Ice Cream in the snow, what a better way to spend a perfect winter, well spring day. After a failed attempt a couple weeks ago to get out of town(we had to rule out Austin having appendicitis) so trip to snow attempt 2 was on. We somehow managed to get out of town Thursday evening after much pessimism on my part that Todd would actually be able to leave early. But we managed to get loaded in the car and head out of town. We drove to Flagstaff and were amazed at how close we live so close to the pine forests that remind us of "home." People have different ideas of what makes a great hotel, for the kids it's simple: Does it have breakfast, and if so does it have waffles? Thankfully this hotel won high praise for it's breakfast. We loaded up in the car at a reasonable hour and headed out to the grand canyon. It took maybe 2 hrs to get there driving through nothingness. I will admit to being a little bit underwhelmed at the prospect of going. I felt like I wanted to see it being we lived so close but felt I'd already seen it in a way. I've flown over it, seen a million pictures of it so I kind of thought it would be a disappointment in a way. But I was really wrong. It's really something you have to see. It's hard to imagine what a 6000 foot deep cut into the earth is like unless you are standing on the edge of it. We parked, used the bathroom and then waited for a bus to pick us up and take us to the place where we had decided we would walk back from, all this before actually seeing the canyon. Finally the bus drove to where we could see everyone was excited except Austin who then realized there was a height factor involved. He is therefore absent from most of the family pictures we took. But he spent the rest of the hike working up to going over by the edge and by the end was way more comfortable. We hiked along the very nice trail they have for a
a couple miles until we got back to the visitors center. Everyone had fun and then we proceeded to drive on to Durango. We had found a nice hotel with an indoor pool(second on the kids list of good hotel requirements after waffles) and had fun. The next day we decided to drive the 2 hrs to Telluride Co. We had heard it was beautiful and it really is. It's like being transported to the French Alps. There is a gondola you can ride up the the various little mountain retreats they have around the mountain. We got lunch and then ice cream(because that's what you do when you finally see snow.) It was a fun family trip. We drove a ton and got to know where we live a little better. It's comforting to know that we are just over an hour from pine trees and mountains.
