Memorial Day Weekend

I didn't have to work over the Memorial Day weekend and it was a four day holiday for Darren, so we decided to spend one day at the Gila river. It was a totally spur of the moment decision, and so, of course, nothing went exactly right, but still...the trip was still a lovely diversion from the chores we'd been tackling around the house!

We decided the night before that we'd pack a picnic, but, since it was late, we didn't want to go to the store for extra groceries. I figured I'd be up early enough in the morning to just whip up a few simple things (LOL! First mistake!) and we'd be on the road early enough to reach Grapevine Campground by lunchtime.

Well.

After hitting snooze a few too many times, I finally made my way to the kitchen, rummaging through cabinets hoping for some culinary inspiration. I thought some banana bread would be nice, and got a loaf started, and put some eggs on to boil, too. (We love hard boiled eggs!) We had plenty of fruits in the crisper, and cheeses, and an unopened 12 pack of orange drinks, so I figured we were set. Ambitiously, I decided to also make chocolate chip pancakes for breakfast, thinking full tummies would be nice for the road.

After finally getting everyone fed, cleaned, dressed, combed, pottied, and packed, not to mention locating the ice chest, evicting it's occupants (worms that the children were "rescuing" from our garden the night before), tidying the house (I cannot leave a mess!), finding our field guides...we finally hit the road somewhere between 10:00 and 10:30! (Darren was sure the night before that we'd be leaving by 8...HA!)

A couple hours later, we were all feeling really hungry. Guess where we stopped for lunch? Burger King! It sure wasn't the charming picnic we'd envisioned, but we were starved. The kids thought it was great, and soon we were back on our merry way. When we finally reached the campground, though, it was becoming quite stormy, with sprinkles of rain and loud rumbles of thunder in the distance.

We had promised the children a trip up to the cliff dwellings, so we left pretty quickly to see if we could beat the storm. It as soon apparent, though, that that didn't seem likely. So, we turned around and stopped again at the campground, where the children soon soaked through their final change of clothes! We didn't actually stay too long, but they really enjoyed it. Next time, though, we'll plan better!

The drive home was beautiful, with showers in the distance (which finally caught up to us) and the most astounding rainbows stretched in full, glorious arches across the sky. It was impossible to photograph them in their entirety, but I'm including a short video clip at the end of a particularly breathtaking one that was actually, for a while, a double rainbow. I don't think you can really see it in the video, but you can get an idea of just how awesome it was. Simply amazing!

Oh, and by the way: we did finally enjoy our picnic "lunch"...but not until we were home that evening! We spread our picnic blanket on the living room floor and had a picnic dinner, instead. :)