Cruisin' the Southwest

In April four of us Benedicts took a trip down to the Southwest. We started our journey in Las Vegas. We stayed there for 2 nights and 1 day. It was an awesome experience. Nice and toasty compared to cool and rainy up here. Swimming and lounging by a pool in April!

We rented a sweet car and drove from Vegas to Flagstaff. On our way, we stopped at a few places. Hoover Dam and we HAD to drive along Route 66!

In "Flag" we stayed with the Dahle family and did

fun stuff everyday! The evening

we got there we went on a hike around Walnut

Canyon. The old Indian dwellings there were crazy! (they had to scale the sides of this canyon).

The next day we all went to the Grand Canyon. They hadn't been there yet either. It was hard to take it all in. It was unreal, looked like a painting.

We also went to Sedona, Az and went on another fun little hike. Sedona is exactly what I pictured ALL of Arizona to look like. Not the case. It's so beautiful. The red rock just pops all over the landscape.

After a short but sweet weekend with them, we continued our journey south to Phoenix/Scottsdale to see my Aunt Celeste and fam. They had a lot more cactus down there. Another thing I imagined to be everywhere! It was so beautiful there too! We stayed there that night and hung out with them until our eyelids started to close.

The next day we headed south to the San Xavier Mission in Tucson. Totally worth the drive! If I remember correctly it was built in the late 1700's. It was like I walked onto a movie set.

Amazing!

On a side note...One scary thing that happened while driving, as all great road trips have. I was driving along....mindin' my business, going over 70, the usual. I was looking out my window to the left at some cactus of course. I tur

ned to look out the windshield again and up ahead in my VERY near future was a giant box. One that could hold a pretty good sized TV. I had no choice, there was someone to my right, and I was in the very far left lane. All I could do was plow right through. AHHHHHhhhhhh! Phewww. It didn't seem like there was ver

y much weight in there, no damage to us. What did I do?....um..kept on driving. Until.... a guy in a big truck came along and was honking and shouting out his window at us. I thought I heard something about

water...tire.. At that point I just went numb. "This isn't even my car, what have I done!"

I drove over to the shoulder and said a giant sized, silent prayer. I really should've taken a picture. I was dragging about a hundred feet of electrical wire. It looked very much like the cord of a lamp but very thick and sturdy. I then got down and dirty underneath the car to see what the heck this cord holding on to. Some sort of metal hook. Hold out your pinky...now slightly curl it. Yep, that was all that was holding hundreds of feet of cord. We didn't want to liter of course, so we bundled it all up, shoved it into the trunk...and at the very next rest stop, dumped it into a secluded garbage can.

Pretty long side note, sorry. To end the exhilerating day we stayed in the hotel pool and hot tub for as long as we could. We flew out the next day. We checked out of our hotel and drove to see the Mesa Temple before it was time to turn the car back in. So beautiful. I think it is one of my favorites! The palm trees, cactus, and green grass with water fountains! Aaahh heaven on earth!

Staircase Hike

First off....Yes, Lisa is blogging! Never thought I would. I decided to create this one because we LOVE going on road trips.

This time we started out pretty late. Didn't leave the house until noon. Then there's going to the store, getting food for the day, getting gas. These are the 'chores' of the road that I don't enjoy.

We had a couple of places in mind, but we wanted to go somewhere new. We just jumped in the car and blew where ever the wind took us. We headed over the Narrows Bridge. That's mostly the direction we seem to go.

At the end of Hwy 16 we were stuck with the choice...north? or south? We always go north, so this time we headed south. Drove along the Hood Canal. Jeanette remembered a hike she once went on while in Young Women's. We drove through Hoodsport, then up to Staircase. (I think it's a state park!?) My poor car.I didn't know we were going to drive about 10 miles on a dirt road with a MILLION potholes. There's one thing I hate, driving 25 miles an hour for long distances. It was beautiful up by the lake though! It even hailed. Uh Oh!

Once we got there it was perfect. Dry trail and no rain. After reading the bulletin board, we found that all the hikes were all less than 3 miles. Bummer. At the trail head was a sign. Something like 'The foot bridge crossing the river was washed out in a recent storm. Crossing can be dangerous, use extreme caution.' We thought we would decide what to do once we surveyed the damage. The trail was only a 1.9 mile loop. No biggey. It was such a beautiful, easy hike.

Then we got to the river. Yep...that bridge was a goner. I took a look down and thought 'darn. well..ok, lets turn back.' But what did us three Benedicts do? We climbed down to the river bed. There were a couple of ways over. None of them looked easier than the other, so walked upstream a ways and decided to cross there. I really didn't want to take my socks and boots off.

I didn't have a place to put them, my pack was too small, and I needed my hands for balance. So we all de

cided to roll up our pant legs, and get our boots wet. It was pretty amazing. Each time I lifted my foot it felt like the river was going to take it away. The water was only just up to my knee. We got to the middle of the river, which was an island of small rocks, then had to cross on top of some small unsteady rocks. On either side of that were pretty deep pools of water. I think that was the most scary part. I probably could have stood in water up to my shoulders. Once that was over we had to figure out how in the world were we going to get up the other side of the bank. The way up to the trail was covered with branches. We literally had to take it one step at a time.

Whewww! We were up! What an adventure. Each step after that we had water shooting from our feet. Boots FULL of water. I wanted to get back asap and take those bad boys off!

We were steadily walking up an incline when the trail suddenly ended and we found that the rest of it was way down in the river below. CRAP! I did NOT want to go back. We turned, climbed the rock and roots to our left 'til we found the continuation of the trail. In less than 5 minutes we were back a the car. Sheesh!

Thing is...I would totally do it again! So fun.