Our Arizona Spring Break, Part 1

One of my favorite stories Beau tells from his childhood is about an epic trip his family took via Amtrak train to Seattle, Washington.  He was ten years old, in a full leg cast after breaking it sledding a couple weeks before, but his parents were so excited to show the boys some of our beautiful countryside on the way to see their Aunt Marge.  But then the Amtrak train broke down somewhere between here and there, the pipes froze, the toilets filled, and the dining car was unable to make food with no water.  They were stuck for three nights on a broken down train.  And all Beau remembers is getting cold KFC delivered on the train and a couple of honeymooners sitting directly behind him with a blanket over their heads reading erotic romance novels to each other.  By the time they made it to Seattle, he's pretty sure they had to turn around and fly home shortly after.  They still talk about that trip!  Not the trips to Disney or Canada, but their epic trip to Seattle when it seemed everything went wrong.

If every family is due to have one vacation you talk about forever, our quick Spring Break to Arizona may just be ours.  We booked cheap tickets to Phoenix after cancelling our original planned trip to Palm Springs just after the new year.  Instead of balmy Phoenix, we wanted to check off a National Park bucket list and get some adventuring in, so we landed on the Grand Canyon and Sedona.  Being the researcher I am, I discovered Sedona has an average temperature of mid-sixties in March, which we thought was perfect for visiting the Grand Canyon and doing some hiking.  

As Spring Break grew closer, the weather forecast for all of Arizona looked cooler than average.  But after talking to several people far more familiar with Arizona than us, we figured an inch of two or snow that would melt by afternoon tops.  I begrudgingly packed winter gear on a "just in case" basis, but had no intentions of needing it too much.  

We flew into Phoenix mid-afternoon to sunny skies and fair temps.  We grabbed some In-N-Out burger before hitting the road up to Munds Park, Arizona, our halfway point between Phoenix and the Grand Canyon, as well as home to our cozy airbnb in the woods.  I was pretty unfamiliar with the state of Arizona (had never been before) and couldn't believe the geographical changes witnessed in a short two hour drive.  We started with brown dirt and countless cacti and as we climbed 7,000 feet in a short amount of time, our landscape soon resembled that of Lake Tahoe instead of the desert I was expecting.  And it was cold!

We settled into our cute cabin our first night and loved the details of this place.  It had the most comfortable beds, a record player with so many of our favorites, coffee and s'mores and popcorn waiting for us, and baskets of faux fur blankets everywhere.  And we needed every one of them!  As big flakes fell outside, it got cold inside!  We kept that fire stoked big, warmed up with lots of hot cocoa, played Cribbage, and ate s'mores for breakfast.  

And when we woke up the next morning, we couldn't believe how much snow we got.  There was at least a foot on our back deck and Beau wasn't too happy about having to shovel a three-foot drift at the end of our driveway.  But you know, the snowy scene made for a pretty great backdrop to soak up our cabin and some uninterrupted time together.  While it may not have been what we were expecting to see, we took advantage of our space and enjoyed reading books, making s'mores for breakfast, watching the snow avalanche from the Pine trees that towered over us, and grabbing some cheap barbecue with the locals Friday night.  

Pictures of our cozy A-frame in the woods on our first snowy day in AZ...