Pictures from the trip part three!!!!

Here are the pictures from the Grand Canyon (where I swear we were stalked by some animal at night) and New Mexico.

These are the actual structures in the park! They are very old here is what I found on them:

Kivas are subterranean ceremonial structures used for religious purposes by modern Puebloan tribes. Many kivas are circular in shape and have a hearth in the middle of the room with a ventilator shaft at the southeastern face of the room. This kiva was probably built and used for only a short time around A.D. 1050-1080. It may have fallen into disuse due to the collapse of the north wall.

here is the website where you can virtually go inside the kivas scientists have found!

http://www.nps.gov/features/grca/001/archeology/palk.html

 Then we went into the totally cool museum on how the grand canyon was formed!

The Grand Canyon is gigantic. It is the eleventh largest national park, but is the fourth largest in the continental US. It is 277 miles long. The width of the park varies from one end to the other, but in some places it is 18 miles wide. All of the acreage totals 1904 square miles! But the Grand Canyon is not just big around. It is also deep. It averages one mile in depth, but parts of it are much deeper than that. In fact, it is so big and so deep that it can be seen from space! 

To learn more about the Grand Canyon check out this neat kid friendly website!!!!! http://kidsgeo.com/geology-for-kids/0078B-grand-canyon.php

Then we went to the four corners! it is where you can stand in four states at once!!!

Then we went to the White Sands in New Mexico!!

There use to be an ocean here millions of years ago!

 Here lew and I try sledding on the gypsum sand dunes!!! It did not work very well.

 then the box broke

We're Leaving Portland

Hey everyone!

Well we thought it was time to tell you all that we are leaving Portland. Why? Well there are actually couple of reasons but mostly because Lew has been having a very difficult time with PSU here and I just recently lost my job. So we think it would be better for us if we went back home so I can start my teaching career and Lew can go to Rutgers. We decided this last Sunday and today (sunday) we are leaving! It was a very hard decision and an even harder week of selling anything we could and packing the rest. (As of 9:19 am we still are not finished) We are sad to be leaving so soon, we both had plans for the summer months here. But we can't help but be excited for yet another ROAD TRIP!!!! This time we learned from the past trip that not everywhere has wifi and that my cellphone battery (nor my eyes) can handle typing a blog post on my iPhone. So I have updated the blog to be more family user friendly. We hope to still be making blog updates but for those times where we will be in the middle of a desert and only have the phones. So if you all look to the left the slide show that is playing is coming from my instagram feed that I should be able to post from my cell. Below that is my Twitter feed which lets me update from just about anywhere and although the updates will be short at least you won't go a week without hearing about us! I figured that this would be easier than people logging into twitter or instagram if they don't have them and have no want to get them either.


Hope to see all you east coasters in a couple weeks!!!

Brooke