Grand Canyon - birthday surprise

My 28^th birthday was the last day of our trip in Hawaii.  It was also my first birthday as a married woman.  :)  Good combo, if you ask me.  

                To make it even more spectacular, Blair had a BIG surprise.  As if Vegas and Hawaii trips, back-to-back, weren’t enough adventure…Blair planned a surprise bucket list trip to the Grand Canyon on our road trip back to Albuquerque!!  I was totally surprised!!  And SOOOOO excited!

               

 Because it was a surprise, and we had only planned to be in Vegas and Hawaii…both of which had really hot temperatures...we were very under-prepared for what we found on our way to the Grand Canyon.

Snow.  Lots of snow.

We had a lot of shorts, skirts, and tank tops.  A Walmart trip was essential and we each bought a sweater and long sleeve shirt.  Luckily we both had socks and tennis shoes already, as we had done a lot of walking around in the other two locations.  But we would have died without those last-minute cold weather clothes!

My first sighting of the Grand Canyon!

We wrote our names in the snow.  :)  It was very reminiscent of our honeymoon snow-writing.

 Driving to our lodge, we ALMOST hit 3 deer.  The sun was at the absolute perfect angle to make it almost impossible to see more than 5 feet in front of our car.  At the last second I saw a shadow of what looked like deer ears and shrieked for Blair to stop the car.  Just.in.time.

Then we found our lodge and got checked in. 

As I was looking around the lobby, Blair secretly informed the lady at the desk that it was my birthday.  They upgraded our room for free!  We were literally right on the edge of the cliff!  It was so awesome!

The only thing that was a tad scary about it was the fact that it was SO cold that the sidewalks and trails were icy.  I definitely didn’t want to slip and slide and fall down the canyon!  I walked soooo slowly around there.  Haha

Here's the view from our room.

This is the panoramic view from the edge of that sidewalk.  This was literally outside of our lodge door.

Our room, upgraded for free!  It wasn’t gorgeous, but it had a heater, and a fabulous view.  TOTALLY thankful.

I would have frozen to death if it weren’t for that heater.  My gosh it was cold.

Once we unloaded our bags into the room, the sun was starting to set and we were hungry for dinner.  We set out to find some dining in the lodge.  It was really tasty.

I don’t think I ever took off my coat during the meal.  I was chilled to the bone…but having a blast.

Blair “got up to use the restroom” part-way through our meal.  I found out later that he had secretly talked to our waitress and informed her that it was my birthday.  Sneaky pants.  She brought me a free chocolate dessert!

She, alone, started to sing to me…and about 1 ½ lines in to the birthday song, the ENTIRE restaurant started singing with her!  It was totally weird.   But REALLY fun.  The waitress went on and on about how that’s never happened before and how she thought it was so cool that everyone joined in.  I must be loved.  :)

I think 28 is destined to be a really great year for me!