The Wheels on the Element...

Go round and round, round and round, round and round...

Well, it's time for a big update. We didn't have any signal the night before last, and for some reason the place we were staying, I wasn't able to connect to their wifi. And last night I wasn't feeling well and just went to bed. So i'll update you on our goings on today for the past several days.

We left Aunt Frances' and Uncle Ray's and headed towards the North Rim of the Grand Canyon on Wednesday. Our first stop was just outside of Kingman at my Grandpa Jack's new property. He is going to eventually build out here. It was a heck of a drive - dirt road, over steep hills that you couldn't see the road as you crested them on the other side... After that detour, we were again on our way to North Rim. About half way there I got pulled over. I was seriously searching for a reason as to why I might be getting pulled over. Turns out, I think he just pulled me over because he thought I was cute. The "official" reason was because I had a crack in my windshield. He was very nice and all smiles and didn't see that I had my mom and baby in the back seat until he came up to the car window - and he seemed quite surprised to see them. I just kind of smiled at him like "I know you don't have a legitimate reason to pull me over". Why would you pull over an out of state car for a cracked windshield? The crack isn't even in my line of vision. That was pretty funny.

We made it to the North Rim about 8pm, so it was too dark to see the canyon. The lodge was full, so we headed back out of the park (45 minute drive each way) and stayed at Jacob's Lake Inn at the entrance to the park. It was very nice. We woke up and had breakfast the next morning. Such a cute place. The waitress told us that she thought Brice was the best behaved (and cutest) baby they had ever had in the restaurant. We did not head back in to the park though. I didn't want to drive another hour in and hour out just to see a big hole in the ground that i've seen before. So maybe next year. That, and it was hot. I don't like to sweat. And carrying baby makes me even hotter. So we went on our merry way. We drove through Zion National Park (above - beautiful as always) and made a short stop at the Visitors Center. Again, too hot to stay long.

The baby in the Element goes waa-waa-waa, waa-waa-waa, waa-waa-waa...

Baby doesn't like to be stuck in his seat all day, who can blame him. So we decided to cut a lot of our trip...a lot of the hot stops anyways. We stay in Salt Lake City last night, after getting totally confused on their freeway system (thank goodness for GPS!). Not only is it confusing with exits on the left and right, but the people in Salt Lake are crazy drivers. I always try and avoid Salt Lake for that reason. Just before we got into town we pulled up on an accident that just happened (above - blurry). We were there before fire and rescue. A truck went under an on-ramp with a load that was too tall and lost it's load. Some of the debris from that hit another vehicle and caught it on fire. Luckily, no one was seriously hurt. But it did stop up traffic. Thankfully we were at the start of it, because Brice was HUNGRY!

He is doing pretty good. One of us has to sit in the back with him so he can stare at us. And a lot of the time we have to give him our hand to hold on to. He'll start to drift off to sleep and then suddenly jolt awake an watch us again...like we're going to leave him. We are having to stop every 1-2 hours to feed him. That's the hardest part. And I think he's going through a growth
spurt. I just can't seem to keep up with his appetite. He is loving to blow raspberries now and can't get enough of sucking on his hands. He is usually a big drooly mess.

Last night I drew a bath at the hotel and he and I got in. He was a little freaked at first when he was kicking his legs in the water, but he got over it quickly and loved it.

Today we're on our way to Yellowstone. We're on some little highways that keep jogging us between Utah and Wyoming. It's a lot cooler up this way. Yellowstone is into the 30s at night and 50s during the day, with mostly sunny skies. I think we're going to stay in Jackson Hole tonight and maybe the park two nights. Or we might just go straight to the park. That's how we do these trips, decide as we go.