Christopher's Girlfriend

Well, I've always been afraid to post all my vacation posts at once, thinking it'd be too overwhelming. But after going to Julie's blog today, I'm not worried anymore. It was so fun reading about her vacation! :)

Anyway, this is Louie's sweet little niece, Corrinn.

We're pretty sure Chris had a crush on her, because he went everywhere she went, and held her hand the whole way:

It was really adorable. (As an aside, this is just one more way Chris is like John. John has always liked girls, having a crush on one girl every school year ever since Kindergarten. Even before then, his "girlfriend" was my best friend's daughter Tessa, who's his age. Back when they were three and giving each other hugs, we just thought it was cute. The way he talks about girls still is cute. You'd better believe I'll be keeping an eagle eye on these boys though!)

Anyway, I just have to say how wonderful Corrinn is. (I think I'm spelling it right. It's pronounced Cor-IN.) Anyway, she wasn't bothered at all by Christopher's attentions. I think she really enjoyed him. As the day progressed, she'd hold her hand out for him to take because she knew it was coming (ha ha) and her and the other girls at camp kept saying "Isn't he so cute??"

Well, yes, now that you mention it. ;)

But Corrinn is one of those kids you just marvel at. She's 11-years-old and has been playing tennis for the last 2 1/2 years. She's such a natural, that her coach has her playing against college-aged kids because the other players just weren't challenging enough. She gets straight A's in school. She volunteers at a respite house and talks affectionately of the kids she helps there. Unlike the other girls her age who talked for a LONG time about which famous boy is cuter than which, and which famous girl is prettier than which (those girls just cracked me up, BTW), talking with Corrinn was different. She really has her head screwed on straight. By the end of the trip, she had given me several sweet hugs, which I could not get enough of.

Do you think her dad would let us adopt her? We're a little short on girls around here. :)

Tusayan Ruins at the Grand Canyon

Very near the South Rim of the Grand Canyon are the Tusayan Ruins and Museum. I forgot to take a picture of the entrance, so I pilfered this image from the internet. Thanks Google!!

I remember visiting these ruins as a child, so this was a must during our Grand Canyon trip. I love Indian ruins anyway, and would like to take the kids to some of the ruins here in the Valley (you know, someday).

The ruins and museum both are very small, and can be done in an hour or two. Much less time if you're not taking the time to read anything. But the museum is small enough that you can see everything and read every plaque without feeling like you're taking too much time. The ruins are left from people who lived there around 800 AD.


This is a pic of the boys in front of the fireplace inside the museum. At first I thought it was a model of the kind of fireplaces the ancient inhabitants used here, but after seeing the ruins, I no longer think so. I'm including the pic anyway cuz I think the boys are cute. ;)

These little stick figurines are a bit legendary around the Grand Canyon - you'll see references to them at other places there on the rim:

The text in this picture gives a good overview of why these stick figurines are so mysterious. (Just so you know, when it refers to "remote caves", it's talking about caves within the Grand Canyon, not there at the ruins.) Here's the text:



"ARCHAIC CULTURE: Two to four thousand years ago, people fashioned animal figurines from split twigs of willow, cottonwood, and rushes. Most have been found in remote caves with no indication of any other human use. What did they mean to the people who hid them?"

There have been suggestions that these were used in ceremonies or something. It's interesting to think about.


I was amazed at the artifacts they had on display. I love this basket:

It's so pretty! I want one. :)

This piece of stone (broken at the corner) was artfully chiseled to create the indentations for use as a silver mold. Just amazing.

This is a terrible picture of a seashell bracelet. The plaques in this display talked about the trading routes that were set up, bringing items from the sea. Stuff like this just amazes me. Why? Why is it hard to imagine people so long ago having such things as that flute and bracelet? They must have loved music and beauty, family and playtime, just as we do.

As we were exiting the museum and on our way to the ruins, we noticed a Park Ranger giving some little kids ranger badges and swearing them in. When she was done and the kids were gone, we asked her about it. Turns out many National Parks offer a Junior Ranger Program. She gave our kids each a booklet to fill out, but in order to complete the program, they also had to listen to a Ranger presentation somewhere at the park (there are several throughout the Grand Canyon). She had just finished her last one of the day. When she found out this was a one day trip for us and we'd be heading home soon, she offered to do a mini-tour just for us. How cool is that?

This is part of a three-room structure (I believe) that constituted their living quarters. You'd have 6-12 people living together in ONE room! You'll notice there were no doors. They came in through a hole in the roof.



These are storage rooms. For these people, a year supply was a survival must! (Oh, and I just remembered something we learned. At the ages of 10-13, boys would be expected to start a family! Just a few years older than my John! Hitting the age of 45 was tough to do, and considered old age. It was a hard life.)

This is the Large Kiva, or ceremonial room. See the "bench" around the side (left and bottom of the picture)? On the plaque below, the top illustration is a drawing of the Kiva looking down. See the ladder that led to the hole in top? That's how they got in.

After the tour, our ranger, Cindy, gave us a chance to let the boys fill out their books. Then she talked with them one by one, asking what they learned. They each got a certificate, a badge, and a patch for the Grand Canyon Junior Ranger program. (There's a unique patch for each park that offers this - Boy Scouts are actually allowed to put these on their sashes! - and Cub Scouts can put them on brag vests, which no one in this ward seems to use). Then she swore them in:

Christopher didn't really appreciate this, me thinks, LOL, but John was quite serious about it! After that, we visited with her for awhile and asked her questions about what rangers do and how she got involved with it. It was really interesting and she was so nice to spend time with us like that.

If you're interested in learning more about the Tusayan Ruins, watch the short video at the Ranger Minute site. There are other Ranger Minutes you can access in the sidebar too, including one about how the Grand Canyon was formed.

The Grand Canyon

I know I said this was a two-in-one vacation, but actually it was a three-in-one vacation. We've been wanting to go to the Grand Canyon for a long time now. Even though Brian grew up in Arizona, he'd never been there before. (Until I met him, I didn't even know it was possible to grow up here and not go to the Canyon - my Dad took us so much when I was a kid that I was starting to get a little sick of it.)

Anyway, it's been hard for me to get Brian to commit to doing this. The drive just seemed too far for him. He was thinking that he's seen pictures of it all his life and, after all, it's just a big hole in the ground.

Uh huh.

Well, when we realized our campsite was less than two hours away from the South Rim, I was happily surprised that Brian agreed to make a day trip out of it.

Despite knowing photos don't do it justice, I couldn't resist anyway:

I would love to see what's inside this cave, but I would not love the climb to get there.

We decided to walk a short section of trail along the rim, and kept stopping to take pictures. I had forgotten that there are plenty of areas with no guard rail. Oh, and in case you're wondering, Brian loved it here. He kept saying what every adult can't help but say, over and over, "This is just incredible!"

It's neat to see so many visitors from all over the world here. More often than not, English is not the language you hear. And I'm not talking about Spanish either. ;) You hear German, French, Asian languages, Middle Eastern languages. People come from all over the world to see something that's basically in our own backyard:

That's a long way down!

Of course, there's pleasure in stopping and noticing the small things too. Here are the boys quietly watching a squirrel just on the other side of the fence:



On our way back up the trail:

Ben and Chris were a little ways ahead of me, so I didn't see this happen, but I heard it happen. Ben leaned against a fence post and the whole thing came down.

Fortunately, I had noticed this bit of fence the first time we passed it. It was missing a couple of the horizontal pieces of wood, so it was ready to come down anyway. If I didn't already know that, I'm afraid I would have been grilling poor Ben about what he did.

Once we were back in the van, we had some other places along the rim we wanted to go to, along the road that would eventually lead us back home. Every time we saw a lookout, Brian had to pull over. After the third time or so, we stopped getting out of the car and just waited the few minutes for him to get out, say "It's just so incredible!" and then get back in the car. LOL. He said if it weren't for the kids, he could sit there and look at it all day.

Me too, honey.

At the far eastern edge of the rim is what's called the Watchtower. We kept seeing it in the distance every time we'd pull over at a lookout. This is not something I'd seen during my childhood visits to the Canyon, and I really wanted to see it up close. Doesn't it look cool?

The whole time we were working our way toward it, my little story-teller's heart imagined native tribes engaged in ancient warfare, battling around this rocky fortress. I wondered what the inside was like. I wondered if there'd be ancient weapons on display! I was totally disappointed to learn this was just a visitor's center that had been built in the 1930's, merely made to look ancient. Ah well. It was cool anyway. Here's the inside:

There are three levels. I took a picture from the top level, Brian and Chris were on the second level, and John and Ben were on the ground level:

This was a plaque on one of the walls of the outdoor balcony. Nice.

Amen.

This is the observation area on ground level, before you go up the tower:

By the time we got there, the sun setting in the west made the Canyon look all misty. This isn't my camera. This is how it really looked.

And looking east:

Of course, visiting a destination of this kind of grandeur and beauty justifies another foot shot:

You may be questioning whether or not that's really my foot. Afterall, where are the red toenails for proof? But trust me, they're in there. I wore those blasted things the entire week - the only thing I don't like about camping. Once we were done camping, I couldn't get my sandals on fast enough!!!

Lake Mary Walkabout

On our first full day of camping, we decided to go on a little explore of the surrounding area. We'd never been in this part of Arizona before, so it was fun to poke around. About 4 miles from our campsite is Lake Mary. As you can see, it's not very wide:

It is, however, really long. As in, six miles long. Imagine driving for six miles, with a lake by your side the entire time. It was really amazing.

This is where it curves to the, um, south I think.

This is the dam that brings upper Lake Mary to a halt:

From here, if I turn myself to the right and this is what I see:

This little marshy area goes on for another mile or two, before you get to lower Lake Mary which is another 2 miles long.

Do you see the natural levy in that picture? On the other side of that is this ancient-looking cabin:

So cool. I love little things like that.

Between the upper and lower lakes, there was a turn off for a dirt road. It had a little inconspicuous sign, with a mile marker for a campground, and then something else. "Lowell Observatory NPOI 2 miles" it read. (Okay, I don't remember how many miles, exactly, but you get the idea.)

We knew Lowell Observatory was up in Flagstaff, so we decided to find out what this was. We took the steep, winding road up the mountain, all the while trying to figure out what NPOI stood for.

"National Point of Interest?" Brian suggested.

I shrugged. Sounded good to me.

Well, we get there and this is what we see:

Several little observatories, all fenced off:

At the end of the road (paved within the compound) was this:

Now, early in our marriage, I would have been frantically pestering Brian to get out of an area that's clearly not open to the public. Several years ago, I would have been nervous about getting in trouble, but would've kept my mouth shut cuz he just ignores stuff like that anyway. By now, I think of it as an adventure. In fact, when we saw a worker in a separate area watching us suspiciously, I encouraged Brian to go talk to her, and take John with him.






They ended up right next to the fence and talked to this lady for quite a while. Turns out, NPOI stands for Navy Prototype Optical Interferometer. (Say that five times fast.)



This is an outpost of Lowell Observatory and one of the things they do is maintain an accurate measuring of the stars for use in Naval navigation. This naval observatory is also in charge of setting the world clock. How cool is that? They do plenty of your normal scientific studying as well.



See those big pipes in the picture? There were four of them all in a row (you can only see the front one) and they're really long. Parts of the pipes are called delays. Little mirrors pop up from them. They use optical waves instead of radio waves, and all this is linked to Lowell.



No, I don't really understand all this, especially since that's the extent of my notes. You can go to the NPOI website for more info, but it's pretty technical. Turns out (looking at their map) we could only see a tiny part of this compound from the road. And the pipes are tiny when compared to the pipes in their three-armed array.

This is the view on the way back down (see the road that goes next to Lake Mary?).

And looking in the other direction...

Here's a view of the lake on our way back to the campsite. The angle of the sun made this so pretty:

On our way back, Brian suddenly says "Big Foot crossing!" and starts to turn the car around.

"What the?" I think.

Here's what he saw:

Big white footprints leading from the forest to the lake. Here's a close up of the set going in the opposite direction:

Funny. Now, if I had been thinking at all, I would have waited for a break in traffic, plopped my foot on top of this and taken a picture. How cool would that have been, I ask you?? But I didn't think of that until I was downloading these pics a week later. Grrr!!

What I did do is lean my head out my side of the car, and take a picture of this:

Ah well. These little beauties deserve their moment of glory too.