Thursday night my son-in-law and I arrived in Flagstaff, AZ, for a short vacation at the Grand Canyon. No, I’m not vacationing with my son-in-law … he had a business meeting he couldn’t skip in Phoenix, so Muri, Amy and the Grand kids went ahead while I waited for him to be done. Yes, we would have needed two cars anyway. We are staying at the pet friendly La Quinta Inn and I have never seen so many dogs in a hotel. In my several trips up and down with luggage, I learned something new … some dogs are freaked out in an elevator … and I am a bit nervous being in the elevator with freaked out dogs. Other than that, though, the dogs were mostly very well behaved, better than many of the kids. Our Grand kids, for example. They were very excited and bouncing off the walls … the beds … the doors … you name it. Either Mom and Dad are less inclined to suppress that enthusiasm than we were as parents or we haven’t traveled with little kids in a very long time. Probably some of both.
So, in the middle of the night in the La Quinta Inn Flagstaff, I awoke from a dream in which I had just called someone an arrogant bastard for questioning something I said. The room was pitch black. We always leave a light on in hotels because Muri gets claustrophobic in the dark , particularly in a strange place. She had already found her way to the phone in her purse and was using it as a flashlight. The power is out, she said, sounding relieved to have me awake. I found my phone and downloaded a neat little Android app called Night Light. It allows you to set your smartphone screen to a very low light level … with or without clock … for use as a night light, which gave us enough light in the room to keep us oriented until the power came on an hour later. Still, by morning, we had only had a half a night’s sleep and we were off to the Grand Canyon, all seven of us crammed into my daughter’s SUV, at 9:30 am. Just Grand.
As it turns out, the hour and a half drive was fine with the Grand kids chattering away for about 40 minutes then conking off to sleep … except for Savy, who kept us laughing all the way with her antics. The boys awoke just in time to see a large mule deer feeding by the park entrance. We found a parking place by Mather Point and the Grand kids got their first look at the Grand Canyon, then we wandered the rim until lunch. Grand kids can sure give a Grandfather palpitations with their continual climbing, especially in the vicinity of a 5000 foot deep canyon. We had lunch under a 
pinion pine with an afternoon thunder storm rumbling in the distance and scrub jays waiting in the branches for scraps. After lunch, we drove to Bright Angel Point, where the Grand kids got
another canyon view, met some very aggressive ground squirrels and one ancient raven. Reed declared that, This is the best day of my life, which made it a pretty good day in my life, too. The Grand Canyon is indeed Grand … I’ll let some photos speak to that.
Grand Canyon from Mather Point
Grand Canyon from Bright Angel Point
Grand Kids at the Grand Canyon