day sitting as far away from the edge as possible and forcing my sister and I to enjoy nature.  We also played "Guess Who" on the way home and my dad picked Hitler.  WHO DOES THAT???

So my only memory, was about a decade ago and I remember thinking, "WHY ARE THERE NO FENCES???"  I prepared Luke -- the runner -- by telling him that he HAD to hold me hand or else he would fall in the hole and die.  And so we set off for one of the wonders of the world with Luke repeating over and over again, "I'm going to hold mommy's hand.  I don't want to fall in the big hole and die."

Luke was probably the most enthusiastic when we got there.  We saw a rock, "It's the Grand Canyon!"  We were walking on the path, "Ooooooh, look!  It's the Grand Canyon!"  Finally we got to the *actual* hole and Luke was appropriately impressed again.  And guess what -- there were fences!!

I was starting to relax a little bit when the kids wanted to go walk along the path, so we headed East.  Suddenly the fences disappeared and all that was left was a steep drop to the bottom of the canyon and my 4 very wiggly kids.

We pressed our luck, no one feel off, but I decided that we should head back to the car and drive around to see what else we could see.

Well "what we could see" ended up with us happening to stop at the trail head to the steepest and scariest climb down to the Canyon.  And guess which child loves to hike??

We decided that since Sadie was in ballet flats and I was in Toms, Dustin would take the big kids down and I would stay at the top where the littlest two were being loved and adored by some tourist group that couldn't stop taking their pictures.

Until Luke decided that he ALSO likes to hike.  And so down we went in our non-gripping shoes as people with their hiking poles looked at us like we were crazy.  We weren't going all the way to the bottom people!!  Oh wait, Nate also thought we were and he would only agree to come BACK up if Dustin agreed to take him hiking into the Canyon in the spring.

I ended up carrying Sadie up the trail because she couldn't be bothered to wear her shoes.  At the top she informed me that I was breathing so hard because it was aerobic exercise.

It really was fun and a gorgeous hike.  I'm actually kind of excited to go back and do it for real this time.