Road Trip Again

Sunday we decided to take another road trip. Apparently we just can't get enough of being in the car so off we went. Drove up Parley's Canyon, through Kamas and picked up hwy 150. We were actually looking for some new places to go camping. We just about gave up because all the camp sites were kind of boring. Then we found the Provo Falls. These water falls are really cool. It almost looks like they are running down man made steps. It didn't take Jarod long to get soaked. That child!!!! First he just wanted to touch the waterfall. How cool is that to be able to get close enough to just put your hand right in. Before long he was climbing all over the place. These falls are cool because there are "steps" all around them that you can climb all over. Or just climb right in them, as a couple of guys we saw were doing. Of course, I had to just shut my eyes because I was sure Jarod was going to go right down the river, but he is a great climber! Just down the road we found some great campsites: Trial Lake, Washington Lake, Mirror Lake. We had heard of these but never knew where they were. So this week we are headed out!

Oquirrh Mountain Temple

We went to the Oquirrh Mountain Temple open house tonight. DJ had never been to a temple before because he had strep when we went the the Draper temple, so he was really excited to go.

Our guide was a sister missionary named Sister Azzaya. She is from . . . . .Ulaanbaatar!! Cool, huh. She has been here for 11 months so Mom and Dad would not have met her, but we wondered if they might know her family. They live in the new stake there in Mongolia. Look them up and tell them your daughter met their daughter. She was really cute and spoke very good english. Funny how many connections we find between here and Mongolia these days.

Cherries anyone?

We planted a cherry tree when we moved into our house seven years ago. It has never produced more than a handful of cherries, and they were kind of yucky. We decided that our tree was just for decoration, not for produce. Imagine our surprise when we returned from our trip and found a tree COVERED with beautiful red cherries! The birds haven't gotten them, no bug bites, just yummy cherries! The kids climbed up and picked these two buckets full. And that's only about the bottom 1/4 of the tree. We are going to have to get a ladder to get the rest. We have never trimmed this tree because we never expected any produce! I guess all this rain is good for something!

Day 13 - Home Sweet(?) Home

Well, arriving home wasn't quite the sweet experience we were looking for. The kids ran in the house expecting to see a very excited puppy waiting for them only to find an empty house. We looked all over - no Joey. We had been gone two weeks, and on the day we were to arrive back he decided to run away! The night was spent with tears and we were worried that the good memories of our trip would be replaced with sad ones of a lost dog. Thank goodness for happy endings. A trip to the animal shelter this morning found our little dog scared and stressed but ok. And VERY excited to see his family. If we thought we was glued to Lindsie's side before . . .

One last picture. This was taken at breakfast before the last (BORING) leg home. If I thought Day 12 was boring, man yesterday had it beat by a long shot. The beginning parts of our drive were so pretty that they just flew by. But the road home felt like forever. Not sure why Heavenly Father created Nevada. Jarod insisted that I blog this picture, so here you go. End of vacation!! We're sad that it's over, but glad to be home. Now to tackle the laundry . . . .

What do you think Rebecca? Should we have a contest to see who can finish first?

Day 12 - BLAH

Nothing to blog today. I'm sorry, Nevada just isn't pretty. Not much to take pictures of. We just sat in the car and drove and drove and drove and. . . . it was boring. All of our drives have been 5-6 hours each, but this one felt like 12 hours at least. We are sitting here in a dumpy hotel in Winnemucca (we have been spoiled getting great deals on nicer hotels) just waiting for morning so we can get home.

On a brighter note . . . you gotta love dramamine!!! I'll bet you have never had as quiet a drive as we had today! Kids were out almost the whole way. Of course, they will probably be up all night now, but that's ok cuz then they'll sleep all day tomorrow too! : )

Tomorrow . . . .HOME!! YAY!!! Vacations are great, but after two weeks of hotel hopping my bed sounds so heavenly.

Here's a picture from the Oregon coast so you can have something pretty to look at. We sure didn't today ; )

Happy Father's Day!!

Happy Father's Day to some awesome dad's - one on the other side of the world and one on the other side of the veil. We love you both and miss you both. Have a great day!

Day 11 - Fisherman's Wharf

Today we took a ferry across the bay from Vallejo to San Francisco. That was way more fun than driving over there. These are commuter ferrys so they are really big - they hold about 350 people. It started out freezing in the morning, then got a bit warmer mid afternoon, and by early afternoon we were freezing again. That wind off the ocean can be quite cold.

It takes about an hour to get all the way across on this huge double decker ferry.

The view as we came into San Francisco.

Pier 39, where we spent most of the day. It's a little bit of a "tourist trap" with mostly souvenier shops and eating places, but there were some fun things to do, too. We had fun looking at things. And of course, spending some money. This is the first time on our whole vacation that we bought any souveniers, and we went to town.

We hit up a farmer's market that had the biggest strawberries I have ever seen. It's hard to tell from this picture, but they were about the size of a golf ball. And SOOOOO yummy. Their size wasn't the only thing that was big - the price was horrible. $9.00 a pound. I was wondering if they came all the way from Mongolia or something. Actually, we passed many strawberry fields yesterday. Seems like they would be cheaper, but I guess that's what you get when you buy them on the pier. We only bought 5 - one for each of us.

By the way, HAPPY ANNIVERSARY TO US!! We have been married 17 years today. 17 YEARS!?!?! Are you kidding!?!?! I am getting old. This is how we celebrated our anniversary - feeding each other giant strawberries dipped in chocolate in front of our children. How's that for exciting? But on a more romantic note, we came to Pier 39 when we were on our honeymoon 17 years ago. We went to Yellowstone first, then to the bay area for a reception with Dean's family. While we were here we rode the ferry over to the pier for a day! We really didn't plan to be here for our anniversary, but it worked out nicely.

Notice the sunburn on my arms and neck? Why is it that sunburn hurts WAY MORE the next day? I am really hurting tonight. (Do you feel sorry for me yet? Come on, give me some sympathy).

We left the pier to go catch our ferry, but we got their late and it was crowded. We figured we would have a better chance if we waited for the next fairy, so we went down Fisherman's Wharf a little. We got to actually go down into this submarine. Hats off to those navy boys - I don't know how on earth they can live down in one of those things for long. I couldn't stand 20 minutes! Tight quarters for sure. The kids thought it was very cool, but Jarod was really worried that since we missed the ferry we were going to have to ride the sub back to the hotel. He was a little nervous about that.
When we rode the ferry back home, we thought it would be fun to sit out on the deck. When we have ridden tour boats around Jackson Lake, everyone rushes to get "the good seats" out on deck, so we couldn't believe our good fortune when nobody took those seats. Didn't take us long to figure out why. Sitting on deck in a nice leisure lake cruise is nice, but sitting on deck on a huge boat going 60 miles an hour is a different story. It was COLD and WET. We kept offering to take the kids back inside, but they loved it. By the time we got back to shore, Lindsie was literally dripping. Too fun.