Day 4 - Grand Canyon and a day off!

Day 3 was good, pretty uneventful. We stayed in Albuquerque, NM. Today is day 4, and we arrived at the Grand Canyon around 4:00 today. The drive today was beautiful, although I didn't get a lot of pictures of it. I tried to take a few through the windshield, but they are just okay. Northern New Mexico and Arizona are very mountainous and incredibly scenic.

We drove through a lot of red rocks, black mountains, washed out gulleys, and snowy hillsides.

Anja is still doing very well on the drive. Amazingly well, actually. My mom and I stop every two hours for her, and haven't really needed to stop more often than that. Our schedule is breakfast, drive two hours, short break, drive two hours, lunch (1-1.5 hours), drive two hours, short break, drive two hours, done for the day! We have each been driving at our own pace, and meeting up for breaks when we can. Yesterday and the day before all three of us met up for lunch. Today just our car and Jay met up. Dad ends up being last usually because of the trailer. We stop because of Anja, but Jay has to stop because of Blue, so it varies who is in front. By the time we check in at a hotel, unload and head out for dinner, it's usually Anja's bedtime, so Jay left the restaurant early the last two nights to put her to bed. Tonight we are eating in. Normally we can keep her up a little past her bedtime, but it's too much stress to add to all of the traveling. Plus we have been in three times zones in the last four days, which doesn't help.

BUT, tomorrow is a day off for us. We are staying at a hotel one mile from the Grand Canyon both tonight and tomorrow night, so we can take it easy tomorrow. Everyone is looking forward to a no-driving day. Dad was actually really sick the day we started driving and is starting to feel better now. Mom started showing symptoms of the virus yesterday and is trying to fight it off. We are probably all in line to catch it, so a no stress day of checking out the canyon will be good for us. We managed to get to the canyon about an hour before sunset today to get a sneak preview of tomorrow. This is a great time of year to visit since it isn't very busy.





I was walking Blue, and some people thought she was so cute they wanted their picture taken with her. Then Jay was carrying Anja, and some girls wanted to take her picture. Nobody requested to have their picture taken with us.



Jay thought Anja might like to use the binoculars to look down the canyon