Wow. What a trip. We just got back from a three week camping trip to Washington state to visit my family and attend my Mom's memorial service. Eight states and over 5,000 miles later, we are home.
Because I have so many pictures to share, and so much yapping to do about this trip, I'm going to break it up into four sections. The Trip Up North; Dad's House; Mom; and The Trip Home.
It all started about three weeks after my Mom's death. Out of absolutely nowhere, my Dad called me. I won't go into detail about the conversation, but I will say that I have had contact with him by either phone or text every single day since the first time he called me. We agreed to put the past in the past where it belongs since neither of us can change it. And that was that. Moving on.
And that's how this trip came about. My Mom didn't want a funeral. My Dad and brother honored her wishes and no funeral took place. But feeling the need for some sort of closure, my brother and his beautiful wife Jillian decided to have a memorial type of thing in her honor on June 22nd, which is her birthday. And since things were all patched up between me and my Dad, I planned on attending.
I figured since Joe was on terminal leave before his retirement and the boys were on summer break from school, we ought to drive and make a sightseeing tour of it. There are so many things to see in this beautiful country, so why not? And since so many folks surprisingly asked us this question about our trip, I will go ahead and address it. You do NOT save money driving and camping instead of just flying. It is not cheaper to camp as an overall rule of thumb if you are driving a distance to get there. If you are not a camping person and want to get into camping to save money, don't do it. It's not even cheaper when you drive straight through and don't stop to pay for a campground every six hours. If you are pulling a trailer and not tenting, the gas costs alone equals the cost of plane tickets in most cases. The campgrounds, food and souvenir t-shirts from every single city can double the cost. So many people asked us whether it was a lot cheaper than flying, and the answer is no. We have been "camping people" for a long long time and it's never been cheaper. But you do get a lot more out of it than a layover in Detroit and a free juice and donut breakfast from Holiday Inn Express.
The Coach hates to be in the car for long periods of time. Me? I could drive about 15 hours at a stretch comfortably, and I could honestly be a passenger for days without complaining. That sort of makes us incompatible as far as road trips are concerned. Technically, we could have been there in three days. But we both compromised and decided that six days on the road was a comfortable pace for everyone. We were toting around a new baby too, and taking his comfort into consideration was important.
I am the navigator. We traveled a lot when I was a kid and if I had a dime for every time I heard the following statements from the front seat...
"You missed the exit!"
"How was I supposed to know to get off if you didn't tell me to take the exit!"
"Just find somewhere to turn around" (as Dad is towing a 32 foot sailboat... "Just turn around" she says... hahaha)
"Get the map! Get the map!"
"Where exactly are we?"
"You went the wrong WAY!"
"*&^%"
"^&* $#%%(&"
Ahhh, good times.
Anyhow, I learned from a really young age how to read a map and how to plan a trip.
I made all the camping plans and figured out the routes, scheduled our stops and made campground reservations before we left the house. Joe trusts me for some unknown reason and just follows the directions I jam into the GPS. I heard a whole lot of "Sounds good to me, babe" during the week I was planning the trip. (Meaning: I don't care, babe). And while I do enjoy the modern convenience of the GPS, I cannot stand not having a map in front of me to make sure the GPS is pointing us in the right direction. So I double map everything, comparing times and total miles. Overkill? Maybe. But better than going west on a 400 mile stretch of highway you are supposed to be traveling east on. Joe teased me constantly about my mapped directions and notebook full of information about where we were going. And let me throw this out there... if you lose your phone signal and/or your GPS craps out on you, you're screwed without a map. And for the record, Wyoming has no freaking signal of anything.
The first day of the trip was tough. It was the longest day we would be on the road of the entire three week trip. Jacoby screamed almost all day long. It was a rough start to what could have been a miserable journey. He was so unhappy in the car, I wanted to turn around and go home. Thank goodness he was a completely different baby from the second day forward, and was quiet and happy in the car.
On night one, we stayed at Curt Gowdy State Park in Nebraska. State parks are completely hit or miss. You could end up in a great campground, or you could be constantly looking around for Jason from Friday the 13th to come and whack you in your sleep. We don't mind rolling the dice. We rolled a winner with this one. It was about 20 miles off the highway, but it was nestled on the shore of a beautiful lake and gorgeous trees. The bathrooms were clean and the showers were hot. We do have a shower in the trailer, but I don't like to use it. I'd much prefer the boys mess up the campground showers than the little one in our popup.
I've never been to Nebraska before. It was beautiful. Flat, grassy and very green.
The view of the lake from the campground.
And did I mention Joe and I are incompatible travel companions? The next morning, day two, I'm up at 5. I'm ready to go. Joe? He likes to sleep late. He is not up and he is not ready to go. I figure out the best way to get him up is to get the boys up. They will make enough noise to get Joe up.
I was right.
We got out of there fairly early and headed to Wyoming. We spent most of the day traveling through Nebraska.
The Wyoming campground was beautiful.
Remember what I said about state campgrounds being hit or miss? This was a weird one. They had a huge visitor's center, a gorgeous lake, a stocked camp store... and no showers or running water. I knew that ahead of time, we decided it wouldn't be a big deal. It wasn't.
On day three, we drove to Salt Lake City. And I'm still struggling with my traveling incompatibility with The Coach. He's getting up semi-early, but he's not happy about it. You could say he was a little testy in the mornings. And I know my chipper bright-sunshiny-day attitude was killing him. I was SUPER excited about this part of our trip, and we planned to spend two nights there so we could spend an entire day seeing Temple Square and catching up with a former missionary from our area.
We were in Wyoming for what felt like forever, as we traveled nearly the distance of the entire state east to west. I liked Wyoming for a minute. The part of Wyoming where we camped by Nebraska was beautiful. As we got deeper into the state, it got drier, and browner, and I kept waiting to see a cowboy just pop out of nowhere. Neither of us had a phone signal for eight straight hours that day. I decided Wyoming was not awesome. It was a little hairy in spots, too because random deer kept hopping out all over the place.
This sucker was just itching to hop out into traffic. This is the parking lot of a gas station, by the way.
And here it is in all it's brown glory. Presenting... Wyoming.
Temple Square was everything I had hoped it would be. It was spiritual and beautiful. I wanted the temple to make a huge impression on the young mind of Justice. And it did. And I was glad. He made a personal goal to get married in that temple, and I sure hope and pray he follows through with that. Jack? Jack was his typical grouchy self the entire day.
At the end of the day when we were back at the campground, I asked both boys what their favorite part of the day was.
Jack: "Nothing. I was tired, hot, thirsty, hungry, grumpy, mad and grouchy"
Me: "So you didn't like anything at all about today?"
Jack: "No. Well, I did like the Big Jesus a little bit"
Actually, Big Jesus scared him to death.
He walked in the room where the statue was and immediately cowered behind me. Keep in mind he was being his typical charming self that day and I kept threatening him with corporal punishment for his lack of reverence (yes I know, beating a kid at temple square is verboten. It was just a threat.) It took every drop of restraint I had in me not to laugh when he finally peeked from behind my legs and said
"WOW. Jesus is a lot bigger than I thought!"
And for a brief moment, he was reverent.
Yes, I realize it's wrong for your child to be afraid of Jesus, but that ten minutes of peace and quiet I got was pretty awesome before I explained to him that Jesus wasn't physically that large.
Big Jesus is actually really big. I wish I had taken a picture of Jack next to the statue so you could see how big it actually is. For reference purposes, the top of his fuzzy red head was at the top edge of the pedestal.
When I asked Justice what his favorite thing was, it was indeed the temple. He absolutely was speechless standing at the bottom and peering up at that huge beautiful building.
The view of the temple from the roof of the conference center.
His second favorite place was the conference center. I was actually REALLY impressed with it, too. From the waterfall going from the top to the bottom of the building, the artwork, the statues, the fountain, and the gardens on the roof of the building. It was amazing.
You can tell by the look on Justice's face how excited he was to be in the same place that General Conference's are held. Our tour guide loved him. At one point, Justice said "I can't believe the Prophet stood right there", pointing to where the pulpit would be.
And the little old lady nearly swooned. I mean really, he was so cute that whole day.
And at one point, the same sweet lady said about Justice and Jack
"Boy, they sure are different, aren't they?"
HA! Yes Ma'am, they certainly are. And I love them both to pieces.
Yes, I realize Jack is grouchy in every single picture I ever post. Let me clear something up for those of you that don't really know Jack. He's like that 90% of the time. It's not an act for the camera, or the fact that he hates having his picture taken.
One other thing. I do dress the boys in matching outfits. I do it when we are going somewhere crowded or very busy, and I do it for a particular reason. I'm always scared to death that Jack is going to quietly sneak off somewhere searching for solitude and then he will get lost. I purposely make sure they are dressed the same so when I have to explain to the security guard or cop what he looks like, I can very easily say
"He is dressed exactly like his brother"
Call me paranoid, call me weird. But if you were Mom to a fiery little guy like Jack, you'd think I was brilliant.
The top of the conference center was really awesome. These pictures are taken from the rooftop. This mural thingie is amazing because when you are standing in front of it looking at it you can see your reflection and it looks like you are right in the picture. It gave me goosebumps.
There is a beautiful manicured garden on the roof, and a large fountain.
Another section of the roof holds a wildflower garden that the tour guide tells me will be covered with summer blooms in a few weeks.
There was also a ton of beautiful art in the gardens around the temple.
My priesthood holder and my future priesthood holders in front of the Aaronic Priesthood statue. Very cool.
The gardens in Temple Square were gorgeous, and immaculately maintained.
And we got to see Megan. Megan was a missionary in our ward when Justice was baptized. We fell in love with her and were very excited to see her again. We spent the day together and had a great time catching up with her and her life "after mission". She set a great example for Justice on how fun a mission could be and how important it is to serve. He really looks up to her, and we love her very much.
I made Joe take this picture because let's be real for a second. Have you ever seen a floral centerpiece that big? I mean honestly? It's in the Joseph Smith Memorial Building, for reference sake.
And I suppose the floral centerpiece ought to match the size of the giant Joseph Smith statue near it.
Salt Lake City is where we snuck in a couple of good dinners out, too. They had a Sweet Tomatoes (also known as Souplantation in some places) restaurant, which is our favorite place to eat of all time. We also made the obligatory Golden Corral trip for Justice. It's his favorite place to eat and he pesters us to death every time he sees one. Ack.
On the fifth day, we headed towards Oregon via Idaho. I expected Idaho to be green and beautiful, and I was disappointed. I am sure glad we got to go through Northern Idaho on the way back, because it changed my view of the state completely. But on the way there? I didn't like it. Too much like Wyoming. Brown and dry, and desert like. I couldn't wait to get into Oregon, and I was anticipating the brown to go away, and the green to magically appear. Not so much. It was very brown and not so green until we got closer to the coast.
Needless to say, I learned a ton about national geography on this trip.
This is a picture of dead trees in Oregon. We also encountered these dead pine forests in several other states as well. They left a terrible brown mark on the landscape of nearly every forest we encountered. Turns out there is a terrible beetle epidemic that is killing our national forests. And I mean really killing them. It's heartbreaking. We noticed a few states not really doing a whole lot about it, and others like South Dakota have a great program in place to harvest the dead trees and "fix" the forests. At any rate, it was a good educational lesson on why you see signs at every campground in America that tell
you not to bring firewood across state lines.
The campground in Oregon was absolutely gorgeous. It was just far enough off the highway to squelch any highway noise, but not far enough to be out of the way. It was tucked underneath a beautiful mountain and had a stream running through it.
On most days, we traveled about 8 hours. On the day that we were only traveling 6 hours, I made sure we landed at a campground with a pool so the boys could burn off some energy from being locked up in the car.
I do have to mention Jacoby once more... that little baby is awesome. He started sleeping through the night on the night we camped at the Oregon campground, and he hasn't looked back since.
My sleepy baby is all smiles after a good nights sleep
For the record, none of our other kids (big ones included) ever slept through the night until they were over a year old. A full-night sleeper at six weeks is a dream for just about any parent. And he's mine, all mine! Muahaha! I'll also add that we aren't doing anything different with this one. There is no magic trick, no special potion or schedule. He just likes to sleep. I can even put him down on his back wide awake and he falls asleep on his own. No rocking, singing, music. Nothing. Just lay him down and he goes to sleep within ten minutes without a peep.
All right, enough of that. Where were we....
Day Six, and the last day of our trip to Washington. Once we left the campground in Oregon it didn't take much time for it to get green, lush, and wet. And it was BEAUTIFUL. I have never seen such beautiful country before. I had been to Washington once as a teenager, but didn't appreciate the landscape the way I did this time. I fell in love with the green trees and the wet, cool weather.
Dont' let the snow fool you. It wasn't cold outside. The average temperature was about 70 degrees while we were driving through this part of Oregon and Washington, but the highway rambled up through the mountains.
We arrived at Dad's house late in the afternoon on Tuesday, June 18th.
Stand by for Part 2!
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