We celebrated Mama and Daddy’s Anniversary with a family weekend away to the Opryland Hotel. Celebrating our anniversary with our kids was a lot of fun this year. Emily is old enough to understand what an anniversary means and loves the idea of celebrating her parents wedding. The joys of girls!

– a room with a view! a climate controlled balcony is awesome on a super hot weekend when four people share a room.

Emily has a general love of hotels and wants to run one later in life so we thought taking her to such a unique hotel would be fun. She was a bit overwhelmed and it will be interesting to see what her long term thoughts are on it. She loved following the different trails of the garden and watching the "dancing" water show. We were always watching out for brides and grooms too. Being Memorial Day weekend there were a lot weddings going on at the hotel.

We saw a wedding set up in the gazebo earlier in the weekend and thought it would be fun to get Emily’s photo in the same spot. For the whole weekend Emily was a bit more willing to let us take her photo. Julia’s favorite things this weekend were coloring on the balcony in our room, throwing coins into fountains, and jumping into the pool over and over again.

We enjoyed riding the boat and learning a few new facts about the hotel. Another interest that Emily has is about any natural disaster or weather anomaly. In 2010 Nashville had severe flooding of the Cumberland River which flooded the Opryland Hotel. After riding the boat all Emily wanted to discuss was the flood and the hotel.

Daddy and his girls strolling on one of the many trails.

We took a walk around the state capitol building and checked out the statues and the burial place of a president. We now know James K Polk was buried at the state capitol. We also visited the State Museum and enjoyed a little local history and some air conditioning.

The girls and Mama went camping and had some time to play at the beach. The weather was warm, the ocean cool, the breeze pleasant, and the giggles perfect. Thank you Grandma for taking photos so that Mama could just play.

Just some shots from the fun beach play.

No words can say more than Emily’s face already is saying.

So intent, Julia what are you studying?

Dylan being busy. Lots of sand digging – lots of fun!

What a ham! Natalie was SO great with all of the kids.

Everything is so new and fresh for Elizabeth. Even her crying face is cute.

Our first Grand Canyon stop was the North Rim. This is our first trip to this out of the way destination. It was quite out of the way too. Our first day there was filled with hiking preparations. Sandwich making, pack filling, quick rim visits, and getting settled for the night was our evening. The two different cabins that we stayed in at the North Rim were really nice. I was expecting them to be small and compact, but they were pretty spacious. The first one had a front porch with rocking chairs and the second one had two rooms with lots of sleeping options. The discovery was wonderful.

The guys started their hike early in the morning and the girls and Mama continued to sleep. We spent some time that morning repacking our bags so that the next 6 nights would only require one bag for the three of us. Then we ventured out for our day’s exploration. We hiked out to Bright Angel Point and checked out the canyon from the exposed point. It was amazing to see the canyon from this side. It felt like you were set into the canyon in a way the South Rim doesn’t offer. The hike was fun with the girls and while the morning was warm we did fine. Julia walked about half of it herself and was carried the other half. Emily kept going and never slowed us down. This hike paralleled the trail the guys hiked down in the morning. We wondered a lot about where they were and looked for them.

We walked back and had lunch at the lodge and did some additional exploring around the rim until naptime. After naps, we heard from another hiker who had seen Robby and Pat and informed us that they were hiking back out instead of continuing on their hike. They had assisted by carrying out the news and 10+ pounds of Robby’s pack contents. We met up with them and found out more information and got his belongings. Robby had started the hike with a headache and it had gotten worse combined with the heat coming earlier in the hike than they had planned and influenced their decision to hike back out.

We needed to fill some time before the guys hiked back out so we went to the Cookout Experience for dinner. This involved a train ride to a fun tent theater. There was a buffet to eat and singing entertainment. The girls had a blast. First there was a train ride and then after dinner they found two families worth of kids to run around and play with as dusk came in. The girls also loved having camp cups to drink their water from.

We we got back to the lodge we found out that the guys had beaten our hiking estimate and were already back at our cabin. We were very thankful that despite all the trouble that they were out safe and sound.

The next morning, Julia and Mama dropped Pat off at the trailhead where he was going to hike down to the next reserved campsite of their trip. The pre-dawn trip to the trailhead was beautiful. The sky was clear and it was our first opportunity to see a million stars and the milky way. Julia was a sweet companion and was a good girl including that she crawled back in bed when we got back and went to sleep.

Later that morning we checked out and drove out to Cape Royal and took in several of the canyon views. The girls took their naps in the car while we took in the views and then joined us for the last one which involved a hike. We watched storms across and in the canyon. It was fun to show the girls storms from a distance. We wondered if Pat was getting any relief from a rain storm, which we found out later he didn’t get enough to have it as a temperature relief. The rest of our day was spent driving the long drive to the South Rim through storms and dusk. We got settled in at the South Rim.

I love how Julia wouldn’t look at the camera earlier, but when given the chance to not to have to look she peeks back at Daddy. What a grin!

Are all the long hours in the car worth it? For us it is. The ride does get long, make our backs hurt, and it is boring for the driver when everyone else has something to do. But, it is also family time. It is time to see different parts of America. We get to talk to the girls about a million different things. We talked about how big the sky is. We talk about how many stars there are in the sky while we are seeing the Milky Way. We get to count rainbows. We were disappointed with only three, but one was a double rainbow. We talked about the wind turbines as we passed miles of them. At night the turbines have flashing red lights which are fun to watch when you are 4. We tried to spot at many trains as we could. The first person to see one would point it out as we continued to play games of counting engines and talking about what each one was hauling. The girls enjoyed hours of book reading, coloring, playing with toys, the occasional nap, cheering with each state we crossed, counting the mosquitoes that traveled with us in our car after stopping at a rest stop, playing running games at rest stops, and asking lots of questions.

We were delighted with an amazing drive in and out of the valley Albuquerque is found in. We did the drive at night and the lights of the the city were beautiful. It was by chance that we turned around and looked as we drove out. If the night lights would have photographed well we would have tried. This memory will have to be one that stays in our head. Another unexpected driving surprise was the bear that ran across the highway as we drove out of Colorado. We didn’t expect to see a bear and this one was moving fast. He was gone before the girls even looked up. What a treat.

The wind turbines are really cool to see, but we settled with a moving photo of them.

We thought we had timing our arrival to Arizona well. We had to pick up Pat from the Flagstaff airport. Only, we forgot that Arizona goes by a different time than most of their time zone so we were in the state an hour earlier than we had planned. We also heard from Pat that his last fight was running late. Based on this information and our location we decided to detour over to visit Walnut Canyon National Monument.

The canyon is one of many ancient cliff dwelling communities found in the west. There is a hike down into the canyon (lots of steps) to place view the dwellings. We didn’t take the hike with our little people and just viewed the dwellings from the visitor center. It was good that we didn’t try the hike and steps. The girls ran out of energy quickly and thunder started up while we were hiking along the rim. The outing was perfect for the time we had and it was wonderful to get out of the car and stretch our legs after spending so many hours in the car.

The wonders of traveling America and the things you can find. This classy joint will cook you up a great steak dinner in the ambiance of saloon meets . . . not really sure what. There really isn’t any way to explain the Big Texan, but to stop by and see for yourself. Maybe it is the Texan version of Wall Drug. It may be corny, but for the girls it was amazing. They loved the color and all the visual entertainment found inside. They loved looking at the sample meal placed to demonstrate how much food was in the 72 oz. of steak dinner. They mostly loved their new cowgirl hats they got with their dinner.

When we sat down to eat all Emily would talk about was they new hat she would be getting. She decided that she wanted her hat to be blue. Lucky girl, when dinner came they brought her a blue one. Only two disappointments about our visit: one was that no one was attempting the 72 oz. challenge while we were there, the second was that the cowboy band was not playing. We were eating a late lunch/early dinner and there were not many people there to eat. Bonus was that we got in and out quickly and could drive several more hours after stopping to eat.

Emily and her own special cowboy band.