Day 16: Chillin’ in the Heat
This appears to be one of the few black holes that Visible/Verizon, my phone carrier, doesn’t get service. It has saved our bacon a number of times already this trip when AT&T didn’t work for Rob, but not here. It is actually quite freeing knowing that I can’t get any messages for a couple of days.
We opted to keep the car attached here and not explore anywhere other than the campground. With Navajo nation still having all their parks closed, we don’t have a lot of options, anyway. Rob had a good point last night that we can only ask the boys to look at rocks for so many consecutive days before they burn out.
For our campground hangout day, we did start with a short hike right here at the campground, which we did start with the one trail here on the campground property which lead to a pretty cool arch. After that we played hours of cards, Skip-Bo (Cooper’s favorite), and Monopoly Deal (Nicholas’ favorite). We were able to make quesadillas on the griddle outside for lunch ,leaving the RV sub-90 degrees inside for a little longer.
Post-lunch, we hit the pool for hours. We were the only ones there and we all had a great time diving for rings, playing Marco Polo, and jumping off the side many times. It was the perfect afternoon activity.
We came back for more card playing and haircuts for all three guys.
We also made dinner outside on the griddle: hot dogs and fried rice. These were the only hot dogs available at the last store, and they were not good. We usually get Nathan’s or Hebrew National.
After dinner we did the same campground hike to check out the views with the sun setting, and they were even more awesome. We came back for some video watching about crop duster airplanes and the Cliff Palace in Mesa Verde, our next stop for the next two nights.
Rob and I ended the night with more card games outside while sharing a new-to-us candy bar: Reese’s Nutrageous. The cooling weather, nice sunset, bats flying over head, and quiet made it so enjoyable.
It’s absolutely incredible that Rob gets to take this much vacation time and we get to go on this 6-week adventure as a family. The physical closeness of everyone all day long and the lack of data connectivity has given us ample opportunity for us all to talk and connect.
By the way, if you don’t want to hear remakes of popular songs with the lyrics subbed out for Minecraft-themed lyrics, then we recommend not letting your kids search Spotify for music if they’re really into Minecraft. They are loving singing these new versions of the songs on repeat all day long.