Years go by....

And you write nothing!  Life goes on.  Then you child reminds you that you have a blog, when he does a google search of his name and The Ronayne Rules pop up.  Happy for that!

Facebook seems to have taken over the daily blogging for a lot of people.  It's where I "store" my pictures.  I've done pretty well at getting them printed, but I don't have one place where I electronically store things.

Colin has a baseball game tomorrow - he's on the JV team and plays at catcher.  He's backup, so he doesn't play a lot, but I'm awfully proud of him for making the team.

And I promise again to post more - and post more videos and photos!

Grand Canyon

We left LAS Vegas behind - didn't mind leaving it - and saw dirt devils - little dirt tornados - on the way out of town.  The boys were fascinated!  All I could think of was the tasmanian devil from the cartoons of my youth!

You can just see it in the distance.  A dusty, small tornado.

Anyhow, we took a non-hurried drive to Tusayan, Arizona.  It's amazing that the boys did NOT play their nintendos the whole way - I actually caught Andrew just looking out the window at things.  We tried to impress on them that the whole country was different looking - not just what they see out their backyards.  What were the differences?  No grass, check.  Adobe houses, check.  Tile roofs, check.  Just want them to be aware of what's out there.

Tusayan turned out to be a 2 1/2 block town just a few miles outside of the grand canyon.  I would so stay in this town again.  It all looks relatively new.  Many hotels, a few restaurants and a couple of shops.  Oh, and a gas station.  Everything is so close together you walk everywhere.  We ate in two of the local places - and at a Wendy's.  The prices at Wendy's were TWICE what they were at the one in Charleston.  Sigh.  We went to a steak place - which I wouldn't visit again.  And a great little pizza place recommended to us by our Pink Jeep tour guide.  So glad Mike suggested we take this tour.  We saw so much more than we ever would have on our own.  We went to the East Rim and saw things that our tour guide explained to us.  Did you know the FAA was started because of a plane crash in the grand canyon?  Well, neither did I!  Just interesting little facts, and it was nice to have someone there to get all four of us in a picture.  (You know, Mom is rarely IN the photo, since she always is the one taking the photo!)

It really is a beautiful sight to behold.  While at the South Rim, we hiked a little bit.  Just enough to say we did it.  We went down the Bright Angel Trail to the first tunnel.  Very cool, and I felt that altitude difference coming back up.  This is where I wish I were more fit. I know the boys could have easily gone down further on the trail, but I was worried about ME getting back up!  We saw a rattlesnake, chipmunks, deer and mule poop.  No, we did not take the mule trip nor did we see any coming back up the trail.  The boys had fun just being goofy in a beautiful place

It was cool, believe it or not.  When we arrived in Tusayan, I'm guessing 58*.  When we toured with Pink Jeeps in the morning (we started about 1030) it was 70*.  I would bet it only got to 80* or 82* the whole day.  It was very pleasant, and as Colin said, "I don't sweat in this dry heat!"  I kinda liked it.  But we ended up buying the boys jackets because I had forgotten to tell them to pack those.  And I knew it would be cool in Durango and Silverton...which will be the next posting!

PHEW!
Our vacation is over!  It was a great time - and I must say, perfectly planned.  (Of course, it was, I planned it!)
Day one:  fly to Las Vegas.  Our flight left in the afternoon, so we had plenty of time to finish packing, get a good meal in and get to the airport to wait....  The boys were excited because they had never flown before!  Easy flights with Southwest - we got the seats we wanted and no major problems.  I would definitely fly them again.  I paid extra to get the early check in - so we had good seat assignments in the 20s on each flight.

Day two:  Get up and get to the Hacienda Hotel outside of Vegas near the Hoover Dam.  We were to catch a float trip in the Black Canyon at that hotel.  We got into their van and drove to a restricted area (cool!) and got in these huge rafts to float the next 12 miles.  The Dam was right behind us - an awesome sight to look at from the river on up.

Here is Mike, after we've gone a little bit away from the Dam.

After our float trip, we went up into the Dam itself.  We took the Powerplant tour, which was the shorter of the two offered.  It was very cool to ride down 50+ stories in a smooth elevator - and it took only seconds.  We got to see some of the generators.  Awesomeness!  I must say, going in the afternoon they say won't be crowded, and it wasn't.  We had about 48 people on our tour - and it seems like that was everyone at the dam itself.  When we went out to the observation deck, it seemed as though we had the whole place to ourselves.  

And the best part?  The boys got to go to the Dam(n) gift shop and get some Dam(n) souvenirs.  They were so happy to tell everyone they were going on the dam tour, and going to the dam bathroom.  We have warned them NOT to tell it that way when they go back to school!  

We went on the Strip that evening.  We parked at Treasure Island (free parking at all the casinos!) because we were going to see the free pirate show outside.  We waited and got pretty good "seats" (we actually stood) and could see both sides of the show - the pirate side and the siren side.  It was a cheesy, lip-synched show, but still, we enjoyed it.  What we didn't enjoy was the THRONGS of people trying to all leave at the same time.  The boys and we saw an altercation where M-F'er was thrown around like you or I would say "and."  I just knew that fists were going to fly - luckily, they didn't.  But we got to walk around and see the lights and go into another casino, the Venetian.  Mike and I didn't gamble even one cent.  Honestly, I would have, if the machines had made sense to me bu just looking at them.  I really felt like kountry with a  "K" come to town.  After a stop at a few souvenir shops - yes we joke that this was the 2013 Ronaye Family Gift Shop Tour - I was just D-O-N-E.  It was 11:30 p.m. and time to go back to the hotel!

More to come on the week's adventures later!