Memorial Day

Since we never seem to be home on holidays, I wanted to take advantage of this one! There are actually quite a few things in our general area that are worth seeing.

I knew nothing of the Petrified Forest until last year, when my cousin Leah said it was big on her list of things to do with her kids. It's almost exactly an hour away from us, on the west. Right before you hit Holbrook. I was excited to see it! We invited the Shaheens and Hatches to come along too. Turned out to be a really good move, because Megan and I forgot our cameras, but Tania remembered hers! So most of the following are pictures she took. I was stoked to have so many pictures of a family outing and actually be in them! Novel! I told her I was tempted to hire her out for all future occasions. ;)

We started off on the north end at the Painted Desert Visitor Center.

We wanted to do some hiking, but got distracted by the beautiful view at the first lookout point and pulled over. ;)

 It wasn't much farther before we parked and got semi-lost looking for the first trail head- the Painted Desert Rim.

Disaster struck in the form of moody clouds, rain in our faces, cold wind and crying children. Rubi fell and went hysterical, so Megan took her back to the car. It seemed like not much later that 75% of the children were screaming or saying they wanted to go home. None happened to be my children which was great except that I was feeling mighty guilty about inviting everyone! 

Despite it all, I couldn't help but stare at the view, mesmerized. These pictures don't do it justice in the least. The northern end of the park is the Painted Desert. It looks just like the postcards, but better. I felt like I was the only one entranced though because I was the only one that kept ooooing and ahhhhing. I could have sat there looking at it for hours. The bitter weather was just a minor determent. 

Almost everyone got picked up by Megan at the end, but we huffed it back to the parking lot with Tania. Everyone was soaking wet and cold, but we had just started! We couldn't turn back now! So on we went!

It's 28 miles to drive from the northern end of the park to the southern end. We had maps we got from the visitor's center that showed us various stops along the way. 

Next, we stopped at Puerco Pueblo. It was a 0.3 mile walk among a partial excavation of 100+ room village, occupied 1250-1380 CE. We got a view of ancestral Puebloan homes and petroglyphs.

We laughed when we saw a plaque showing a woman with a baby strapped to her back. Not much has changed in a thousand years! 

And thank goodness the sun started shining! We had warm weather the rest of the day!

It was hard to believe these petroglyphs were real. I just imagined some Indian, teenaged pranksters, scratching them out then giggling at the excavators when they thought they'd hit pay dirt.

This shot cracked me up! Yawwwn! I think I've seen enough old people villages for today!

Don't even ask me what this is! I still haven't found out! Abraham sacrificing Isaac?? Only Bron.

(I should mention, Megan's parents were in town visiting, so they came along too!)

Again with Mr. Collin. What a turkey.

Some puffy tufts of grass looked like good chairs to these two!

Next, we stopped at Newspaper Rock. It was a lookout point that you could see over 650 petroglyphs, some as old as 2,000 years old. It's really hard to make them out in these pictures, but they're at the base of the rocks.



 Lunch time!

Little miss was none too interested in her PB & J, but bring on the Cheeto puffs!

Don't even remember what her sobbing was about, I just remember the straight fingers to the eyes was TOTAL DIVA. I love Weston's no sympathy face... "Yeah... a likely story".

This makes me laugh because it looks like she's taking a selfie. She was just insistent I watch her try to stick her sucker up her nose. This entertained her entirely 'til our next stop.

Agate Bridge was just a large, petrified log spanning a gully. You can see the concrete they built underneath it to support it.



I look like I'm coping a feel on the Agate Bridge. Sorry, tree. I know we just met. 

From there we drove to Crystal Forest. It was a .75 mile looped trail that showed an area full of petrified logs. It was so hard to wrap my mind around the fact that these trees are 250 million years old. How can anything be MILLIONS of years old?

Also, how can anyone take a picture of 8 children and get everyone looking? Impossible. We were just missing Rubi, who stayed with tired Bron, napping in the car.

Steel wins for best faces.

Tania caught a little PDA in the background.... we like to put on a show for the children. ;)

We debated whether we should go all the way to the south end, because we had already been out several hours, but "Old Faithful" was yet to be seen. So we persevered to the "Giant Logs", near the southern visitor's center. Here Collin sits atop Old Faithful. It's nearly 10 feet across at the base.

(In all, we spent about 6 hours at the park. It definitely provides a full day of sight seeing.) 

Megan took Tania's camera to capture the wearied mother, now carrying TWO tired children. Hooray for slings!

 On the drive back to the northern end, I noticed "Blue Mesa". I feel like anyone reading this would think I was cuckoo for thinking this was cool, but I swear you had to be there. Everything we saw really was pretty neat. I'd have to say I enjoyed the Painted Desert more than the Petrified Forest, but I'm glad we got to see all of it!

 We probably should have taken this picture on our way in, instead of out, but oh well. Trav stayed with Olive, who fell asleep in the car.

We ended our day with a BBQ at the Shaheens. The guys played corn hole and it was cute to watch the kids cheer their dads on.

I think this will be a particularly memorable Memorial Day!