We made it

Even just a few hours of sleep can put a catastrophic lack of milkshakes into perspective.

Aimee took the early shift that morning, and brought our 3 going on 14 year old down to the lobby for some coffee (and orange juice in a coffee cup) before a quick dip in the hotel pool.

Quinn and I appreciated the much-needed extra sleep, and went down to join them poolside.

We were in no rush, so we dawdled down at the pool and then slowly packed up our room. But by this point it was 11, and I still hadn't eaten any breakfast. And, um, you know, hangries. So when Aimee saw me grumbling and huffing as I pushed our over-stuffed trunk closed, she kindly suggested that I swing by the lobby for a quick breakfast. Knowing she was completely right, and also not wanting to admit it, I silently sat down for green chili breakfast burrito. Three bites in, I was infinitely more empathetic towards Aimee’s episode of nomilkshakeitis the night before. 

With the universe back in balance, we made a pact to always keep an outrageous amount of snacks close at hand. I am referring to both the rest of our road trip and the rest of our marriage. So we sent our threenager out for some groceries.

I suppose we shouldn't have been surprised when she came back with nothing but bananas, chocolate bars, and Pirate's Booty. But there's wisdom in that three year old. We're going to make it. Good work, Mimi.

Next stop: A rest area about twenty minutes away from our last stop. Bananas really have a way of running through a three year old's digestive tract. But Quinn didn't mind running around while Mimi reconsidered her road trip fiber consumption.

All things considered, the twelve hour rolling hanger episode was hardly the worst thing that could have come out of our first real road trip with two small kids. I could have spent the morning pulling elk hair out of the radiator grill. Or more accurately, pulling my radiator grill out of an elk.

And just like that, we were back on the road. Doing this on purpose. As a vacation.

Great American Road Trip

It's a right of passage. It's an institution. It's also a terrible idea.

Let's put four people (two of them squarely in their toddler years) into a mid-sized automobile and spend most of our waking hours strapped into our seats. And we're using PTO for this.

We had a pretty ambitious plan. Over the next few days, we'd make our way to the Rocky Mountain Folks Festival in Lyons, Colorado, camp for three nights, and then make our way back home. This is intended to be fun. We're doing this on purpose.

As is usually the case, one of us was working a 12 hour shift right before we left. This time it was Aimee. So I packed up the car during the kids' naps.

Cooler, pack and play, car potty. This was the first that time two of those items have ever made our music festival packing list. And the cooler isn't packed with what it used to be.

As the sun went down, we entered what Aimee and I have been referring to lately at the Lightning Round. No matter how good our day with the kids was, anything can change between 5:15 and 7:15. The pre-dinner to bedtime run was equal parts giggles, tears, and occasionally a bit of blood. But thankfully, this one wasn't too bad. I fed the kids, put them in the car, packed their pajamas, locked up our house, and set off for the hospital to pick up mama.

The kids were predictably amped up by the late night road trip, but we were counting on them to fall asleep pretty quickly. For one, road trips are just easier with sleeping kids. That's partly why we set off on our road trip at 7pm, despite a decent amount of nighttime hazards on the rural mountain roads out here. But the other, arguably more important reason, was that we needed them to be asleep before we got to Springerville, the last outpost before the high desert expanse between Whiteriver and Albuquerque. Aimee and I had been looking forward to the fast food milkshake that used to kick off nearly every road trip we've taken over the past ten years. That tradition had gone by the wayside since a couple of impressionable back seat passengers entered our lives, but they wouldn't know what they were missing if they were sleeping.

So we thought.

About twenty minutes into our drive, Old Man Quinn McSnoresalot let out a snort that jarred Mimi out of her nearly-asleep daze. Giggles followed, led by some tears of exhaustion, and then the inevitable potty request.

I pretended not to hear her, but internally I was kicking myself for not offering another potty break after we picked up Aimee. On our previous trips, Mimi frequently used the potty as an excuse to hang out a bit longer and delay bedtime. But lately she's been going to bed pretty well, and the potty talk only comes out when she really needs to use it. So I finally acknowledged her fourth or fifth request, and let her know that we'd find a place to pull over. But unfortunately, we were passing through McNary, an old lumber mill town twenty years after the lumber mill closed down. It's the kind to town you skip the bathroom in at noon, let alone on a pitch-black moonless night. So we kept driving, and Mimi kept whining reminding me of her biologic needs.

We pulled off the road about fifteen minutes later, at the pull-off for Sunrise ski park. It was an area I knew reasonable well, and could navigate at night. So I found a safe patch to put down the car potty, and unbuckled Mimi. While I was looking down for snakes and scorpions, Mimi was looking up. "Daddy! Stars! So many stars!" I realized that when you go to bed at 6:30, you don't really get to see this very often. It was probably the first time in her life that she's been outside for a moonless night. And it's not like there's a lot of light pollution on the northeast corner of the Fort Apache Reservation. It was an incredible night for stargazing, even if you've seen them a time or two. Mimi was clearly awestruck, and it was magical to experience that with her. "Daddy, will there be this many stars in Colorado?"

*Sniff* Yes, my love. And also you can have a cell phone when you turn fourteen.

After I dumped the car potty (thankfully only pee-pee this time), we got back in the car and continued our adventure. We put on some quiet music, and Aimee and I communicated in hand motions and facial expressions to not risk waking up the kids. All was looking good as we saw the lights of Springerville coming into focus. But as those lights got closer, the kids started to stir. Not quite waking up, but enough shifting in their car seats that we didn't want to take the chance of having them catch us red-handed in the Sonic drive through.

Cell service was spotty, so we couldn't load any map info. I knew that there wasn't much more between now and our first stop in Albuquerque, but I figured there'd at least be a gas station or something. So we kept on driving.

As the Springerville lights faded behind us, it became quite clear that there wouldn't even be a road sign for the next several hours, let alone a place to grab a milkshake.

I should take this moment to point out that my wife is usually quite charming. She's funny, a good storyteller, an all around warm and caring person. But after a 12 hour shift in which she skipped dinner so she'd have enough room for a milkshake, she wasn't in a particularly great place once that milkshake failed to materialize. The hangries run strong in our family, and I should have known better than to not pack at least 10,000 calories worth of snacks. This was on me. Needless to say, it was a relatively quiet car ride for the next hour or so.

A silent car wasn't the worst thing at that point in the drive. I needed every bit of my concentration. If aliens really did land in rural New Mexico, it's no wonder they didn't stick around for long. That place makes Whiteriver look like New York City. It was dark and desolate almost to the point of cliche. Like a movie director came around and said, "Nope, not creepy enough. Put a broken Cafe sign in front of that abandoned building. Yep. Put an old tow truck over there. Good. Yeah, definitely blow out the back tire. Nice. Rattlesnake? Anybody have a rattlesnake?"

But the worst part was the elk. For the next ninety minutes, I saw three cars and easily forty elk. Every time I'd turn a corner or come over a hill, two small reflective green orbs would appear. Then three thousand pounds of car-stopping animal flesh would come in to focus behind them, and I'd try to figure out if any of it was on the road. I was going literally 25 miles per hour at that point, and was still terrified. It didn't help that three of our friends in Whiteriver recently totaled their cars (and the elks) earlier this year while driving in similar conditions.

As Aimee was either napping or drifting into a hypoglycemic coma, we entered El Mapais National Monument. The dark and desolate stretch of road managed to get even darker and more desolate. But at least I knew a park ranger would find our bodies in a few days.

The road winded through giant sheer rock cliffs that I was sure would be quite beautiful with even a hint of daylight illuminating the road. We eventually made it to the I-40 junction, and I can't remember the last time I was so excited to see a road sign. By that point, the twists, turns, and sudden braking had woken Aimee up, but thankfully not the kids. We were about an hour away from Albuquerque, and I was still determined to find us a milkshake. So I was thrilled to see that a (well, the) truck stop on that stretch of the freeway had a 24 hour McDonald's inside of it. We pulled in and avoided streetlights and speed bumps like the plague so that our kids would stay sleeping. We've had several conversations with Mimi about why we don't go to "The M" for lunch, despite it being one of only a handful of restaurants in our area. So it would be a little awkward if she woke up with us slurping down a couple of chocolate shakes under the yellow and red light being cast off by the giant forbidden golden arches.

I dropped Aimee off to get the food, and circled around the parking lot with the kids. Five, ten, fifteen minutes passed, and I started to wonder how long it took to fill a couple of cups. It's not like the Acoma Pueblo McDonald's was jumping at 12:05 am.

Aimee eventually came out with a large paper bag, but looked sullen. All she was able to muster was, "No milkshakes. No milkshakes."

After she came to terms with our new reality, Aimee told me that they shut their milkshake machine down at 12:30 am. Skipping the obvious question of why do you need to shut down a milkshake machine, it was barely after midnight. "Yep. That's was I told him," Aimee said. "But apparently tonight they shut it down at midnight."

Of course they did.

Looking back, my blog notes from that night were autocorrected by my cell phone to:

No shakes. Duck.

Stay classy, Siri. But that wasn’t quite what I remembered dictating.

However, there was a slight consolation. Aimee pulled out the biggest carton of french fries that I have ever seen from the paper bag. "Here, these are yours." Then she proceeded to pull out an identical carton for herself.

Yes, that Aimee. The Aimee that completed the 114 mile Tour de Tucson bike race while three months pregnant proceeded to demolish her body weight in McDonald's french fries. It was hard to keep my eyes on the road.

Thirty minutes later, we checked into the Best Western Rio Grande. The place was nicer than it needed to be, and the staff graciously brought us a loaner crib for Quinn. We tried to smuggle our kids into their beds without them waking up, but that turned out to be quite difficult to do while cleaning off the giant blowout that Quinn had made at some point on our journey.

This is supposed to be fun. We're doing this on purpose.

Flying out

Hungover from the excitement of the week (but mostly from how we capped it off the night before), we woke up early and motored a few miles down river to a helipad on the Havasupai reservation. The last eighty or so miles of the Colorado River before Lake Mead and the Hoover Dam are relatively flat and hot. So nearly all commercial river trips end at the helipad. The guides drop off their passengers, breakdown their boats, and motor out in a greuling 12 hour day semi-affectionately referred to as the run-out. To speed up their travels, the guides pull off the side pontoons that make the rafts infinietly more stable in the rapids, but add quite a bit of drag. We helped with that part.

Photo by Greg Bryan

I appear to be working smarter, not harder.

As we tied down the last few pieces of gear on the newly streamlined river rafts, we heard the unmistakable whoop-whoop-whoop of a small helicopter coming in over the canyon.

Photo by Greg Bryan

Aside from the occassional hum of the rafts' outboard motors, this was the first sound of modern society we had heard in a week, and it was exciting, jarring, and more than a bit depressing all at the same time. We exchanged contact information with several of the other guests, tipped the guides for hosting what was nothing short of a life-changing experience, and waved them off on the last part of their journey this run. Ted was scheduled for another trip in less than 24 hours, and Tyler's next trip was just a day or two after that. So despite the thirty horsepower motor going at full bore, this would be one of the calmer and quieter days of their summers.

The helicopter loaded up passengers in groups of four or five, and shuttled them up to a ranch on the north rim of the canyon.

The ten minute journey was easily one of the most beautiful poop-your-pants level thrill rides I have ever been on. Because of something involving thermal currents that I don't fully understand, the helicopters don't just lift straight up from the water's edge and touch down at the ranch. They rip along the surface of the river for a few hundred yards to build up speed. Then they bank sharply toward the canyon wall, and skirt no more than 30 feet along the rock face as they slingshot over the top of the canyon at a hundred miles per hour. The last few minutes of the journey are spent rocketing towards the ranch while hovering maybe ten feet above the tree line.

I cursed having that final beer the night before, and tried to remember if I had updated our will since Quinn was born. It was a good thing we had a stunning view to distract us.

I like to think that I'm someone with a pretty high threshold for this type of thing. But even now, weeks later, I am actively sweating as a I type this up safely at my computer.

I could have hugged the twenty-something ranch worker that met us when we landed. But he had clearly seen the looks on all of our faces before, and shuffled us along with a subtext in his voice that articulately stated, "Unless you're one of the female ranch hands that I clearly took this summer job to be around, please keep moving and don't barf on my boots."

We had about two hours to kill at the ranch before our flights home (more on that in a minute). The experience of showering off seven days of river sand and human biofilm was as glorious as you'd imagine. Lunch was a cold cuts bar that was much appreciated, but couldn't hold a candle to the feasts that Ted and Tyler had cooked up for us on the river. And then it was naps and stretching in grassy shade that seemed more than a bit out of place in the middle of the high desert. But I wasn't complaining.

Around one or two in the afternoon, we heard the ranch hands announce that flight 67 had just landed, and everyone on that plane should make their way to the landing strip. Why these flights had numbers besides one, two, and three was beyond me, but the landing strip just next to the ranch was used by a handful of small propeller planes to carry rafters back to Marble Canyon and Las Vegas, depending on where their trip originated. Las Vegas is the closest big airport, so people coming from out of state typically started there. It was also a popular day trip for affluent Europeans looking to dip their toes into the Wild West experience.

We waited nearby while our plane unloaded what appeared to be a German family, and I took a moment to appreciate some sign maker's sense of humor.

Our new out-of-town friends loaded up on the Vegas bound plane, and we waved them off as their plane taxied first onto the airstrip.

Then it was our turn to board the sedan-sized cabin, and I almost literally had to crawl on hands and knees my seat. Even though we had mixed feelings on the inside, we were all smiles on the outside to be heading home.

Our smiles faded ever so slightly when our pilot turned around, and he appeared to have graduated flight school about seven hours earlier.

I'm sure he told us his name, and it wasn't Bro Pilot, but that's how he will be permanently etched in my brain.

Unsurprisingly, the forty five minute flight was breathtaking, and not just because it was a particularly windy day.

As the landing strip came in to focus, I cursed myself for the second time that day about not updating our will.

It actually was a pretty windy day, and our pilot kindly pointed out in casual conversation that we were just a hair below the max wind speed that our plane can handle. And the landing strip is just past a deep gorge in the rock face (directly under us in the photo above) that always adds a bit of turbulence right before touchdown. Thanks, Bro Pilot. As much as I appreciate your color commentary, we're good. You don't need to waste any concentration augmenting our flight experience.

But Bro Pilot did great. Or at least he seemed to. I don't know the first thing about flying. But I'm sitting here today telling you about the flight, so I can't complain. RVCA skater hats off to you, Bro Pilot.

We grabbed our backpacks from the luggage bin (literally a bin), and walked back to our cars. Hugs and tears all around, and then we crossed our fingers to see if our car still started. It did, which I admittedly had mixed feelings about. Then it was back on the road for a day's drive home.

Aimee and I feel so lucky to have had the experience of a Grand Canyon rafting trip. There's no better way to see such a historic and defining part of our country. But it was definitely time to go home, and we were very excited to see our kids. It's slightly terrifying to not even know if they're alive for an entire week. That said, the canyon was barely out of view by the time Aimee and I started to talk about when we should go back next. Do we bring the kids? Can we even wait that long? We still hadn't reached a decision by the time we got home.

Ok, fine. We'll bring them.

Deer creek, breastmilk rash cream, and a final icing.

And bam!

The river doesn't care how hungover you are. It waits for no one.

But after an hour or so on the water, we were given the chance to wake up a bit more slowly. Our first stop of the day was at Blacktail Canyon, known for it's incredible acoustics. The several talented musicians on our trip hosted a casual open mic concert that morning while the rest of us soaked it up and sweated out concentrated margarita mix.

Photo: Greg Bryan

Photo: Greg Bryan

Photo: Jill Knuth

Several other less-hungover groups came and went while we were there. Yes, they were able to open their eyes without feeling their brains getting squeezed out through their ears, but we were having a lot more fun.

Photo: Dean Knuth

Then it was a quick side hike for lunch, and another at the world-class Deer Creek Falls.

Fajitas for dinner, and we were sleeping like babies.

Photo: Greg Bryan

Thursday was our last full day on the water. By that point, we were certainly looking forward to taking a shower and seeing our kids, but also there's this:

Photo: Greg Bryan

Aside from The Confluence, the other can't miss stop on any river trip is Havasu Creek. It runs through the Havasupai reservation, down Havasu Falls, and into the Colorado river. It has the same crystal blue water as the Little Colorado, and is delightfully warm.

Getting there was a little tricky, however. First, the guides had to tie the boats up in the middle of a rapid.

Photo: Greg Bryan

Photo: Greg Bryan

The photos don't really do justice to how fast the water is moving along that stretch. The guides were revving their motors at full bore, with the boats' noses bouncing against the rocks as the swampers hopped out with ropes in hand. Again, glad that's not my responsibility.

Then the guests had to scale up a pretty steep rock wall. So steep that most river companies (including GCW) require their guests to keep their lifejackets on for this stretch of the hike.

Once the boats were safely tied up, Ted untied the inflatable peacock that had been bouncing around the back of his boat all week. We all had assumed that it was just some river guide flair, but this was a peacock with a purpose.

Photo: Greg Bryan

Then we ditched the life jackets and hiked a narrow path along the creek until we reached the bottom.

That last photo reminds me that I have failed to mention two major elementsof this trip. 1) Aimee was pumping breastmilk three times a day! It wasn't really possible to freeze and save any, so she simply offered her sacrifice to the river gods every day. She would have been tremendously uncomfortable otherwise. And yes, this was a first for our river guides, with nearly two hundred river trips between them.

And 2) Jill was suffering from an extremely itchy rash throughout the trip. Their faces in that photo captured the exact moment when, six days into the trip, these two whole-grain, outdoorsy, northern-Arizona moms realized that they could use Aimee's breastmilk as "treatment" for Jill's rash.

My medical opinion: No comment.

We swam, had a snack, and capped the afternoon with some extreme tubing.

No peacocks were harmed, but a few humans woke up pretty sore the next day.

One last group photo before we headed back to the boats.

We donned our lifejackets and carefully traversed the rock path with only one casualty.

Peacock! Come back!

That afternoon definitely felt like the last day of summer camp.

Photo: Greg Bryan

Photo: Greg Bryan

Ted was even able to rescue the peacock!

Leave no trace.

There was also a major achievement that day. Blake, our youngest swamper (off to his freshman year at the U of A this fall) suited up in Ted's lucky polyester suit and piloted through Lava Falls for the first time. He had led us through several smaller rapids, but this was his first time through one of the biggest and most treacherous. It was a class ten (of ten) rapid with a thirteen foot drop off. I had the choice of either taking a photo of it for you all, or remaining on the boat. I chose the latter.

Following Blake's accomplishment, river guide tradition commanded that he be baptized in water from a small spring just past the rapid.

That night was a "talentless show" where guests got up and showcased a talent--or lack thereof. I flossed (the dental procedure, not the dance). You had to be there. Aimee recited The Very Hungry Caterpillar from memory (while firedancing of course). It killed. And Blake, knocked back down to junior guide status after his Lava Falls triumph, was the titular character in a Shorty the Boatman routine. Shorty is a river guide with an unusual routine for getting ready in the morning. It involves a toothbrush, a peanut butter sandwich, and lots of whipped cream. Acting support from Tyler, playing the role of Shorty's arms.

It also killed.

Greg and Rachel led the group in a singalong mashup of each spouse playing the other's trademark campfire song. Rachel parodied Greg's Purple Rain, and Greg responded with Rachel's Where's Me Jumper?, an apparent staple for any teenager who grew up in the UK in the 1990s, as Rachel did. Rachel's version (far better than the original) acted as a sort of theme song for the week.

But the highlight for me that evening was Dean and Jill's routine. I vaguely remember something about Jill being a cave woman who discovers fire, but then can't put it out. But I was far more focused on the intricate scheme that I was working on to finally Ice Dean. Jill's prop was Aimee's fire baton, so I immediately volunteered to "help" with logistics. The plan was that Dean would surprise everyone by running out in a giant, inflatable T-Rex costume (where is he packing all this stuff?) to save Jill and put out the fire. My job was to run up and give Dean the steel fire baton case to fully extinguish the flame before he turned into a giant polyester fireball.

But when the time came, Dean put out his tiny T-Rex arms to grab the case from me, and sshhhhunk, a bottle of Smirnoff Ice slid out of the pipe straight into his hands. Dean took a knee in the middle of the campfire circle, and we we all cheered as he choked down a bottle of over-sweetened malt beverage.

Best vacation ever.