Conference trip - part 2

On the way back from St. George, we took a bit of a scenic route. It was nothing compared to what John had originally planned, but we still left the beaten path of I-15 and took highway 89 up through Richfield and Manti areas. In Manti, we stopped to let the kids have a breather.


And boy did they enjoy it!

Tom got a little hill-rolling in, just to celebrate.


John and I enjoyed the break out of the car (and the break from the "are we there yet?" questions).

We stopped and relaxed on the Manti Temple grounds for a while...




And enjoyed a scenic tour of the old houses in town...





We really enjoyed these old houses!

And then it was home, home, home!
(And it only took us 12 hours to get there.)

Conference trip - Part 1

This past week was the Utah Library Association conference, held in St. George. We decided to pack up the kids and haul them down south with us so that they could have some good cousin-time in Cedar City while Mom was presenting at the conference. So away we went.

This comprised most of our trip.



Thomas was excited by the prospect of seeing his cousin Michael, eating lots of junk food in the car and picking out bushes to "water" along the way. He is a darn good traveler! Mary Alice is not quite so adept at the traveling just yet. She slept a good deal of the way, but when not asleep, she either sang to herself or asked repeatedly "Out?" She was awfully jealous of her brother's "watering" breaks...


Anyway, after the conference was over and the cousins had been visited (a most fun visit, I was told... but unfortunately pictures weren't taken...) we went for a brief tour of northern Arizona. The goal was to go to the Grand Canyon, but with our incredibly bad luck, we made it all the way to Jacob's Lake just to be told we couldn't get to the North Rim of the Grand Canyon until the next day - because that is when the season officially opened.

Now, Thomas had been asking the entire way, if we were there yet. And we couldn't bring ourselves to tell him that after 2.5 hours of driving, we were not going to see the Grand Canyon. So we cheated a bit. We followed the road east till we hit the Navajo Bridge over the Grand Canyon. So, technically it was the Grand Canyon, even if the view was a bit less spectacular.

So, instead of this:


We saw this:

While standing on this bridge:


But to Thomas, it still fit the description of "big hole" that his parents had so eloquently used to explain what the Grand Canyon was, so it didn't make much of a difference. Especially when his guilt-ridden father succumbed to his pleas for a set of dinosaurs toys from the over priced tourist shop at the bridge entrance. Luckily for us, though, those dinosaurs entertained him well for the next couple of hours it took us to get home.

Anyway, it was a bit chilly and rainy - as you can tell by our weird poses. A rather abundant rain cloud followed us from Jacob's Lake on. Every time we left the car, it opened its spout and doused us. Like I said, a rather unlucky trip.


Here are some of the views along our route back.




We made one final stop at the Glen Canyon Dam, thinking that would be a fun thing to show Thomas, as well.







He liked it well enough, but wasn't as impressed as we thought he would be. Mostly because he wasn't allowed to drop things over the side of the bridge, like he desperately wanted to.



Next installment... the journey back, or Our only photo stop - Manti.