We brought my six year old nephew Ethan with us as well. He and Ian were best friend/enemies on this trip. I believe the term is "frenemy". During daylight hours they sat together, played together, talked together, held hands, and were awesome battle buddies. During the night time they turned into little Mr. Hydes.
As we hiked a fairly strenous hike on the Kaibib trail (not the whole thing or even half of it but all of it straight down and then back up again) Matt and I took turns with Liam and Miles while Ian and Ethan held hands and stayed in between us. Miles just wanted to be carried, Liam wanted to drop rocks on people, Ian wanted to lean over the edge and look, and Ethan wanted to scale the Grand Canyon walls. It kept us on our toes.
That night after eating at a really high end McDonalds we stayed at the Holiday Inn. The kids, despite their exhaustion, seemed to have a strange amount of energy left. We took them swimming. They kept going like little energizer bunnies.
The youngest three kept crowding in a random cupboard together like it was the funniest thing they'd ever thought of.
They all attempted to fit in one bed, but we eventually kicked Miles out into the adult bed since he sleeps side ways, snores and kicks people in the head...lucky Matt and I. We did hear Ian and Ethan turn into their alter egos and argue about some very bizarre very six year old stuff, but it didn't take too long for them all to pass out and by morning they were "BFF"s once more.
We ran from the visitor center to a view point and to the geology museum trying to maximize the amount of inside time we had.
After seeing the Grand Canyon we headed back towards Mesa. We decided to make a stop at Montezuma's National Monument. This was a sort of small scale Mesa Verde. Which was a fun rest stop and yet another stamp in our passport book (this makes three stamps if you're keeping track).
Shortly after that we made it back to Mesa...where our adventure continued.
That was so much fun.
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