Are you ready for this series to come to an end?? This should be it... the last blog post about our epic road trip to Utah this past summer. It's only taken like 8 posts to cover the entire 3 weeks we were gone. And once this final post is over, I can get back to the gazillion other posts I want to catch up on!
Our final week in Utah began with a trip to Logan to see Utah State University, the school my youngest sister was attending at the time. I've been to Logan a few other times before, but this was my first time stopping by USU and I fell in love. It reminded me so much of Michigan State, which is where I went to school and where Bruce and I met. It was fun to walk around the campus with my wee ones and dream about the day I can take them to walk the grounds of MSU.
Tressie showed us around her school, including a stop for chocolate croissants, a visit to the library where we saw the B.A.R.N. in action. The B.A.R.N. is a book storage system the USU library uses that is modeled after the door retrieval system in Monsters, Inc. We were all pretty captivated! We also saw the window of Tressie's dorm room from the previous semester and there were some hugs and kisses atop the A.
We also drove up into the canyon, paddled in the river, stopped by the Logan temple (love!!) and then the Providence cemetery where we saw the grave stones of my great grandparents. We had a great day up in Logan.
On Tuesday, Tressie and I decided to hike the Y in Provo, with all my wee ones in tow. The kiddos have hiked plenty of times and I stupidly believed an internet site that claimed the Y hike to be very family friendly. LIES! It was a really difficult hike and I am beyond impressed that my kiddos survived it without a massive melt down. The donuts we took to the top might have been the only thing that saved us from a melt down. And those donuts tasted darn good after all that hard work to get to the stupid Y. Note to self... the hike is not worth it. Don't do it again. Never, ever again! P.S. Do you love Man Cub's soaking wet pants? That was from me sweating so bad hiking with him on my back. Poor boy!
Wednesday, we headed up to Salt Lake to finish our list of things to do there... we met up with some friends from back home and walked around Temple Square, then toured the conference center. My girls loved that... and they were so excited to watch Conference at the beginning of October because "we've been to that building!!" We also stopped by the Children's museum, browsed City Creek and ran by Scheels before following a large rain storm into Provo. Sunshine and my nephew Bodhi convinced Tressie to ride the indoor ferris wheel with them at Scheels and I stocked up on fuel for my fast approaching half marathon.
Thursday and Friday were pretty low key. My brother and I took the kiddos to the Provo Rec Center, I picked up my race packet and drove as much of the course as I could so I would be mentally prepared. I also carb loaded... cupcakes count right!? I was definitely stress eating! It rained a bit one evening and Beebs was in need of some loves, so the two of us went for a walk in the rain and enjoyed splashing in puddles and hunting for snails. And before I knew it, Saturday had arrived and it was time for my big race!
Once the race was over, our trip seemed to wrap up pretty quickly. Sunday I was in recovery mode... stiff and sore and barely able to move. Monday Bruce flew in with my gorgeous diamond earrings in hand and we enjoyed the day with him. Tuesday we repaired a flat tire on the Jolly Roger then said our goodbyes before piling into the car and headed back to Arizona. Everyone was especially sad to say goodbye to Mollie, my sister's ragdoll cat. We stopped several times on our way home- the Provo Temple, my dad's work for one last hug goodbye, Beaver for ice cream (and Eva found an itty bitty baby grasshopper that she named Lizzie and still talks about today), the St George temple where we walked the visitors center and the kiddos each drew a picture of their favourite Book of Mormon story, and then Las Vegas, to touch our final temple of the trip. The drive home was an adventure in itself!
We enjoyed our trip to Utah so very much. The girls still talk about it all the time and even Man Cub seems to have great memories of our time at Nana and Papa's. He loves to talk about all of my parents pets. Ü I am so very grateful for all the fun memories we've made during our Utah Road Trips the past two summers.
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