Grand finale: Grand Canyon

Something pretty exciting happened in the parking lot of the Grand Canyon: we found New Hampshire! We had been playing the license plate game for two weeks and were down to two states, New Hampshire and Delaware, and WE FOUND NEW HAMPSHIRE! It's the little things, people. We are easily amused.

FYI, we never found Delaware. James is convinced it doesn't really exist. Either that, or Delawarians should be ashamed by their lack of National Park attendance.

The Grand Canyon was huge and deep and gorgeous, but both James and I agreed that we were more impressed by the height of the Tetons than the depth of the Grand Canyon. It's just so hard to truly understand how deep it is. Someday we are going to come back and hike all the way down to the base and when we look up at the incredible height on both sides I bet you'll have to pick our jaws off the floor. In the meantime, we joined the club of people who hike below the rim--only 5% of visitors--and no Wiglets went off any cliffs so we good! It was a great last hurrah for our trip.

You can just barely see the look of trepidation on Everett's face through the reflection on the window but Everett was not so sure about that big old hole in the ground!

This Watch Tower was patterned after similar structures found at Hovenweep, so it was amazing that we had just visited that area the day before. 

So many animals! These babies were right off the road!

We went on a two-hour, park-sponsored family hike and Ranger Dave was so informative and interesting and really was the best part of our Grand Canyon visit.

Me and my best men!

This girl is a Junior Ranger, seven times over.

This was our last-morning-of-vacation cuddle session before we got in the car and spent way too long driving home. Los Angeles met us with traffic and smog, graffiti and grime but when we pulled up to our cute little cottage the kids were thrilled with their toys, beds and backyard. There is beauty all around the world, including our pocket of Los Angeles, but sometimes it's so hard to come home from vacation! This trip was the best and as always, I recognize that we are the luckiest to have had this opportunity and to have each other.