With the Winging in our rear view mirror, we set out west to our new base. There are two ways to look at a military move: an adventure or a big ol' pain - we like to look at it in both ways! (let's be realistic here) So, the two dogs, 5 month old husband (oops, I think I meant, "5 month old AND husband....ha)and I loaded up and left southern TX. Due to our late start, we couldn't get out of that gosh-darn-hubongous state in a day so we took it in two.
The second and third nights we got to spend with our Aunt and Uncles in Tucson and Phoenix, AZ. Not only was it amazing to spend time with extended family, but Arizona really wow-ed me. It was the first chance I had had to spend any time in that state and the dry heat, dust devils, cacti and rocky plateaus were actually quite breath-taking. I was always under the impression that Arizona was just a hot and ugly desert full of illegals - Not the case! (well, not completely...) :)
The fourth night we spent some more time with Brian's side of the family in the Grand Canyon National Park. How to describe the Canyon....let me see...well, it's impossible to capture it through any other medium except your eyes. There is no wonder why it's a wonder....if that makes any sense.
After hiking around the Grand Canyon, we continued our quest north to visit some other important sights - namely those in Page, AZ. It is in this town, (previous to our trip, I had never heard of), that there's a dam, the beautiful deep blue lake Powell, Antelope Canyon and Horseshoe Bend. My guess is that everyone has a picture of one of these places as a default screensaver on your computer or smart phone, but you'd never guess where it came from. It would probably be Page.
Luckily, we stayed a couple nights in this destination so we could develop a little routine for the our little backseat road warrior. Thank goodness we did because our first day was met with howling winds that sandblasted everything and everyone in sight. Day 2 in Page was worlds better. We saw all the aforementioned landmarks, loaded up and then we were on our way back west again! (This was after Juneau had thoroughly stunk up our mode of transportation. He must have had some bum issues after swimming in the lake, earning him the nickname "squirt" for the remaining trip... so he caught a ride in the back cab...if we wouldn't have had the pick-up, we would have probably strapped him to the hood at this point. HAH oh Junie.)
While going into Utah, we did a little off-roading which was superb for the little one. All the bumps and jostling kept her napping for a long while.
In Utah, we saw Bryce Canyon National Park, took a high road that brought us through snowbanks and ice covered lakes (at the end of May!), ate at a Café which happened to be called Sullivan's, got a good nights rest and then huffed it all the way to our final destination in CA!
In the end, I'm so glad that Brian was hell-bent on making this trip west a real "Trip". I was very skeptical about making a vacation in the midst of a move, but sometimes ya just gotta go with it! And I'm so glad we did because the southwest region of the U.S.A. is breathtaking. I look forward to visiting it again when Piper is old enough to really enjoy it too!
