Mila is in fourth grade this year, which means she can participate in the National Park Service’s Every Kid Outdoors program. We are big fans! It gives us a reason to visit some of the many NPS sites in Arizona, and she gets the satisfaction of being the reason we’re going and getting in free. She loves wearing her yellow lanyard with her parks pass on it. It’s kind of adorable. Margot is already talking about where we should go when she is in fourth grade.
So far this school year we’ve been to Petrified Forest NP and Saguaro NP. I’d like to go back to both. We only did the west side of Saguaro (there are two park areas, one on either side of Tucson) and we didn’t stop at the painted desert part of Petrified Forest. I’m sure there’s still plenty to see. And since one is less than 2 hours from us and the other is 45 minutes-ish from my parents, visiting again would be easy.
The only other park in-state is Grand Canyon. We’ve been there before (briefly) but certainly wouldn’t mind going again. None of us have been to the north rim, so that might be fun.
We’ve also hit up a few monuments: Wupatki and Sunset Crater Volcano outside Flagstaff, and Montezuma Castle near Camp Verde. We drove by the Casa Grande Ruins on our way to Tucson but didn’t stop, so even though we could see the ruins from the road, that doesn’t really count. There are still plenty we’d like to visit, weather and pandemic permitting.
David and I have been talking about driving to one of the parks in a neighboring state for “spring break.” Unfortunately, lodging restrictions keep changing so we haven’t committed to anything yet. Zion would probably be easiest, since Utah is not really locked down at all, but I worry about crowds. White Sands or Death Valley would be harder logistically, because both California and New Mexico have been stricter about travel, but there’s a lot more open space to explore.
With homeschool, at least we’ve got the flexibility to go whenever instead of waiting for a break in the school calendar. Gotta love those weird pandemic silver linings.
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