We just spent a really nice spring break in Arizona with Mom & Dad. The kids are off school for the week and I took a week of vacation. We flew from Indy to Phoenix, with a really excellent park/sleep/fly deal at one of the motels near the airport, and arrived on Sunday. Mom and Dad have moved back into the city (Tempe), after getting tired of all the driving every time they need to go somewhere or do something. We spent a couple days at their house, first finding that the room that Beth and I were sleeping in is unbearably hot (and I forgot to pack shorts) so we had to take a trip to Old Navy and Target to get some shorts for me and a fan for the room. On the plus side, their new house has a pool, so we were all able to enjoy that. Monday we went to the Phoenix Zoo, I think the first time we've been there when it wasn't the middle of winter. We saw many more animals this time, and Alex and I even went on a zipline. We also did a bit of geocaching, just one that was within walking distance of the house. Beth and I had planned to take the kids up north to see the Grand Canyon, and we didn't think that Mom and Dad would want to go with us so we weren't planning on going with them, but they did both want to go so we rented a minivan so we could all go together. Nice that they did want to go, because they had all sorts of other things we could go see while we were up there. We headed north on Tuesday, stopped to go to the Meteor Crater for a while, then to Walnut Canyon Nat'l Monument, a canyon with all sorts of cliff dwelling ruins in it. The kids and Dad and Beth and I walked all though it, but there are a lot of stairs and it kind of wore Beth and Dad out. Then over to Flagstaff and checked into a motel. Across the road from the motel was a place called Black Bart's Steakhouse, which seemed as good a place as any for dinner...and it turned out to be a steakhouse, saloon, and musical revue. The wait staff are all students at UNA majoring in performing arts, and they put on quite a show! All throughout dinner every few minutes someone does a song up on the stage, anything from a Disney song to a show tune or a pop song. The entire wait ensemble did a version of "Under the Sea" that was great. The next day we headed towards the canyon, stopping at Sunset Crater Nat'l Monument (volcanic eruption about a thousand years ago, still covered with ash and volcanic rocks) and going to Wupatki Nat'l Monument along the way. Wupatki is amazing. It is an Indian pueblo ruin, a huge multistory place that must have housed dozens of people in it's time, with community rooms and ball court and over 100 rooms. You can walk all around and through many parts of it, it's amazing. We stopped at Cameron Trading Post further on the way to the canyon, where there is a really awesome trading post kind of store of native art and jewelry and such, and a really expensive restaurant. Beth got some really nice silver earrings but lost them right away, as it turned out. Then on to the canyon. It was a great day for it, cool but clear and sunny, you could see for miles at the south rim. We stayed and walked around the place where the watchtower is for a while, then took a leisurely driving tour west along the road, stopping at each overlook to take it in a walk around. We were going to go to the big National Geographic theater/store at the western entrance to the north rim but in the end decided not to spend all that extra money. Instead, we did a bunch of shopping in the Grand Canyon village and had dinner at the Wild West Restaurant. Dad drove back to Phoenix all the way since we hadn't paid the extra so more than one person could drive, which was a mistake. He was having trouble seeing the road in the dark and I think he was pretty worn out. We got back to Tempe pretty late. We hung around the house the next day, and headed for home on Friday. We flew back to Indy, where we had arranged to meet for dinner with my college chum P.J. We hadn't seen or heard from him in years, but since we knew we'd be in Indy I made it my business to find him and get together with him again. We did find him; he kind of dropped out of society when he got divorced and didn't want to see anyone. But he's doing much better now. He found a place that was convenient to both his house (he's in the same one as before) and the airport, so we met up at Edward's Drive-in. It's a 50s themed burger place, pretty good, but it was so nice to be able to see PeeJ again and reconnect and catch up. Then the drive back home again. Good spring break.