Day two of our travels....

Okay.....so back to our little miniature road trip. We hopped in the car the second day to head up to Flagstaff. HA! I love how I say "hopped in the car" as if it's just such a breeze to get my kids packed up and situated. Natalie and Richard met us at our house in the morning- at the -time we told them to meet us- and then ended up having to sit in their car and wait for almost an hour for us to get our crap together. Life with kids. Yay.

I just love this drive! Even with kids. I love Phoenix, and I love driving north of Phoenix- leaving the city and seeing everything turn all deserty and then the cacti pop up everywhere and you drive further and further into the hills and then you get to Sedona and see this popping up outside your window:


I mean, really...who could ever get sick of that?! This state's landscape is so diverse and beautiful. I have already been here 3 yrs. (can you believe that?) and I haven't gotten sick of it yet. In fact, as I've said before, I think I have grown to love it even more than the first time I laid eyes on it. So I, for one, enjoyed the drive just as much as, if not more than, the rest of the trip.

One of our stops in Sedona was to see the only McDonald's that doesn't have golden arches. In Sedona, they gave it turquoise arches to blend in and complement the town's main attractions. We kind of thought there were actually going to be big arches instead of this little wall, but it was still fun- because we had fudge sundaes.



Once we got into Flagstaff, I found plenty of opportunities (scenic overlooks) to make the kids pose for pictures. It's so fun to visit Flagstaff in the winter to play in the snow, but I had no idea how gorgeous it is this time of the year. The weather was perfection and everything was in bloom. I'm pretty sure I want to live there.

How cute are they?!?!?! I just can't get over how grown up my kids are. At one of our stops, we used these little mountainside toilets. I couldn't get a great picture, but it was basically this huge, dark abyss poorly disguised by a toilet seat. Hazel was a little apprehensive, and I could totally understand why. It was so far down that you couldn't even hear when her pee finally hit bottom. That's a little unnerving!!! Who knows? Maybe it is still floating down right now trying to find an appropriate landing spot.

We visited Flagstaff's famous Lowell Observatory. I missed out on getting to look through the huge telescope the night before, but I did get to participate in the tour the next morning, and it was pretty awesome.

Here's the building where Pluto was discovered. Cool? I think so. Sure, Pluto is no longer recognized as a planet, but it was a planet long enough for me to think it was pretty spectacular to see the exact spot where it was discovered!

Here's the original observatory:

which houses this huge telescope. This telescope was made partially with random scrap materials- parts of it are made from old bike parts (you can see bicycle chains, etc. all over it) and one part of it is even made out of an old frying pan. Genius.

So- those were our awesome sights for that morning....tomorrow you can sign back on to see our pictures of the giant meteor crater. Aren't you excited?!?!