overdue like a library book

Well it seems as though I'm long overdue for an update. I knew this was going to be harder than I thought!

Jo and I had a great night camping in Mesa Verde but had a battery light come on in the van. We talked to Marni and she said not to worry about it, but we decided to head to the Grand Canyon a day early rather than going up to Moab and back. So, we had a good trip to the Grand Canyon. The drive from Cortez, CO through northern Arizona was not an easy one. Most of the drive was through the Navajo Nation. There is not much there, not even much to look at. Talk about desert. Regardless, we made it to the Grand Canyon and it was worth it.

Our first view was a little hazy and crowded. However, the further we drove into the park, the nicer our views became. We both reacted in a similar way, "It looks like a calendar." It really is just mind blowing how vast the canyon is. It looks like the calendar that you think is fake. We were both pretty shocked at how easy it is to access the edge of the canyon. There are so many little paths and lookouts that don't have fence or guard rail. This makes it tempting for daredevils to see how close to the edge you can get without falling off. I overheard some pretty funny conversations between teenage boys and their mothers.

Our reservation for the campground wasn't until the following night, so we went to see if we could get in a night early. No such luck. So, we ended up having to cut our trip to the Grand Canyon a bit short. We walked around to a few more viewpoints but then had to call it a day. We would have liked to spend some more time, but we both realized that would have involved spending more money too. We decided that on future vacations we want to ride horses, raft, and take a helicopter tour of the canyon. That just wasn't in our budget on this trip.

Our plan was to drive to the Flagstaff area because there are tons of campgrounds there. We had about an 1.5 or so hour drive. We got off and started looking for campgrounds...they were all full! I'm not sure what was going on on a Tuesday night, but there were no campsites available. Eventually, we found a campground in the National Forest. We pulled in around 7pm or so and started setting up camp. We had some dinner and started a fire. This whole time I was trying to find the camp host so I could pay, but could not find him/her anywhere. Odd. Then, while I was picking up some sticks to start a fire, the gentlemen in the site next to us started talking to Jo. I wasn't thrilled that they only spoke to her while I was gone. Jo and I were a bit freaked out. It was a small campground but it seemed like everyone knew each other. We decided we were just going to clean up from dinner and sit in our tent all night. Next thing a know, a skunk comes right up into our site and next to our tent. I know a skunk isn't going to do any harm, but it just seemed like another weird sign to me. Jo and I decided to pack up the tent and move on. We were either going to just drive through the night to Tucson or find another place to stay. We weren't comfortable in that site anymore. While we were cleaning up, the guys in the next site starting making comments to Jo again. It was then I realized we had made the right decision. Even if nothing bad would have happened, we still didn't feel comfortable.

So after quickly packing up our tent and rejoicing in the fact that we never paid, we headed south on the interstate. We were both pretty pissed that we weren't able to go camping. I think it's stupid that two girls weren't able to feel comfortable there. Oh well. We ended up getting a room in a Comfort Inn for the night. We had a good night's sleep and we able to shower with clean towels the next morning. What an adventure though.

Since then we've been in Tucson. I think I've just been way too busy playing with Will to update the blog. Also every time I get on the computer, Will comes over and says "button!" and proceeds to push lots of buttons on the keyboard. Naturally it's super cute, but it makes blogging a little more difficult. We had Jo's birthday dinner on Thursday night, complete with black forest cheesecake (Oh. My. God.) Maggie had to go to a conference in Orlando from Friday morning - Monday night. Jo and I helped Aleks take care of Will. We went to the zoo, the park, and a pool party.

We've been eating extremely well. One of us cooks dinner every night and it's always delicious. On Saturday night some friends came over and we made grilled zucchini pizza. Both the veggies and pizza was grilled. It was to die for. On Sunday morning we went to Bobo's for breakfast. Their pancakes are the best I've ever had (and full of butter).

Other than relaxing and running after a 2 year old, I've been doing some apartment and job hunting. The apartment hunting has been a little more successful. I'm starting to get discouraged about jobs, but yesterday was only Monday so I'm sure a lot of offices were taking care of other business than looking through resumes. Today's another day to get on the phone and bother potential employers.

This entry was annoyingly long and cut out a lot of details so I'm going to make sure I update more often!