The McNiven Clan: June 2015

Back in April Isaac and I went drove down to Arizona to visit my sister Abby and her family for a few days. I always love road trips with my mom, especially when we're visiting family. Isaac was only six weeks old but he handled the long driving days like a champ. Abby's husband teaches band in a small town in the middle of a Navajo reservation, so they were really excited to get some visitors.

The most memorable part of the trip was definitely our trip to The Grand Canyon. Since I already typed this post once (and it got deleted), I'm stealing Abby's excellent description of it from her blog. It is so ridiculous and definitely worth the read. I added a few pictures at the end. Thanks for an awesome visit Abby! We can't wait to see you soon!

From Abby's post:

My mom said the one thing she wanted to do while she was here was to see the Grand Canyon. It's supposed to be a 2 hour drive from here, so we thought we'd leave Monday morning and be back in the early afternoon. I'm just going to say right now that we should've done a little more planning before we left. David couldn't come because he had school, but we left around 9am. Things were going pretty good for the first little while! Both babies (yes, Asher is still my baby!) slept for the first hour and a half, but started waking up when we stopped for gas at Tuba City. Just past Tuba City, we came to a fork in the road. Our GPS said to turn left, but the sign said the place we wanted to go was to the right. Since sometimes the GPS doesn't work very well in this area, and we thought the sign would be pointing us in the right direction, we turned right. THAT WAS A HORRIBLE CHOICE!!!!!! Just to give you a warning for the rest of the story.

We drove for a long time. I was thinking that it should've only taken 2 hours to drive there, but we were having a fun time and Asher was happy so I just went along with it. We saw a couple more signs and the GPS was giving us directions that seemed right and we were heading towards some big mountains so everything seemed fine. And we kept driving....and driving....and then Isaac started to wake up and get a little hungry. And we started to drive away from the mountains. And the GPS wanted us to turn into ditches. So we decided it was time to stop and ask for directions! We stopped at this jewelry stand where my mom got out to ask for directions, I got Asher out so he could walk around, and Lisa was digging through her bag to find the formula.

I went over to my mom to see what she found out, and it was bad news. At the turn, we should've turned left. So we had a choice, go back the 2 hour drive to that turn or try to find something else. I went back to Lisa to tell her the bad news, and I found her sitting in the car almost in tears. She had forgotten the formula at our house and only had about an ounce of liquid formula left. And it's not like we were in a big metropolis, this is the reservation where every town is about 2 hours away. So we all got back in the car and tried to find gas stations that had any formula. But no luck. I knew Page had a Wal-Mart, so we drove about an hour away from the Grand Canyon to save little Isaac from being hungry! Lisa was a little tender during that part of the drive...which I can understand! I think every mother has done something like that. I usually forget diapers so Asher has to sit in a wet diaper until I can track down a dry one.

But we made it to Page and to Wal-Mart and everyone was ok! We thought it would be a good time to get lunch and eat at the park so Asher could run around. He was being so good and not even grumpy about how much time he had to spend in the car! We went to the park and while my mom watched Asher, Lisa and I went to find directions to the Grand Canyon. We were directed to the visitors center where they told us that we would still have to go back to that turn where we picked the wrong way. To be honest, I kind of wanted to just go home, but I knew Lisa and my mom would be leaving the next day and might not get another chance to see the Grand Canyon, so we buckled everyone in again and headed off to see it! I have to say, Lisa was a lot calmer at this point and Asher fell asleep pretty quickly. But Isaac was sick of being in the carseat and he got the hiccups, and I was in back with both of them so I did everything I could to keep everyone happy!

When we started off this adventure, I told my mom that that the speed limit says 65, but everyone goes about 80 because there are never any cops patrolling on the reservation. My mom took that to heart and said that after we left Page, she did something she'd never done before and went over 90 mph! Don't worry, it's pretty flat land and not too many cars drive on that road. We made it back to the turn, and went the right way this time! David was getting a little concerned because by now it was about 5pm and we'd been gone since 9am, but I told him we were almost there and would head home soon. Finally, we made it to the entrance to the park! We paid the $25 and all agreed that the first canyon-looking place we saw, we'd stop and then go home. So we were happy when about 2 minutes into the park we found a lookout! We all got out of the car and made our way down to the viewing area.

We made it to the Grand Canyon! What we thought was going to be a 2 hour drive turned out to be an 8 hour trip, just to get there! It was another 2 hours to drive back home. Lisa pointed out that they could've driven back to Rexburg for the amount of time it took us to drive there, and that they would get to be in the car just as long the next day when they did drive back! My mom wasn't too happy about that. I asked my mom if it was all worth it and it really made me laugh when she replied "I don't know....." It probably would've been more rewarding if we hadn't have been in the car all day! But I had a lot of fun with my family. I love just hanging out and talking with them, so I really didn't feel like it was a wasted day. And I can guarantee that we will always remember that trip! It was an adventure I won't forget!