After sleeping in Flagstaff in one of the worst hotels I have ever been to, we gladly packed up and headed out. Ok, fine- I will give a quick synopsis of this hotel. It was a Travelodge. Ever been to one? The funny thing is, while looking for our hotel, we passed one Travelodge of the seedy pay-by-the-week motel variety, and then soon after passed something else called Travelodge that looked slightly more than decent. Ours was somewhere in between. Here were my personal complaints (everyone had their own):

*The advertised "heated pool" was frigid (also the kids' top complaint) and when I called to make sure that said advertisement was accurate, the young man working at the front desk answered after 18 rings, answered my questions curtly (and with blatant lies), and hung up on me without any farewell. Then when Nathan took the kids down to the pool to freeze their bummies off, and headed to the front desk to report that, in fact the pool was NOT heated, the young man had a hard time getting off his cell phone to converse with Nathan.

*The room reeked of stale cigarettes.

*The in-room refrigerator that qualified this place as an "inn" didn't function.

*There was something brown splattered on the bathroom wall. This beats the dried up spaghetti under the armoire in our last hotel. Why is it that people don't think to clean a wall when cleaning a hotel bathroom. It seems SO obvious and sensible to me. I just don't get it.

*There was a conveniently located restaurant directly on the hotel property that started filling up with hootin', hollerin' drunkards at promptly 10:00 pm and continued to escalate the level of noise throughout the night.

And they couldn't even have comfortable beds to make up for it. I didn't sleep a wink.


Enough of that....


We started out with the meteor crater. Nathan and the kids had already been, but I had never seen this huge...hole. Nathan had mentioned that it was a little windy on his last visit, but nothing he said could have prepared any of us (including him) for this tempest that slapped us all across the face as we exited our car. We made the mistake of opening two doors at once and the crosswind ripped all loose articles from our vehicle. The one we couldn't catch was a plastic bag full of styrofoam chips (of course). It literally got sucked about 60 ft. into the air in a matter of half a second. Once all the styrofoam had spilled out all over the ground, the bag went CRAZY! Everyone stopped to point...it was the talk of the town...or the crater. Also important to note- I dug a ponytail holder out of my bag, only to have it disappear into the wind as well.

Here we are approaching the crater. This is to give you an idea of the impact. See how the ground suddenly rises? Those aren't mountains...or hills. That is where the ground was pushed up from the impact of the crater. Amazing, right?

Cool sign on the side of the 3 mile road that leads to the crater.

Just to give you an idea! I had to hold my shirt down the whole time so my brasierre wouldn't show. I wasn't wearing a pretty one that day. The wind literally took my breath away. And I was afraid if I wasn't connected to Hazel at all times, she might float away.

Nathan tried to hold my hair down for this one....to no avail.

As we are looking down at the crater, a huge shadow started to cover it. Have you seen Independence Day? I'm not going to pretend I didn't get a little freaked out.

Inside the museum. Don't my kids look like wax statues? I guess it was the lighting. Creepy.

After being sufficiently amazed by the crater, we continued on our way home. We decided to stop at a place called Montezuma's Castle. We have passed this place so many times, and even stopped at the Sonic located right outside it's entrance, but we have never stopped to see what it was all about. Luckliy Natalie and Richard had looked it up and were interested enough to check it out. It was pretty stinking awesome. Montezuma had never actually lived there, but it was just as interesting as if he had.

I can see why the Sinagua chose this spot. It was so beautiful and peaceful. There was a creek nearby and beautiful trees and wildlife all around.

It was fun to see all these touristy things so close to our home that we have never checked out.

I love Arizona.

And I love this sweet little face...

And these crazy little farts...

Okay...that's the end of our forever long weekend. And now it's already the next weekend. So let's move on to more interesting things, shall we?