Amazing and blessed

Woke up refreshed and ate from the free hotel breakfast, again feeling grateful that we found a fairly inexpensive hotel that included breakfast for the monkeys and I (almost half of what we spend on the hotel we would have spent on that meal alone now that we don't have a kitchen in which to cook). One of the unintended consequences of our mini-disaster has been a horrid eating habit, eating out nearly every meal, not always good for us - must change this!

In any case, we enjoyed a heavy breakfast, then headed out on today's grand adventure - the Grand Canyon! Along the way, we drove through Seligman, which I had read was the inspiration for the town of Radiator Springs. It was a quaint, one road town, and perhaps it was the inspiration for Radiator Springs, perhaps not. But since we were on a mission to head toward the Grand Canyon, we didn't stay longer than just a drive through.

As we came up to the entrance gate to Grand Canyon National Park, just before the park, there were three mule deer on the side of the road, just chilling as everyone drove past them. I got a bad photo of one of the butt of one of them. You're welcome.

Deer butt 

Military families get into national parks for free, which meant we didn't have to pay the $25 entrance fee (whew). We explored the visitor center and signed up for the Junior Rangers program, and started filling out the books and such. I was getting restless because all of that and we still hadn't seen the dang canyon, really! We reviewed the hikes that we thought we might be able to do, selected one from the South Kaibob Rim to Ooh Aah Viewpont and hopped a bus to the trailhead.

Amazing views

Such a variety of landscape

The hike we chose was a 1.5 mile round trip, which was about the most I figured we could handle considering the descent/ascent we'd need to make. We packed two kids Camelbaks and a bottle of water, a handful of cheese sticks, pepperoni and applesauce pouches and we were off. The kids did a great job, actually hauling booty a little faster than I wanted them to as I was worried about the return trip, but they made that fairly easy as well, and the only complaint came from B when we were two short switchbacks from the top again.

Kids mid-hike with a mish mash of hats, gloves, etc.

When we were done, we headed east, looking for a place to stay. We thought about heading to Flagstaff, or Page, but in the end, we saw a small roadside "trading post" in the village of Cameron. The Cameron Trading Post has a small hotel, that is just quaint and about perfect for us, as well as a small restaurant with fairly decent food (the grilled salmon was fabulous), and a gift shop in which I could spend a small fortune. But I'll leave you with the view from the hotel balcony...

Staying here because of this view at Sunset