Focht Family Blog

I was a nervous wreck the whole day. It was extremely terrifying to see my children anywhere near the edge. Our first stop was to walk to the information center. We could have taken a shuttle but it seemed like a nice day. Here is Nathan and the boys playing king of the hill.

At the information center, we got books for each of the kids so they could become Junior Rangers. Here is a picture of Samantha and Joshua doing an assignment in their books at a safe distance. Timmy was sitting on the rock ledge with Nathan giving me a small heart attack. :)

Here are two pictures I took while I was making sure Timmy was okay.

After finishing all of their assignments except attending a ranger class we stopped for lunch at a cafeteria. The food was not very good. While waiting for the shuttle Timmy started a snowball fight with Nathan and he thought he was well hidden behind something. Nathan threw one and it accidently hit Timmy on the cheek. Timmy wasn’t happy…

The shuttle took us to the Yavapai Observation Station where the kids took part in a class taught by a ranger about the geology in the Canyon.

While she was explaining the path the river takes she let Josh help with the demonstration…

After the lesson, the kids were sworn in to receive their badges…

Here is one last picture of the Canyon and a picture of the family in front of it.

Well, we arrived at the Grand Canyon and I called to find out where our mail was since it showed as being delivered. They gave me directions to an office a bit of a drive away from the campground. Since we had to drive to get the mail anyway, we put the kids in the car and drove on the scenic road and stopped to look at some of the overlooks. It is terrifying to realize how close you can get to the edge. Either there isn’t anything blocking you or there is a 2 foot rock ledge or a pipe railing with large openings. Here are some pictures from the first day.

While at the campground we looked out the windshield and saw two deer feeding. They started butting their horns together while we watched but the picture I took had too  much shade in it to see well. Here is one of the pictures of the deer.

I didn’t take a picture of our sites. They were basic sites with LOTS of snow!

Things I like: For a campground in a National Park this has lots of ammenities. There is 50amp electric, water, sewer, AND cable at all the sites.

Things I don’t like: I think the only negative is that if you need groceries you will be stuck with what is at the small store at the park because there aren’t any towns nearby.

We left St. Louis on Friday morning. Friday night we stayed at a Walmart in Oklahoma City. We actually stopped at a Walmart between Tulsa and Oklahoma City first but Nathan didn’t feel good about staying there so after we made dinner we continued on to a bigger area. We made good enough time that we were able to have short driving days the next two days. It was so nice to go outside on Saturday morning in a short sleeved shirt! :)

Saturday night we drove until Amarillo. There isn’t much available for overnight anywhere outside of Amarillo if you are traveling on I-40 so that is why there were 9 or so campers in the lot with us. :) Unfortunately a cold front came through so the short sleeves are back in the closet. Tonight we are at a KOA in Bernalilo, NM. This is the KOA we stayed at right after we purchased our Allstar. We were going to stay at the Cummins because they are going to fix an oil leak in the morning but it was a bad area so we decided to just pay for a campground so we could dump and fill up with water. If we need to be in NM tomorrow night we will probably just stay at a Walmart. Once we leave here we are headed to the Grand Canyon.

After the zoo we drove to the Gateway Arch. Parking was fun. Apparently people line their cars 3 or 4 deep on the edge of the Mississippi as a parking lot. We were afraid that when we left that we would be blocked in so we parked on an outside edge. Here are Samantha and Timmy at the edge of the Mississippi River. Samantha and Nathan both touched the river…

Here is a view of the Arch as we were walking towards it…

Here is Samantha and Timmy “touching” the Arch…

Here is the view looking up as we were going in. It is pretty amazing when you look up and realize that you will soon be standing at the little windows….

Once we were inside Timmy started getting scared about going to the top. I have to say I wasn’t too sure about it either when I saw the tiny pods that was supposed to be our ride to the top. I would guess that with our society expanding that there are a few people that can’t get into the pods. Here is a shot of the kids in a pod that was at the ticket counter. If Nathan wasn’t in the middle seat he had to keep his head down to avoid bumping the ceiling. All 6 of us were in one of these pods…

Once at the top Timmy was happier. We looked out the window facing the RV Park and we were able to point out our campsites….

Here is a picture of the kids sitting up by one of the windows…

And here are views from both sides of the Arch….

After the Arch we went back to the RV to eat dinner and wait for the fireworks. At 9:00 the children’s fireworks went off at First Night across the town and we could see a few of them between the buildings. However, they do not have fireworks at the Arch on New Year’s Eve. I guess that is only on the Fourth of July, so at midnight we saw a few between the buildings from First Night but that was it. Oh well! :)