We love visitors

Yeah, visitors! My folks flew in Friday morning for a long weekend visit. We were very happy to see them and had lots on the agenda for the weekend. I hear its pretty crummy weather there in PA so they were thrilled to have the warm, sunny weather. We had lunch with Brian and then my mom and brother decided to go swimming. The pool is about 68 degrees, way to cold for any human to enter in my opinion. However, these two thought different. My brother actually swam, like got in the water and went under and all that, but my mom got on a raft and laid in the sun.

my mom enjoying the pool

Saturday we headed north to the Grand Canyon. We rented a mini van for this trip. 5 of us crammed in a VW is no good. We packed it like we were going for a week. You can never be to prepared when the temps dropped to 25 at night. Off we went thinking it was 5 hours away. We were wrong in a good way, in about 3.5 hours we arrived! My family has never been here so it was exciting to show them the canyon. We decided Saturday would be a leisurely day of hiking the rim trail and riding the bus to the different overlooks. To top off the day, we would watch the sun set over the canyon. As the sun set the temps dropped fiercely and we began to chatter our teeth waiting to catch the last bus back to the village.

our sweet ride. Check out the frozen windshield.

elk

sunset over the canyon

Once we got back to the car we put on winter coats and hats and gloves, it was amazing, in a bad way. Good thing we saved those coats.

Sunday we started the day early. Our mission, to hike into the canyon. We agreed to go down the Bright Angel Trail to the first rest stop at 1.5 miles down, which was about 1100 feet in elevation difference. It was a chilly morning but we quickly warmed as we trudged down the trail. We stepped aside for mule trains and got down to our destination. I am not a fan of mule and horse trips anywhere. The leaders use spurs to kick the animal, which hurts, and why make that poor animal do all that work, hauling your fat ass up and down the canyon, when you got two legs to do the work yourself. Anyways......

The 1.5 mile rest stop

Now we have to go back up. Oh man, that's a drag. Brian who is like Speedy Gonzales on hikes was at least a half a mile ahead of me and my parents. We labored back up the trail, making short stops to breathe and drink water. It took us an hour and a half but we made it back out, joy oh joy.

canyon wren

That ended our day at the park. We were now going to drive back but take the scenic route down to Sedona where we would have a most delicious and deserving meal. It was a beautiful drive down, fall colors lined the road.
After a short visit to Sedona we made our way back to Phoenix.

snow in the mountains in Flagstaff

Sedona

My parents were to leave Monday. However not until 4pm, so plenty of time for more hiking. My dad introduced us to Geocaching. This is an addictive hiking activity. To make it even better my parents bought Brian and I a GPS so we could become active goecachers. Our mission today was to find at least 3 of these caches. What a great idea this is. So up the trail we went. Using our GPS's as guides we approached the area where our first cache was. It was hidden among rocks so now we needed to just start looking under every ledge and rock.
After about 10 minutes or so my mom found the cache. Inside was a myriad of treasures and trinkets. If you take one out it is courtesy to put one in. There was a Rio Salado bracelet in there, I took it as a sign that I would get the park job someday in my near future. I removed it and replaced it with some Halloween stuff. There was also a Steelers magnet in there, which my brother promptly removed.

Our first cache of the day

We hid it back in its spot and moved onto the next. We found 3 caches this morning. We roamed the desert in search of these little treasure. There's one nearby that has money in it. I fully intend to find this.

After a long morning of caching, we returned home so my family could pack up their things and return to dreary PA. My mom got a nice tan and they all got lots of good hiking in, good trip! I dropped them off at the airport this afternoon, I was sad to see them go. I will see them at Christmas, I will see many of you at Christmas, yea whooo!


-Nina