The Trip to Our New Home Day 4

Okay, so now Day 4 has been the best driving day yet!  Eastern New Mexico was really boring and desolate, but Western New Mexico was beautiful.  My iPhone picture doesn't really do the landscape justice, but trust me...it was beautiful!

 

 

 

We were shooting for somewhere in Arizona for that night, but didn't have a destination city locked in.  We wanted to push as far as we could, but I have also been sick all week and was feeling really terrible so wasn't sure how far I would make it before getting ready to crash.  We did want to get as close to the Grand Canyon turn off as possible so that we could go see the Grand Canyon the next day. 

 

About 15 miles before leaving New Mexico, Dave called and said the girls needed a potty break.  I asked if they could wait for about 15 miles because we were both tired of New Mexico and just needed the mental boost of not stopping again until Arizona.  We did pull off at the first place we saw once we got into Arizona, and the girls were very impressed by the huge dinosaur replicas outside the gas station.  Of course we had to go play with those for a bit. 

 

 

 

 

Taylor saw some big tufts of dead looking grass nearby and thought they looked like a bird nest, so she had to go and perch like a bird.  And Dave had to keep his baby warm:

 

 

Anyone with kids knows that what you do with one, you have to also do with the other:

 



 

About half an hour before the GC turn off we saw signs for Meteor Crater, so we pulled off and drove 6 miles south, through open cow ranges, to see the world's best preserved meteor impact site.

When you walk up to the ticket booth you can't yet see any part of the crater.  You get your tickets, walk up a staircase (or elevator), go past the gift shop, up another set of stairs, through the museum, and then when the anticipation is really built up you walk outside and finally see Meteor Crater.

 

Dave and I were reminiscing back to about the 4th grade, seeing and reading about Meteor Crater in our social studies text books, and how cool we both thought it was.  So for us, finally seeing it in person was like meeting a famous person, or the President or something.  We were completely in awe!  The kids also liked it, but they couldn't grasp the magnitude of what they were seeing.  They sure loved looking through all of the telescopes though!

 

 

 

They also really enjoyed the museum.  There was a lot of hands-on that they loved trying out.  They built their own meteor (digitally) to test the impact their meteor would make on the earth.  They also got to stand on the earth while the meteor came towards them (again, digitally) so they could feel the shaking and hear how deafening the sound must have been when the meteor impacted the earth so long ago.

 

They both were dying to see the bottom of the crater when we were outside, but for preservation purposes you can't walk on the crater, you can only look from above.  So, they were sort of appeased in the museum where they got to pose on the mock bottom of the crater:

 

 

We ended up making it to Flagstaff, AZ and ended up in pretty prime position to make it to the Grand Canyon the next day.  We had a decent dinner at a mexican restaurant and then let the kids swim for about a half hour.  After that they were good and worn out and we all slept really well that night!