Day 114 (October 14): That's a Really Fat Squirrel

On Sunday, after driving for nearly five hours and stopping at the Four Corners Monument (thus adding Utah to our state-count), we arrived at the Grand Canyon. With fading daylight, Lily and Henry were amazed and Ali lamented, "it's not a canyon, it's a mountain farm." I've never heard of such a thing but apparently it's neither good nor impressive, whatsoever.

Four kids, four states

Four kids, two grandparents, four states

Two lovebirds, four states

On Monday, we had a really good day of school. We introduced a bunch of new curriculum materials last week that had caught up with us in Austin. Today we introduced some more: Henry started a daily science program by covering a week's worth of fossils in about fifteen minutes. (I don't see how a teacher facing a classroom of 25-30 students stands a chance!) Lily started looking up the vocabulary words she has been highlighting in her reading using an online YA dictionary. She had so much fun she forgot to move on when our "third period" started. The twins advanced from learning "initial consonant blends" to "final consonant blends." I had spent an hour last night improvising some teaching materials and they really paid off. During breaks, the kids built a Kiva (part of Puebloan architecture they learned about in Mesa Verde) out of leaves and sticks.

Ali, Henry and Cate with their "kiva"

After lunch we headed up the canyon itself. Even on a Monday (of a holiday weekend, I'll admit) in October, the parking was overflowing. We found a remote lot and started a hike of about 2 miles on the nicely paved and overpopulated Rim Trail. This was perfect for the eight of us, especially since we had plenty of snacks and water.

Henry, Jon, Cate, Elise, Ali, Lily, Todd and Sue Makler at the Grand Canyon!

Four junior rangers, ready for action

Grandparents with Cate at the Grand Canyon

Rangers Cate and Henry on the Rim Trail

Lily and Henry were highly engrossed in their junior ranger programs. Repeatedly, I had to order them to look around (at the canyon, for heaven's sake) rather than work on their activities. By the end of the day, we had locked up their tenth badges.

Junior Ranger Henry hard at work to earn his 10th badge.

Thank goodness for Rangers with patience and humor

There's a good chance that what the kids will remember about the park is the fat, super-tame squirrels. Here's one posing with Cate.

More than 6 million visitors come to Grand Canyon NP ever year and most of them feed the squirrels, it would seem.

Aside: we've been negotiating with the kids about Halloween costumes. They've been negotiating with us about the junior ranger vests and hats available in each park's gift store. Voila! They agreed to be junior rangers for halloween and now they are proud owners of ranger vests and hats. Ali's is pink of course.

Another aside: I don't know where else to record this so this will be the place. Cate loves to whistle. Sometime in the last few weeks she really got the hang of it and now she does it all the time. She's extremely proud of this new skill. That is all.