Day Six: Life is a Two-Lane Highway

Today's installment will be shorter than most because we spent most of the day in the PerkyMomMobile. 

First a little housekeeping/forewarning: Our next hotel will be the nostalgic Route 66 classic: Wigwam Hotel in Holbrook, Arizona. The kids still don't know! We've been referring to it as "The Holbrook Hotel" when we talk about it. "There's no Holiday Inn in Holbrook, so we have to stay at the Holbrook hotel." ;) CEMENT WIGWAMS. They're going to crap their pants I just know it. I promise lots of pictures and I'll have my spiral notebook all ready for direct quotes. However, Cement Wigwams do not have internet access. So when we don't post tomorrow night, you'll know why! Hopefully the internets will be up and running again Saturday night when we hit Show Low, Arizona. 

So on today's story...

We woke up bright and early. We'd left the travel alarm clock in the car so we'd used the hotel alarm clock. Hotel Alarm Clocks are usually so disappointing. This one woke us up to the radio. It worked. Sort of. The boys were sleeping in AGAIN. 

Got up, hit breakfast. We saw a family this morning who'd been at the Holiday Inn Express in Flagstaff, too! Man, that breakfast is CROWDED.

[PerkyMommy Pontificates]

You know, for as much as we hear about Americans being obnoxious when they're overseas, I can not say many nice things about non-English speaking European vacationers. 

I'm not just protecting the English speakers for David's sake, either. It seems that whenever we've encountered other tourists who speak funky English, they're smiling and friendly. But once they speak another language, WATCH OUT. They smell. They push. They're rude.

MG is a great little boy scout. The boy will hold doors open and elevator doors. Americans and English Speakers seem to know that they need to push the door themselves. Them foreigners will let my boy stand there forever holding the damn doors for them. HELLO. Help yourselves people. He's let 25 people through, he has a family to catch up to!

And meanwhile, I don't speak a lot of different languages but I can say thank you in Spanish, French, German, Eyetalian, Japanese and even Russian. If I was going to be visiting a country that didn't speak any of those languages, I'd manage to google a few key phrases in those languages, including but not limited to "Thank You." Hello. A little manners would go a long way people...

And further more, what's the point of getting pissy when a waitress brings you water with ice in it? This is the United States. Our custom is to put ice in our beverages. You've been here long enough to drive out to the middle of nowhere. I'm guessing that this isn't the first waitress who dared to put ice in your cup. That's her JOB. If you don't want ice in your beverage, it is your JOB to remember the simple English phrase "No Ice Please." Just as it would be incredibly inappropriate for me to berate an English/European server for NOT having ice available, you need to get off yer damn high horse and just suck it up: This is the local custom and they're not going to all bend over backwards for YOU. "Sorry, we only put ice in cups on request now because the Germans get pissy." No.

Ok, that's it for now. They don't seem nearly this bad at Disneyland... [/PerkyMommy Pontificates]

After breakfast we walked to the IMAX theater to watch the Grand Canyon movie. We had a 10% off coupon and CS was free. We caught the 9:30 show. It wasn't too crowded until the lights went out. It appears that an entire busload of people came in at 9:31. 

The movie was good. There were a couple of scenes where I wanted DD to put his eyes over CS's face. He didn't. Whatever. The movie spent most of its time showing what the canyon looks like at the river level. It's a side of the canyon most of us don't see. On some levels it made me want to hike down to the bottom one day. On others, it made me want to hop a helicopter ride down one day. 

Afterwards we walked back to the hotel and packed up the car to hit the road. By the time we left it was after 11 am. We were headed east today to Canyon De Chelly (pronounced Shay, not Shelly, for those who don't know like I didn't know.) We'd PROMISED the kids that they could swim for once. It was going to be a long ride and the Canyon is on the Navajo reservation so we lost an hour to daylight savings time. 

In some ways driving through the reservation is just depressing. We did see some amazing and beautiful sights along the way! And a lot of by-the-road Indian Art Stands. 

We stopped in Yuba City for gas and lunch. We just grabbed food after a potty stop and ate it in the car. 

Our first stop was at 3:30/4:30 at the Hubbell Trading Post, a National Historic Site. Yep! They have a passport stamp station there! Unfortunately, the park rangers were away at a training today so we were not able to tour the Hubbell home. There was a Navajo woman in the visitor's center weaving a rug. MG and I talked to her for a little bit. She'd been working on this rug for 3 1/2 weeks, 6 hours a day. She expected to take 4 1/2 months to complete the rug. Inside the trading post they were selling rugs of a similar size to the one she was weaving for $4000. Uhm, ouch. 

(In CS's defense, he had just woken up from a long car-ride-induced nap, hence his not looking at the camera. He wasn't being stubborn as much as he was tired and still waking up...)

We toured what we could see but the fields were filled with locusts. ICK ICK ICK. Little grasshopper bugs were flying up in the air with ever step I took. No thank you.

(This is Hubbell hill. The Hubbell family is all buried in a cemetery at the top of the hill...)

When we got back to the car, Daddy Doc got on the cell phone to contact our Canyon De Chelly tour guide. Last February, I made a reservation with a Navajo guide for a private tour of the Canyon in his Suburban. Only Navajo Guides are allowed to drive into the Canyon. For the cost of five tickets on a open-air bus, we could arrange for a private tour. Uhm, DUH? So we made our deposit on March 2, for July 18, and Adam told us to call when we got to town.

We called. 

Adam told Daddy Doc he'd have a Jeep. Uhm, will all five of us fit in your Jeep? 

Uhm, I could put in an extra seat.

Well in our e-mails you said we were reserving the Suburban.

Well the Suburban is in the Canyon. I guess I could go get it.

YOU GUESS??

HELLO?

You write down on your calendar: July 18, 5 people, Suburban. How hard is this?

(BTW, I did check reviews on Trip Advisor. Most of the reviews I saw were quite positive.)

Now we're anxious. Usually I'm the anxious one. Daddy Doc was actually the one who brought it up at dinner - he's really anxious about this, too. 

So please keep a positive thought for us that this tour works out for us!!!!!!!

There's only three hotels in this town: A Best Western, Holiday Inn, and a hotel inside the park. We're at, of course, the Holiday Inn. Our first reaction was that we made the right choice! (And we do still believe that!)

The Best Western is two miles out from the park entrance. We're pretty much right here. The Holiday Inn looks like a little desert resort. It's not that big but the buildings look like adobe, squared Native American architecture. Where Holiday Inn Express offers free breakfast, Holiday Inns offer "Kids Eat Free". So we'll have to pay for breakfast in the am, but eating dinner here tonight, the kids' meals were all free! The money we saved on dinner will balance what we'll pay for our breakfasts in the am.

We have a lovely first floor room with a sliding door that overlooks.... the POOL! Isn't that perfect?

Oh wait. I forgot one little detail. At check-in, Shayla told me that the pool is closed due to weather. (And apparently, in her language, "Weather" means "Because the pool water is green and nasty." I'm not sure how the weather made the pool green and gross, but it totally is.)

Needless to say, I had three UNHAPPY little boys in that car when I had to tell them about the pool. They've managed to mostly get over it. But we're getting very anxious about our upcoming hotels and their pools... :( :( :(

We ate dinner at the hotel restaurant and ordered Navajo Fried Flatbread so the kids could try something "local". It was pretty good - a bit greasy but good. Especially with the honey on it...

"Cindy, et al" - please do not read until you see "SAFE AGAIN FOR CINDY ET AL" Skip the two pictures, too. Thank you.

We had dinner at the hotel restaurant. Afterwards, the weather is just lovely so the boys spent some time running around in the grass outside. CS went out to join MG and SBS when we heard the big boys SHRIEKING at him. Something about a snake. I went out to see what all the screaming was about and the boys told me there was a SNAKE in the grass. They did say it was a garter snake. I decided to check it out. I have to say that snakes are not something I'm very afraid of. I don't know why but I've always been ok with snakes. I won't pick up wild snakes but I'll hold people's pet snakes.

MG took me out to show me the garter snake and, yeah, this is what we found:

Can you even see it? it's pretty small!

We watched the snake for a little bit and everyone survived the excitement.

SAFE AGAIN FOR CINDY ET AL

Everyone's getting ready for bed again. We have double beds tonight. The hotel feels a bit old. The towels are reallllllly old. It's kind of funny because the Holiday Inn Expresses have specially branded hotels that are all very lush and nice. But the carpet in the room looks rather new. This hotel has bedspreads again - another thing I find funny. The chairs look old. But nothing is worn or ugly or unappealing at all. It's a charming little place and I'd definitely recommend it to anyone coming to this area.

CS is cracking me up. Two nights in a row, he's picked the sleeping bag over the bed. Last night it meant that the third choice boy lucked out and got the bed. Tonight it's good because CS is third choice so he was going to get the sleeping bag anyway. Good thing it's what he wants!

Please keep a good thought for our tour tomorrow, please!!!!

And imagine three little boys slumbering on Route 66 tomorrow night, in a cement Wigwam/Cozy Cone!! We'll see you in Show Low!