Trip to see cool things: Grand Canyon edition

For spring break this year, we decided to go see cool stuff.

What? That's a perfect reason to take a trip as far as I'm concerned. Plus my mom and I were able to cross some things off our bucket list.

We decided to go see what cool things the southwest had to offer.

Like any good family vacation, our first stop was Las Vegas. Yeah, we took our kid to Sin City. And you know what?

Vegas is not a good town for kids — especially 10-year-old kids who can read and witness first hand all the debauchery Vegas has to offer the 21-and-over population. Margaret was continually irritated that she couldn't move freely around inside the casinos. And she didn’t care for the adult nature of much of the entertainment.

The point of taking Mar and my mom to Vegas was to see the Cirque du Soleil show "Love," featuring remastered music from the Beatles.

It was spectacular. All four of us enjoyed the heck out of that show. Those Cirque people certainly think up crazy and beautiful stuff. Definitely worth the exorbitant ticket price and jaunt to Vegas.

So the first cool thing we saw was the Cirque show. I have no pictures of that because it is strictly verboten. We actually witnessed a woman get her camera confiscated because she kept taking pictures.

After a couple days in Vegas, we hit the road and drove on over to the east entrance of the Grand Canyon where we stayed a cool trading post on the Navajo reservation. I found the Cameron Trading Post in my trusty Frommer’s guide to Arizona. It was a gem. I’ll never travel without a Frommer’s guide again.

There isn’t any other place to stay on the east entrance of the Grand Canyon, but the rooms were still considerable cheaper than any within the park or down near the south entrance. The only problem is that it’s on the res which means no beer.

We didn’t know this, but you cannot have any alcohol on the Navajo reservation. I had no idea that prohibition existed anywhere within our U.S. borders. But the motel rooms were so big and southwesterny cool that we didn’t even care — oh, it did help that the served giant, delicious Navajo tacos in the restaurant.

We spent a day driving around the Grand Canyon National Park and enjoying its glory. Check out some of our pictures below. To see more, click here.

Next up: Tales of traveling the res and visiting the spectacular Navajo Monument Valley.