Travel Day

Before we left Flagstaff on Tuesday, we stopped by Walmart to stock up our food supplies.  While we were checking out the sandwich meat and cheese we saw the biggest containers of sour cream we have ever seen.  Seriously, they were larger than the twins' heads.  It needed to be documented with a photo.

Then we set off, back to Utah.  Our next destination was St. George, but we were definitely open to stopping whenever something caught our attention.  

 We had several hours to admire the landscape.

 We stopped when we crossed the Colorado River at Marble Canyon- according to the GPS on my cell phone at the time.  Sometimes it said we were back in the Grand Canyon and sometimes it said we were at Marble Canyon all during this same stop.  It's not like we wandered very far either.  We walked from the parking lot and onto the pedestrian bridge.

 The restrooms were decent here, but the stalls were a little short.  I feel like it's not quite right to be able to see people's heads over the stall doors.  I shouldn't have to face people again until I have all my clothes put to rights after a trip to the loo, right?

 A little further down the road there was a pull out area that sold Navajo trinkets, and had places to wander around.  Stop #2.

 I'm certainly glad my walls are a bit more wind proof than these.

 This rock looks like it could lose its balance at any time and squish tourists.  But it didn't stop us from taking a picture by it.

 There was supposed to be a picnic area by a lake along the highway that Ryan wanted to stop at for lunch.  Unfortunately, it's still closed for winter in April.  So we drove along, looking for any area we could pull over and eat, and eventually found this.  You can see how close we were to the highway, but we were starving and didn't much care where we stopped.  Sandwich time again!

Our first stop in St. George was the temple.  It has a distinct look, which is nice.  The nearest temple to us looks a lot like the Spokane temple, which looks like most of the others built during the same time period.  Not that I'm complaining, but variety is good too.

 We checked out the visitor's center and got a picture with the Christus statue.  We were not going to make it to Temple Square in SLC this time in Utah, so we made do.

After our visit to the temple grounds, we grabbed a couple of Dominoes pizzas and met my mom for dinner at Pioneer park.  The kids had been cooped up quite a long time by this time in our trip, and were ready for another adventure.  So we climbed all over the rock cliffs, along with my mom and her new husband Kevin.

 It's hard to tell with pictures, but these rocks were massive and we were up pretty high.

 Annie had to show me her shoes all covered in red, dusty dirt.

Then it was time to check into our hotel.  Our plan had been to do laundry at the hotel, but the 1 small washer and 1 small dryer made us rethink that plan.  We were out of clean clothes and families of 6 people need more laundry space than the hotel provided.  So Ryan saved the day and took a couple of pillow cases full of dirty clothes to a laundry mat close by.  He said it was filled with Spanish speakers who all got really quiet when he walked in.  He ended up being helpful and making change in quarters (we brought plenty from home) for someone who was disappointed the quarter exchange machine wasn't working at the laundry mat.  It was established Ryan spoke Spanish and seemed like an acceptable person, and talking resumed and included him.  Meanwhile, I got all the kids through showers back in our hotel room.  It required the kids breaking eye contact with the Disney channel, since cable is a novelty for us.  Although the kids did agree it is silly to pay for cable since it includes a TON of commercials.  Netflix has spoiled us all.