Grand Circle Tour

Merril usually takes Japanese tourists on the Grand Circle Tour but because there haven't been any tourists because of COVID, he took us at a discounted rate. :) We took off over Spring Break and hit Bryce Canyon, Goblin Valley, Moab, by Monument Valley (covid shutdown), Sedona and home.

Bryce Canyon hiking:

Goblin Valley:

Moab and Arches National Park:

Corona Arch:

This sticker was all over signs in Moab. Jimmy on the burger guitar is what we named him.

Mexican Hat:

We drove through Monument Valley but it was on super lock down. We couldn't find a bathroom or a place to eat or nothing. The Navajo Nation has been hit hard with covid. We basically just drove through.

Grand Canyon:

It was cold! Brrrrrrrr! Kids were freezing but we decided to hike along the rim. I dropped off the kids and Merril and drove the car down to the pickup spot. I hiked back up to meet them. I ran into a few of the kids and Mark fell. He was cold and hurt himself so he wanted to be carried. It was still at least a 1/4 mile but we made it back to the car and warmed him up.

We were very underdressed.

Sedona, AZ: 

We arrived in the later afternoon and hurriedly hiked Bell Rock. We all pretended to align our chakras or whatever.

That night it snowed. 

So beautiful!

 

Ellen and her family were also in Sedona, AZ and we met up with them. We brought pizza and salad and took it over to their airbnb and ate and chatted. Some of the kids played in the snow and got very wet, since we didn't have any snow clothes. 

We kept overspending on dinner so we tried an experiment to not spend too much. 

We had some leftover pizza and Merril warmed it up on the heater in the car and brought it to Mark on a Grand Canyon pocket map. Pretty silly.

We left and headed home. We stopped at Hoover Dam and walked out on the bridge. It was very sunny.

I'm not gonna lie. This vacation was a little rough. Merril wanted to show us a bunch of beautiful scenery and I was trying to keep kids quiet with tablets. Merril seemed annoyed at our distracted children and halfway through, we were trying to decide if we even wanted to continue. We kept going but we were all out of sync. The vacation ended on a better note but just so you know, not all vacations are cheery and perfect like it shows in the pictures.