Spring break

We're back from our trip to Arizona, tired but happy. The trip had an unpleasant start, which isn’t surprising given our history of airplanes trips. (Emergency landing in Nova Scotia due to smoke in the galley over the Atlantic; severe enough turbulence over the Sierra Nevadas that Husband’s coffee cup stuck to the ceiling and we literally thought we were going to die; broken seatbelt on crowded Albanian Airlines flight; baby Huckle swallowing a necklace pendant right before the flight; innumerable delays, including stuck overnight in Detroit without enough diapers last year. Don’t get me going…) So add to the list Huckle (now age 5) vomiting throughout a 4+ hour flight (including down the aisle and on a stranger) and you get an idea of our inauspicious beginning. I’m starting to consider the flight attendants’ safety talk at the beginning of each flight to be a check list of emergencies yet to come (Hmm, which will it be this time: water landing in which we get to use the seat cushion as a flotation device? Or a chance to try out those oxygen masks that don’t fully inflate?). Needless to say, I’m fully aware of the emergency exit locations…

Beyond that, the vacation was a success. We had a really fun hotel with a water park (http://www.pointehilton.com/indexsp.cfm), thanks to Husband’s hotel points from back when he traveled weekly. It’ll be hard to go back to regular vacations after getting so spoiled by Husband’s repeat-customer status at Hilton. (Okay, okay, I prefer having Husband home each night, even if not until 7:30pm!) The kids especially enjoyed the “lazy river”inner tube ride and the hot tub (but not so much the waterslide or waterfall). We also did a little tennis and mini-golf. One morning we hiked part way up a “mountain” peak near our hotel (http://www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com/bigmap/outoftown/arizona/phoenix/piestewa/index.htm).It was so beautiful with the tall saguaro cacti and many wildflowers in bloom. But it’s funny to look down onto sprawled city instead of nature and to hike ina mob of people, all huffing and puffing up the same path. With a 3-year-old in tow, we didn’t get even halfway up (or halfway winded), but it was still fun. We also managed a quick glance at Frank Lloyd Wright’s Taliesin West (http://www.franklloydwright.org/index.cfm?section=tour&action=taliesinwest), an interest of mine, but didn’t dare take the long (and expensive) tour with the aforementioned moody 3-year-old. Some day…

Our rental car was a convertible (thanks to Husband’s rental car points!), which made the drives between Phoenix, Flagstaff, and the Grand Canyon extra fun, especially the beautiful drive along Oak Creek from Flagstaff to Sedona (http://www.visitsedona.com/) with bluffs rising high above us. And the rapid changes in temperature and vegetation in Arizona were very striking: hot, dry desert of Phoenix to almost exclusively ponderosa pines of Flagstaff to the scrubby ranch land around the canyon. As for the Grand Canyon, no photos can do justice, as anyone who has been there knows. It’s truly amazing. We managed to hike partway down the Bright Angel Trail, which goes all the way down into the canyon. But the hiking was really slow, because many parts of the trail were still covered in ice(which was then covered in mule droppings…). So, while Husband displayed the sure-footedness of a canyon mule, I displayed the stubbornness, I’m sorry to report, and at one point refused to let my dear babies and husband continue any further down the steep, narrow, icy trail. But the kids were just as happy (happier?) to take a shuttle bus to different points along the top edge (suburban kids LOVE public transportation: Huckle dreams of someday riding the Acela to Boston and Sally, the NJ Path train). Of course I held on tightly to their hands or clothes while they peered over the edge. That’s the thing about parenting: it’s hard to have your heart walking around outside your body. Especially near steep canyons.

Other than swimming and hiking, Husband and I caught up on some reading, and the kids caught up on some TV watching. Since Huckle and Sally were up by 6am each morning (thanks to 3 hour time change) and since the hotel had cable, they now know Dora the Explorer, Diego (male counterpart of Dora), WonderPets, and Scooby Doo. Among Husband’s books was an account of the exploration of the Grand Canyon in the mid-1800s, and among mine was Elizabeth Gaskell’s Cranford, sort of a British version of Lake Wobegone Days written in the mid-1800s. Not sure why all my books were about the social plight of women before they gained the right to vote. But, if my recurring nightmare ever comes true – the one about sitting for a college final exam on a literature course I had forgotten to attend all semester – I should have a decent thesis.