grand canyon

I feel like we returned home from our road trip weeks ago {two weeks to be exact}, so blogging about it seems outdated. On the other hand though, if I don't finish my road trip updates, I'll feel like a task was left incomplete. The Virgo in my won't let that happen.

I was on a roll updating and then some unexpected, well actually, it was pretty expected, family novella occurred. My mom was admitted to the hospital on Friday in San Diego, so I've been back and forth since then. Unfortunately, the hospital doesn't have Wi-Fi, so I'm limited to completing homework for a class I'm taking this summer at CSULB and reading another Jodi Picoult novel {The Tenth Circle}. I'm not comfortable revealing too much about what's going on with my mom, but if you could pray or think positive thoughts about our family situation, that would be awesome. I'm a little anxious about what the future holds and how we'll deal with what's going on with my mom, more so, how she'll cope and manage her own health. Thankfully, Rob has been amazing and his family has been incredibly supportive too, and of course, my bro and Mimi are awesome and totally involved.

On to the Grand Canyon...

Is it completely un-Americana to say that this was my least favorite portion of our road trip? The Grand Canyon was spectacular and completely crazily massive, but those feelings lasted for a few minutes and then we were ready to move on to the next activity. It was a total National Lampoon experience!



Rob slept for a couple of hours en route to Flagstaff from Telluride, he missed New Mexico and some of Arizona.



We arrived very late to Flagstaff, so there isn't much to share other than our dinner/midnight snack at Denny's. We were up bright and early to catch a train to the Grand Canyon.

Do you see the train guy's bow tie? He was only the start of the train experience cheesiness. We were told that this was a fun ride with some silly Wild West reenactments. Boy where they right-on describing this ride with the word "silly". For me, it was an opportunity to not sit in the car. The train took us to the South Rim where we had about 4 hours to explore the beauty.

I love this picture of Rob!

Taking it all in

Okay...let's go

Desperate to escape...

I'm somewhat joking about my boredness. It views were spectacular and our pictures surely don't showcase the actual feeling of being in complete "awe". We would like to visit again one day: probably the North Rim, with little Tuckers in tow, and without the train experience. Not that it wasn't fun to be part of a pretend robbery...

The train station was located in Williams, AZ, an itsy bitsy town with lots of country western charm.


The town had a "shoot-out" with some live Revolutionary War-style music played by some high school kids. After watching the entire town watch the shoot-out, we ate some delicious BBQ at a little cafe called Cruiser's Route 66 Cafe.

They had a giant BBQ!

That's it for Flagstaff, Williams, and the Grand Canyon. Up next, a quick drive through Sedona and Avondale to visit my family.