Last Day at Grand Canyon, 7/18/11

Ethan posing with Smokey the Bear.

Ethan fell in love the Remingtons' bronze sculptures.

One small panoramic view of the canyon

An Indian dancer showing off his moves.

Another Indian Dancer at Angel Bright.

Ethan at the Painted Desert

Monday, 7/18/2010

We ate breakfast, packed the car, and headed to the Grand Canyon and I'm not sure that we were ready to leave the Grand Canyon. There was still a lot more that we wanted to do.

We packed the car up after breakfast, checked out of our hotel, and headed for the Bright Angel Lodge. This area has great panoramic views of the canyon from the south rim. As you can tell from the picture above the storm clouds were rolling in. We got rained on a couple of times but we weren't ready to give up so easily. Ethan enjoyed wandering around the maze of walkways watching the small animals and large ravens. He also liked the Indians dancing and explaining the different dances of their people. At first he thought the storyteller was singing, "Aye yey yey yey". He didn't believe me when I told him he was speaking in his native tongue. Finally, when the storyteller explained what the dance was about, Ethan agreed.

As the storm clouds darkened we decided it was time for us to tear ourselves away and start our drive down to Gallup, New Mexico. On our way out of the national park we stopped to get Ethan's picture with Smokey the Bear. He had never heard of him before.

We managed to stay clear of any major rainfall and showing Ethan the Painted Desert was our next goal. The Petrified Forest was another stop we had planned to show him but we decided it was a little to far out of the way. Ethan told PaPere that he had already seen a Petrified Forrest, he was sitting in the front seat. He got the biggest kick out of that.

The Painted Desert was beautiful but windy. Ethan kept trying to get close to the edge. I was afraid a big gust would come along and wisk him away.

Gallup didn't seem to have changed much, but it did seem larger than both of us had remembered. El Rancho, the hotel we had stayed in before was exactly the same. I made the mistake of asking for a room on the first floor in order to avoid pulling luggage up the wide staircase. After I asked for a lower floor, the gentleman behind the counter informed me that did have an ancient elevator, but it did work. Too late we had already gotten our room key. The room was large and it was named the Jackie Cooper room, but it couldn't compare to our original suite dubbed the Tyrone Powers suite.

Dinner was good at the El Rancho restaurant. We all enjoyed our Mexican food. When we finished dinner we walked around the hotel, all three floors, then Ethan decided he wanted to investigate the upstairs lobby and all of the ways he could get out onto the balconies. After he exhausted all of the possibilities, we retired to our room where we watched "The Incredibles".