This (Palm) Desert Life

Well, I have plane tickets.  I feel.... a bit nauseous.  Nothing makes it feel real like spending $1600 in airfare I guess?

From the Grand Canyon, we descended into the heat of Flagstaff, Arizona.  I had been to Flagstaff once before, almost 20 years ago when my mom, my sister, and I dropped off my dad at the airport where a sign read, "All Arrivals, All Departures: Gate A."  I can only hope my transfer in Auckland will be that straightforward.  

In Flagstaff this time we ran into some locals who recommended the Aquaplex - notable for it's water slides and childcare.  Childcare, you say? We went immediately.  Sorry, I have no pictures of this outing because pools and iphones are not my favorite combination.  But a good time was had by all.  Bear didn't want to leave the childcare area when we came to pick them up (they had trains).

Then onward, to our next destination: Homewood Suites of Palm Desert, CA. This place is awful.  Not the hotel, the hotel is good, I mean the desert in general.  I don't understand how people are always espousing the values of 'dry heat' and saying 'it cools off at night, though!' It does not cool off at night.  And yes the heat is dry - so dry you can feel the saliva evaporating from inside your mouth.  

Driving through this landscape with the outdoor temperature reaching 48C (that's 118.4 degrees F, y'all), I began to realize I do have a phobia - and that phobia is being baked alive by the toxic sun inside a rental car with my entire family.  There was literally no shade for hundreds of miles. 

So in Palm Springs, a bunch of wealthy retirees decided they hated winter so much that they would literally rather live inside a dry sauna.  Evidently they also hated shade, water, and non-cancerous skin.  But they were brought together by their love of golf, investment banking, and imitation stucco to found Palm Springs.  

And then someone made Palm Desert so that the waiters and golf course workers in Palm Springs would have someplace to live.  So here we are.  

The open road.

Pax has started eating non-milk food - she is a big fan.

Post-aquaplex dinner.

Pillow hog.

I am going to miss these two so much. 

Pax loves pickles.

Ugh.

Grand Canyon

From Las Vegas, we called the Grand Canyon and found that there was a North Rim Cabin open for two nights.  This is crazy, usually you need reservations like a year in advance.  It was obviously a sign, so off we went.  

The Grand Canyon is a special place for both me and Benjamin, but this is actually the first time we have been here together.  Last time I was here was five years ago, just before our wedding, when I hiked from the North Rim to the South Rim with my mom and uncle.  We stayed in these very cabins before setting off.  

Being here made me want to hike so bad.  I wanted to be down in the canyon with all the other hiking type people, I wanted to feel the accomplished soreness in my legs, I wanted to be lulled by that rhythm of putting one foot in front of the other to just keep going, I wanted to feel that pure, clean hunger that makes a powerbar taste like manna from heaven.  

But it wasn't just my family holding me back, it was also my own body.  When I hiked rim-to-rim, I was in arguably the best shape of my life having just trained for a sprint triathlon.  In the intervening five years I have completed residency, gestated two children, and hiked or run probably a grand total of 20 miles.  So no, I cannot just jaunt down to the Colorado and expect to be able to get back out.  And that was a little bit of a tough pill to swallow.  

But while I was disappointed to not be experiencing the canyon the way I had before, I found we had a different and also enjoyable experience.  We hung out at the lodge.  We took leisurely meals in the restaurant there.  We walked around the short rim trails.  We chatted with other people staying in the cabins - kids are great conversation starters.  

We did the very short walk to Bright Angel Point and ran into my friend Stephanie from medical school.  She is also in Family Medicine and now works in Colorado.   She was on vacation with her brand new fiance, Stephen.  We rolled into their vacation like an IUD infomercial.  Bear demonstrated his inability to stop talking, tried to steal her engagement ring, and detailed his plans to try to kill his sister.  

***

As part of our canyon activities, I got to ride a mule.   In fact, I was the only one on the ride, so I got a private tour.  We rode along the rim, looking down into the canyon and smelling the Ponderosa pines. Almost as good as hiking.

At home in the cabin.

Majesty

"Salt Experiment in Red"
Digital Photography. Bear 2016

"Dinner at the Lodge."
Digital Photography. Bear 2016

"Wagon Wheel"
Digital photography. Bear 2016

"Spokes"
Digital photography. Bear 2016

"Backpack Dad"
Digital photography. Bear 2016

"Baby Monkey"
Digital photography.  Bear 2016

These huevos rancheros changed my life.

Canyon kid

Adventure hats

Flowers growing in rock.

Bear loves rock climbing.

We had really clear days - you can see the San Francisco peaks on the horizon.

Bear chats with Stephanie

Good view of the rim of the Inner Canyon.

Canyon selfie

I'm on a horse.  Mule.

Outside the cabin in mom's shoes

Will you ever have enough pictures of gnarled tree trunks?
No, no I will not.

Benjamin supervises Bear's water consumption.

We Still Like Each Other - Barstow, Vegas, and Benjamin's Birthday

We reached the end of our hotwired time at the Carlsbad Staybridge Suites with no clear plans on what to do next.  It was certainly nice not to have to pack everything up every day, but we checked into extending our stay and the rates on our room would increase considerably.  Also we were due to return our rental car at LAX.  

So we decided to head to Las Vegas.  Because where else would a Quaker family with two small children want to be, really?

So we headed back to the Enterprise to exchange one white sedan for a different white sedan.  While Benjamin completed this transaction, I waited in the "visitor parking" area with both children and all our worldly possessions (except, obviously, those that are taking up space at my in-laws' - thanks Howard and Rosalind!).  Bear entertained himself by crawling around the parking lot and then licking his hands.  Since the dirt did not appear to contain peanuts I decided to let it go. 

We loaded up the new car and headed to a park to tire out the children before driving to Barstow, CA.  The road-trip guide book suggests that the must-see thing in Barstow is their McDonalds - it is inside a train.  Despite Micky D's Chocolate Milk and trains being Bear's favorite things in the world, somehow we skipped this one.  

In the morning we enjoyed yet another hotel continental breakfast and then got back on the road.  Driving commenced, with the usual amount of Bear screaming, whining about being hungry, and kicking the driver's seat before falling asleep.  At which point Pax began screaming.  Again, I would like to reiterate for anyone planning on following in our road-tripping footsteps - consider just staying home.  

In Las Vegas we were staying at Circus Circus because it was deemed the most "child friendly," of the casinos with its circus acts and indoor amusement park offering.  But by the time we got there, Bear was in full meltdown mode, so we hustled through some really expensive lunch and back up to the room for a mostly unsuccessful nap time.

Between Bear plucking every last one of my nerves, Pax making sure some part of me was constantly damp, and the general overstimulating nature of Vegas, I was really, really, ready to be done.  I even tried clicking my heels together, just in case that worked.  It did not.

But at some point in this haze of wretchedness, an important shift took place.  I looked over at Benjamin and instead of thinking, 'this was your idea and therefore all your fault,' I remembered that he's my partner in this, and I realized he's just as overwhelmed and tired and overstimulated and frustrated as I am.  And also it was his birthday.

So we hired a babysitter.  From the internet.  Yes folks, I have gone from someone who cried at the first day of preschool and left my cell phone number with the teachers in case Bear needed me, to someone who leaves her kids with a stranger in a Vegas hotel room based on a 4.5 star google review.  Done and done.  Benjamin and I went out to see Cirque du Soleil.  It was awesome.

The show was fantastic. It elicited all the usual feelings in me brought on by live theater spectacle - the ache in the pit of my stomach for paths not chosen in this life.  God how I would love to work on a show like this.  (The usual budget of shows I worked on in college was $150, so this was a little different.)

Mostly it was just good to share an experience with my husband that was not about our children.  I was reminded that we do, in fact, like each other and enjoy spending time together. 

I love you, Benjamin.  Happy Birthday!

Everything we're taking to New Zealand, right here.

Playground selfie!

It's the wild west!

Bear proposes novel sleeping arrangements.

Hotel reading options - California edition.

Woohoo, Vegas, baby!

New York, New York and some sort of paramilitary exercise?