DAY 18 - Seligman, AZ (Route 66) to the Grand Canyon
I forgot to mention that Nora really got a kick out of watching the clothes go around in the dryer at the campground laundry last night before bed. She just laughed and laughed. So we pulled up a chair and sat there and watched the clothes for awhile.
Michael has been smiling a lot more in the past 3 or 4 days. I’ll sit him on my lap, facing me, and make his legs kick or his arms go up and down, and he gets a big toothless smile on his face. He seems to be growing like a weed. He is starting to outgrow a couple of the smaller sleepers we brought along for him. We have plenty of clothes that fit him, though. He just seems to have hit that 6-week growth spurt I guess. It seems like he takes up a lot more of his bassinet than he used to. Also, he can already get out of the Velcro blanket. It is this special blanket that Velcros into a swaddling type thing, to keep their arms and legs tucked in. Nora slept in it for MONTHS until she outgrew it. Michael already can get both arms and one leg out of the thing somehow. Then he flails the free arms and legs until his top blanket is down around his knees. Then he cries because he’s cold. (Sigh.)
We are driving into the Grand Canyon now. Of course it doesn’t look like anything until you get out of the car and peer over the edge, so there’s not much to take a photo of. We are just reminiscing about when David and I came here after my Tucson internship was over. It was late March or early April and we camped in a tent in super warm sleeping bags and it was still freezing. The forecast this week is for 60s and 70s during the day and 30s at night.
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It’s a good thing we have reservations, because the section with hookups for campers is full. We found our site here. They pack you in pretty tightly here, but not nearly as bad as the RV section at Yellowstone, which we purposely didn’t stay in. I read stories that people can’t even put their awnings out without touching the rig next to them in Yellowstone. But here in Trailer Village at the Grand Canyon, we have just enough space. The dogs are both tied out to the post for the iron grill. We have a picnic table and a gravel surface. No grass, no tree. But there are trees around us near the restrooms and at the ends of the lanes. There are some songbirds here. We decided to really set up our campsite, since we are going to be here 5 nights. We put out the awning and assembled the screen tent David got me for my birthday. It is supposed to set up in 3 minutes or something. It took us longer than that, and this is our second time. We set it up at home to make sure it was what we wanted. Unfortunately you are supposed to stake out the corners, but the ground here is too rocky. You really can’t get a stake into the ground more than a half inch. We put big rocks on the legs. We got out our camp chairs and the tablecloth and everything. We’re in for the long haul. They have a shuttle bus here, so maybe we won’t even need to move the camper much.
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Took the free shuttle to the visitor center. The shuttle is quite convenient, unless you have two kids under two. In that case you have to figure out whether you want to drag a stroller onto the bus with you, or just sit funny in the seat because you have a kid on your back. But it still beats driving a 30-foot camper around. We walked over to peer into the canyon and we also checked out some easier hikes along the rim we might be able to manage. Then we took the shuttle to the general store and picked up a couple food items and came back here to make dinner. The general store is surprisingly reasonably priced. I suppose it’s because almost all of the park employees live in the park and shop there. Bagged salad (no, NOT spinach!) is cheaper than at home. Their wine was even priced normally, when I would expect they would mark it up a lot. At one of the KOA campgrounds, wine was $14.95 a bottle no matter what kind it was, just because they figured you were trapped there and would pay it.
We cooked and ate outside in the screen tent tonight.
I had a little mental breakdown this evening, feeling like I was going crazy from Michael crying and from constantly having to contort my body to reach things or step over the dogs or try to pass David in the hall or just to get from one end of the camper to the other. Nora was in bed and David took Michael and I took the dogs for a long walk. A really long walk. Like 4 miles. It was nice. It was really dark on this bike path we found, but the moon was bright and it was mostly park employees we passed on the trail.