Our niece McKenna is leaving for a mission to Finland in a few weeks, and her “farewell” was in Utah on Sunday. We thought it would not only be a chance to wish her well and see some of Pepper’s family, but also to visit our kids at BYU. So after returning from Missouri, we packed up the car and headed south.
There was a lot of snow on the ground, and the sunny weather made it quite bright. Pepper doesn’t own a pair of sunglasses, so she borrowed mine and made a fashion statement by wearing them over her normal glasses.
As we hit the Salt Lake City area, it was rush hour. On a Friday. Of a holiday weekend. Yeah, fun. Although it’s hard to see in the photo below, the lines of cars and brake lights extends for miles.
It sure is nice to live in a small town, where rush hour means you might end up waiting a cycle of the one stoplight in town. Anyway, we made it to Provo and hung out with Alex, Kaitlyn, and Kyra for a few days. Dinner at the Olive Garden was wonderful, and Kaitlyn managed to score an amazingly cheesy mozzarella stick:
On Saturday, Pepper and Kyra went to the DI thrift store to shop for clothes. I was the lucky guy who wandered the store for nearly three hours waiting for them to try on a thousand things. In my journeys I found a photo that I considered buying and then hanging on a wall somewhere just to generate conversation (“Who are they?”).
There was an ancient contraption that’s either a medieval torture device or a sewing machine:
After walking the entire store, I sat on an old couch and literally read most of a (short) novel until the ladies were finished. Whee! Then it was off to Kaitlex’s apartment for a game of Aeon’s End:
Not surprisingly, they loved it– they play Dungeons and Dragons almost every weekend, so a D&D-themed game was right up their alley.
The mission farewell was great, we hung out with the fam for a few hours, and then drove back north. The scenery was really cool along the I-15 and I-90 corridors, including some pretty mountains in Utah:
The edge of a snowstorm in Idaho:
And a storm brewing in Montana:
All in all, it was a fun trip, and we plan to take more down to see the kids in the coming months.