Utah is an interesting place. I decided to drive right through it, mostly, as I found the Mormon billboards somewhat disconcerting. “Discount Missionary Clothing” (for my mental image, please see missionary family below) and “Guess what, Elder?” (not sure what this means). I saw many, many bumper stickers referring to the U.N. as a one-world takeover to precede Armageddon, and I decided I armageddon myself right out of Utah (couldn’t resist the pun, sorry). Ben didn’t like the Utah trip, either. After 11 hours trying to get across, his comment was, “No more truck, mama. Go home now.” Poor guy!
Archive for » 2004 «
Well, here are the Grand Canyon pictures, finally. Sorry for the wait, but I have been in the land without fast internet. Ben and I enjoyed the Grand Canyon and were, as all people seem to be, awed by the vastness of the canyon. We hung around to see the sunset, and of course I had to pull over to glass out any large raptors I saw, so it was slow going around the canyon on the scenic highway. I have a great picture of a family of vultures, but I had a technical problem uploading so I will have to add that in later. The pictures are chronological, starting with our first view and ending with the sunset on the Colorado River on the eastern side of the canyon. I decided, along with about 100,000 other tourists, to try to go to the northeastern side of the canyon and stay in one of the motels in a little town near the Navajo Nation. Every motel/hotel was booked for miles, so we drove for four hours before finding a tiny motel that was about to close, and both of us collapsed, exhausted, into bed. We awoke to find we were at the head of the Colorado, right where it enters the Grand Canyon, and it was beautiful. I couldn’t have chosen a better place to stay. It was called Marble Canyon, and we enjoyed a giant breakfast of biscuits and sausage gravy (although it should have been called gravy sausage, as it consisted of giant chunks of sausage graced with a bit of gravy) before heading on up through Utah. I will tell you, we didn’t take any pictures going through Utah, because we were pretty exhausted after tramping around the grand canyon and didn’t even stop at Bryce Canyon (a shame, but Ben was napping as we passed). We spent a whopping 11 hours on the road and ended up backtracking for an hour, because again all the hotels north of Salt Lake were completely full. Lesson learned: find good hotel at 6 p.m., stay.
Day One: Having frantically packed all morning, we made it out of Tucson at 1:30 p.m. — basically ahead of schedule. Other than a slight problem getting off on the freeway going south instead of north 60 miles north of Phoenix and travelling the wrong way for a while, we made it. Ben slept through Phoenix, as you can see, and after seeing some truly gorgeous scenery and a breathtaking sunset, we rolled into Flagstaff at 7:30 p.m. Tomorrow, the Grand Canyon! I have never seen it before.
These are from the trip I took last month, to Portland. Pictured are Asia, oldest daughter of Steve and Sheleen, and then Lily, their youngest (there are only two!). Next is Steve and Sheleen and the girls, in their “We are a missionary family” pose. Steve really isn’t trying to choke Lily, I promise. Next is a picture of myself, Sheleen, and Christina — we’ve been friends now for 10 years, so I guess we’re called old friends. Last is a picture of Steve posing, and he made some very un-Missionary comments when I asked to take his picture. There are dozens more adorable pics of the girls, and also of Chloe, Christina’s daughter, who isn’t pictured (yet). I will get the others up as soon as I can, I promise!
