Here I am sitting on a ledge on the south rim of the Grand Canyon.

 
I got to introduce Karen to snow, which was a lot of fun. Karen absolutely loves the snow and still gets excited whenever she sees snow on the side of the road. Our "western vacation" was then paused for 5 days for my sister's wedding, which I'll post about when I get home.

 
Here you can see Karen chimping on the side of the road and our rental car (the horrible horrible horrible PT Cruiser, which was clearly designed by monkeys).

 
We climbed the "mountain" (yes, we're from Florida) a couple hundred feet and it qualified as Karen's first real rugged hike. These shots are wonderful and I look forward to posting them when I get back to Florida (and back to using Aperture on my Mac Pro and not a laptop!).

After a night in Prescott with my mom, we drove over Mingus Mountain to Jerome and then dinner at my old friend (and best man in our wedding) John's parents' place. We were delayed though because after helping Karen up from sitting in the snow, I helped pat the snow off and my wedding ring went flying! Unfortunately it wasn't virgin snow, so there was no way to tell where it went.

I kicked around the snow for a while and then as I was giving up, I kicked one last bit and Karen saw something... sure enough it was my ring! Lucky lucky!

Last night John came up and stayed with us at a hotel in Flagstaff and we went and played pool downtown until midnight, when the giant pinecone was lowered and everybody went wild. Today we tried to go to Snow Bowl but apparently they close the road when the ski resort is closed, which is rather annoying and disappointing (my tax dollars not at work). I wanted to show Karen more snow.

Afterwards we went to Meteor Crater. On the way we saw a sign for Walnut Canyon National Monument. Since we had time and we are going around looking at parks and what not, we checked it out and were quite amazed.

 
Still in love with snow after a week, Karen was tossing snowballs around and covering herself with snow.

 
I'll post photos from the monument after I get back to Arizona. It's an absolutely beautiful place that we just randomly decided to visit when we saw the sign on the way to Meteor Crater. We loved it. I don't know the last time I've been outside and really didn't hear anything at all.

Tomorrow we're going to Page, Arizona, and around the local monuments and parks. The next day we're taking 89A up to Zion National Park, with a stop at the Vermilion Cliffs National Park. I've taken Route 89 there before and that was amazing, so I can't wait to experience 89A past Page... the stretch of 89A near where I grew up through Sedona / Oak Creek is amazing and not to be missed, so I'm hoping for the same.

The next day we're going to Hoover Dam to drive on it before they close the road for security reasons, and then reaching our final destination at Paris, Las Vegas. I love that I get to do all this with Karen and be her guide to the west.