Road Trip!

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Don't worry, I did not fall off the blogosphere! I'm here, I promise. The family went on a little road trip that lasted longer than planned.

We had a total blast.

There is no way I can blog about it all in one day so I am breaking it up into 3 or 4 posts over the next few days. I hope you like slide shows cuz here they come.

So many photos, so little time.

So here is how our trip was panned. Mr Bird took the week of November 10-14 off from work. He had a huge conversion in October that kept him super busy the whole month. I was starting to feel like a single parent. He'd be up and gone for work before we got up and would not come home until after we were all in bed, even on the week ends. I would wake up some nights to find him there, lying beside me, then he'd be gone come first light of day. He even pulled a couple all nighters at the office, snatching a few hours of rest on his office floor. Things have gotten back to normal since then but we all needed a break from it all. Mr Bird took the week off and we were determined to have a great time. We actually left Friday, November 7 and headed down to St George. Mr Bird had some work to do there for a few hours.

While he worked, we played.

I left the camera in our hotel room while we played so I did not get any photos of the cool dinosaur museum we went to. This museum was a little different. They did not have huge dino bones and reconstructed life sized dinos. They had lots and lots of dino tracks.

This old guy named Dr. Johnson was developing some land for commercial buildings. During construction a huge piece of rock fell and splintered. When they looked closer they saw dino tracks embedded in the layers of rock. So they got to digging and paleontologists found that that area had been a watering hole of sorts for dinosaurs and their prints, along with little fishes and fossils became imprinted in the mud and preserved deep in the layers of rock. So Dr. Johnson stopped his building and built a museum right on top of the naturally existing dino tracks. We were very impressed. There were huge dino tracks and tiny dino tracks.

We stayed the night in a hotel in St George. The next morning we planned to go see Mr Bird's dad in South Western Arizona. The route we took led us through Vegas and within miles of the Hoover Dam. So we did what any good home school family did and went to see it.

HOLY COW

That place is amazing.

I could write tons about the history of the dam and how it generates power and on and on and on. I will not do so here, but I will say we learned a ton. Plus we got to see it in real life. These pictures don't even compare to the real thing. It really is a wonder. I love it's history.

If you have never been there, you have to go. I could not believe the amount of power that thing generates. There were more power lines than I have ever seen in one place in my life. There were the biggest, baddest power structures I have ever seen. It was truly awe inspiring. The Hoover Dam is right on the Nevada, Arizona border. That was the first time I had ever walked over a state line before. I have driven over plenty in my day, but that was a first for me. So fun. The kids were a little intimidated at first, it is a loooong way down. But then they thought it was cool and enjoyed learning about President Hoover and why he had the Dam commissioned and how it was built. I love home school.

So after we left the Dam we continued on down to Grandpa and Grandma DD's house down where the oldies fly south for the winter. We got there late at night and it was way passed bed time. We all crawled into bed and waited for the next piece of our vacation to start...

Tune in tomorrow for updates on Arizona. Trust me, you will not want to miss it!