Virginia Vacation 2016

It's been a pretty crazy week. This is our first day back on the normal schedule, and it's super nice to be home.

It was also super nice to travel and visit family.

Last Tuesday, my parents returned from Florida and picked up our dogs on their way through town. The timing was fantastic, because my sister offered to watch the dogs while we were gone, and there wasn't really any other way we could have gotten them to Idaho without a lot more travel.

Then, we spent most of Wednesday packing and preparing for our trip. Grig, Kevin, Grig's two brothers, and I were all leaving together. Then, at about 5:00 pm, we drove off to the Salt Lake airport. There we met Grig's sister and her husband.

We boarded our flight by 8:00 and arrived in Denver, CO at about 10:30 p.m. It was dark, so Kevin couldn't really see the plane take off, but he still yelled, "We're flying like Superman!" several times.

We had an all-night layover. That would have been fine, if they hadn't had fire alarm tests and other loud sounds going off every 30 minutes. Grig and Kevin fell asleep at about 12:30 a.m., but Grig woke up at 3:30 a.m. when the loudest of all the drills went off. It continued for about 10 minutes. Surprisingly, Kevin and Grig's sister were able to sleep through it, but everyone else was either already awake, or woke up.

We'd hear the alarm going loudly, and then it would be interrupted by: "This is only a test. Please do not vacate the premise. This is only a test." Then the alarm would begin blaring again.

We finally started laughing from the sheer ridiculousness of it. After that, I fell asleep from about 4-5:30. We woke up, got breakfast and boarded our second flight. Kevin never woke up as we got on the plane and flew. We finally woke him up just before we landed so he wouldn't get too far off schedule.

Then, we arrived in Virginia at about 12:30 p.m. We picked up our rental cars and drove to Grig's parents' home.

Grig's mom wasn't home. She was at the hospital with Grig's younger sister Argent (who lived with us for a while). We were hoping that they would be able to come home while we were there, but that didn't work out so well.

We relaxed the rest of the evening and enjoyed spending time with Grig's dad and his youngest sister, both of whom we hadn't seen in a couple of years. Grig and his brothers went running through the family woods. They were pretty excited to be back in Virginia.

Friday, we woke up late and then went to visit Grig's grandmother. We were trying to see his uncle and family who had come from England, but they weren't there, so instead we asked Grig's grandmother if we could do a personal life interview. She agreed, so we were able to get some really good video footage from Grig's grandma for a while.

Just as we were about to go home, Grig's uncle and his family showed up. Grig's cousins were closer to Kevin's age than ours, and they had a great time together.

We went home to eat dinner, and then almost everyone went to a walk again. I had recently gotten plantar fasciitis a few weeks before, and so I was trying to help my feet to heal by staying off of them as much as I could. Due to that, Kevin and I remained at home this time.

Saturday we met at Grig's grandmother's home again to have a family dinner. I took many pictures and got to know Grig's family better.

Kevin was playing with his cousins and aunts and uncles. They were playing hide-and-go-seek. Suddenly it came to my attention that everyone was calling for Kevin. I was a bit freaked out to realize that no one knew where he was. We all began searching and calling for him. After a few minutes, we found him.

Evidently, he had been searching for a great place to hide, and had wandered away from the house toward the neighbor's. Suddenly, he realized that he was all alone. He began to call for me, and that's when the neighbor heard him. She quickly put on her shoes, came outside, and found poor Kevin. He told her he couldn't find his mommy. She was a friend of Grig's grandma, and knew about the party, so she told him that she knew where his mommy was. He immediately reached out his arms and she picked him up and brought him back to us.

When I took him in my arms, he said, "I couldn't find you, Mommy. I call and I call and I not find you!" It was very sad. However, the next thing he said made me laugh. He then added, "I not find a hide place."

Poor cute kid. I was glad that turned out so well. It could have been much worse.

Afterward we decided that he won. No one found him after all.

The rest of the party went well and everyone had a great time. The food was also amazing. I ate way too much.

Grig and Allopex looking for arrowheads.

That night was also General Conference for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. That took up most of the rest of the evening. The sessions were awesome! I love conference. There were so many good talks that had things I really needed to hear.

Sunday we had a pretty lazy day as we watched the last couple of sessions of conference. Between the two sessions, Grig, Allopex, Kevin, and I went on a walk. Allopex left halfway through, but it was fun to have him along for a while. The woods around their house are beautiful. I haven't been there in April before. It is fun to see the farm at different times of the year.

Monday, we all decided to go to Baltimore to visit Argent in the hospital. It was great to see both her and Grig's mother. I think they were really happy that we came. Kevin was very excited to see his grandma and "his" Argent. Every time he sees her picture, he gets really excited. While we were there, the doctor informed her that she might be able to go home the next day. That was pretty exciting. We were hoping she would be able to come home with us before we left, but we wanted her to be sure she was healthy before she did.

We had rented two cars, so the first car went home after we ate lunch at the hospital. (By the way, I ordered a ranch chicken burger at that hospital and it was the best thing I have ever eaten. I've been wanting another one ever since. If you're ever in Baltimore, stop at the John Hopkins Hospital and try one.)

We visited with Argent a while longer, and then, when she was feeling tired, we went to the Barnes and Noble there. We wanted to go to the National Aquarium, but it was way expensive for only having three hours until it closed. We hadn't been to a book store in a while, and Grig's youngest sister was really excited about going there.

It turned out to be one of my favorite parts of going east (besides family, of course). We had a good time browsing books in the book store, but in the bay next to it they had the last surviving ship from Pearl Harbor. They also had a play area and we really really enjoyed using the equipment.

It was fun to look around. We brought our GPS to use in our car, but the rental car's cigarette lighters didn't work. So, we would turn on the GPS, write down the direction s and turn it off again, or use it until it died, and then use the written directions. However, we found Barnes and Noble without using it, and then it died, so we didn't have any directions on how to leave Baltimore.

We had a pretty good time driving around Baltimore, trying to find a way out. It was occasionally frustrating, but often enjoyable. Baltimore drivers are interesting. I'm pretty sure I saw every traffic law being broken as we drove around. Eventually, with some luck (and some prayers) we found our way out and back home. Grig's dad had prepared us a delicious supper of lamb, broccoli, and rice.

Tuesday was our last day. We went for a walk in the morning, and then visited some friends and neighbors of Grig's. We should have done it before the last day, but it didn't work out until then. We also picked up some treats for the next day's travels and filled the car up with gas.

We got back in time to have a fire and cook up hot dogs and s'mores. We had a really good time.

We traveled to the Reagan airport the next day and got on our first flight at 1:30 p.m. We flew back to Denver and then had a layover of 2-3 hours. Then, after a short flight back to Salt Lake, we drove home and got to bed by 11:00 p.m. It wasn't until the last flight that Kevin really got to see the plane take off and land. He really enjoyed flying.

Grig had work the next morning, so we woke up at 5:00 a.m., and drove him into work. Then, Kevin and I drove up to Idaho and picked up the dogs and spent some time playing and talking with my family. The dogs looked great and Siff had grown so much! I took a short nap and then we drove home to spend a mostly relaxing evening with Grig. Kevin slept the whole way home, so he wasn't very tired at bedtime. So, after Grig got to bed, Kevin and I ran to the store to buy groceries.

Kevin with my mom.

It was nice to sleep in our own bed and sleep in a little this morning. It was a great vacation, but it's nice to have the dogs back and to be on a mostly normal schedule again.

Welcome home!

First Family Camping Trip

This week, we took Grig's vacation and went camping!

We couldn't really afford to go anywhere, but we've been buying a little something here and there over the last few months so we had all the equipment.

It took us until the day of to decide where we were going to go, but we finally decided on a little reservoir just 20 minutes north of us. It was our first family camping trip, and we were both pretty inexperienced at this. I had been camping before, but we'd never been in charge, so we tried to think of everything we'd need.

We brought both dogs. We debated whether or not to leave Dakota home. We didn't know if she'd be able to handle the stress of the trip, but we finally decided to bring her.

Very beautiful place

It took pretty much all day to get ready. Our original plan was to go from Monday - Thursday night. We were hoping that we wouldn't have to come back into town, except that I had a church activity on Wednesday night that I was partially in charge of.

We finally got to the campsite at about 8:00 pm. I was worried about not being near the restrooms, so we picked a little place not very far away. The mosquitoes were horrible, and if it hadn't been for the bug spray we brought, I don't think we would have made it even one day.

We had time to unpack, set up everything, and cook dinner, and then it was time for bed. We made hamburgers and hotdogs for dinner. We'd bought a campfire grill, and we used it to fry the hamburgers. They tasted amazing! We followed it up with s'mores for dessert.

While Grig was away getting ready for bed, Kevin and I turned off all the flashlights and just listened to the darkness. As we did so, we heard what sounded like kids playing and carrying on. However, as I listened, I realized that it wasn't kids, it was coyotes. They were fairly far away, so it was just fun to hear them.

That night I didn't sleep well. I don't usually sleep well during the first night while camping. It was nice to have the dogs there. We knew that they'd alert us if anyone came near. (Well, actually, we knew Arkhon would alert us. Dakota is pretty deaf and mostly blind. She'll bark if Arkhon barks though.)

Tuesday, I was awake by 5:30, and it was already pretty warm. We made breakfast (it was really complicated...we had a bowl of cereal) and then I fished a little while Grig and Kevin went on a walk. I didn't catch anything, except some cute pictures.

By 9:30, we were in the water. At first, it was a little cold, but as soon as you plunged, it felt perfect.

We swam for a couple of hours, Kevin didn't really like it at first. He didn't like getting all the way wet, and after a while, he got cold. He was also tired. We made lunch. For lunch we tried to cook hotdogs with crescent roll dough on the outside. We decided we didn't like that combination as much. It would have been better with sausage in the middle. After lunch, we all took a nap in a very warm tent at about 2:00 p.m.

We woke up at about 4:00 p.m., and then we went swimming again because we were baking. This time, at the end of it, kevin was starting to splash around, and we developed a fun game where he would drop rocks and we'd try to catch them under the water. He loved it.

Grig and I took turns playing with him and swimming. Arkhon wasn't too sure about the water at first. He'd never been in water deeper than his chest. However, after we started to swim away, he began to plunge in after us, and it wasn't too long before he was becoming a real water dog.

The real surprise was Dakota. She immediately waded into the water, but at one point, when Arkhon and I were swimming away from shore, I looked back to see that she was swimming out to meet us! That was a surprise. Dakota ended up having a great time. She only really went for one good swim a day, but she seemed really happy. We were glad we brought her along.
After swimming, we ran out of bug spray. We'd been sharing our with our poor dogs, and our bottle became empty pretty quick. So, I ran to a store in the nearby town, but when I went to purchase the bug spray, I realized that Grig had my card in his wallet. The lady at the store was super trusting, and allowed me to take the mosquito spray before I paid for it. She wrote my name down instead. I quickly drove back to camp, only to discover that Grig had left his wallet at him. I left the spray and Kevin with him, and drove home quickly. I grabbed the wallet and a bit more firewood, and then drove back quickly. I got to the store at 6:50. I didn't know when they closed, and I was worried I was going to be too late. To my relief, they were still open, and I paid for our purchase.

Once I made it back, we made dinner. We tried chicken, pineapple, and onion shish-kabobs. I cut the chicken into chunks, and put pineapple and onion slices in between. We then seasoned them with Mrs. Dash, wrapped the kabobs in tin foil, and threw them into the coals. Those turned out really well. I never thought the combination would be so delicious. After dinner, Grig and Kevin went on a walk while I made peach cobbler. When they returned, we ate our dessert, which also turned out really well, and as it became dark, we went to bed.
I slept a lot better and didn't wake up until 7:30 a.m.. We had bacon and eggs for breakfast (so good!) and then we went on a walk.

There were some real advantages to bringing dogs to a campout. Here are some things I learned about it:

Advantages:
1- Dogs are great guardians. You can leave your stuff with them, and no one's going to dare to touch it. Especially if your dog is great at barking at people who come nearby.
2- When you're swimming, you have someone to swim with if your husband is watching the baby.
3- They are fun to watch play in the water.
4- You can sleep knowing that large predators are more likely to stay way.
5- They love it.

Disadvantages:
1-When you leave them, they sometimes bark in protest.
2- They get tangled up when they are tied.
3- You have to spray them with mosquito spray too, or the mosquitoes start swarming your camp.
4- You have to bring food and supplies for them as well.
5- If they aren't good at listening, you have to keep them tied the whole time. (Arkhon got a lot better at this as time went on. At first, he had a hard time disengaging his nose, but by the end, if we whistled or called, he came running. Dakota never wandered, because she is too old.)

While on our walk, we saw some rabbits, and Kevin was really excited about those. We also saw raccoon tracks.

We were running low on mosquito spray and water, so we decided that we would head home Wednesday night instead of Thursday. We ended up leaving a day early, but I think it still went really well.

After our walk, we went swimming again, and when Grig and Kevin disappeared after swimming, I decided to fish for a while.

When they got back, Kevin joined me.

We tried a lot of different types of baits, and I finally went back to powerbait. I was just about to give up, when I felt a tugging on the line. I called for Kevin and Grig to come and join me, and we pulled in a little blue gill.

Kevin loved that fish, and here is the part that Grig wanted to call:

Kevin's First Lesson with Mortality

Kevin happily took the fish back to camp. I showed him how to carry it so he didn't drag it on the ground the whole way. When he finally got the gist of it, he carried it around proudly for awhile.

Then came the tragedy. I set up a spot to gut it, and Kevin watched with interest. He was okay with I stabbed it, but when I took its head off, he lost it. He began to sob the most heart-wrenching cries. I felt really bad, but I tried to explain to him that we were going to eat it. He cried and cried. Grig comforted him while I finished preparing it, and then I hugged him as well. 

Grig was laughing a little bit, but mostly because he was raised on a farm and has had similar experiences with sheep and cattle. We grilled the fish up in butter, milk,and some garlic salt and it was delicious. When we were done, there wasn't much to eat though, so we also cooked hamburgers and hotdogs. It's a good thing we weren't planning on living off the land, because we would have starved. 

After eating his hotdogs, Kevin was happy again and he recovered nicely. The dogs enjoyed eating the fish guts, so everyone was happy. 

Honestly, I don't like killing fish very much either, but I do enjoy catching and eating them. Sometimes I wimp out and make Grig kill them instead, but that's not fair to him either. 

If I ever want a farm, I have to "woman-up."

After lunch, we packed pretty much everything, and then we went swimming again. 

Campfire food is the best!

Things were going great. Kevin was finally playing in the water by himself, and the dogs were sleeping on the beach, when suddenly a sheriff came walking down the trail. He scared both me and Arkhon, and Arkhon barked at him pretty well. He was just making sure we were all behaving. He was a nice guy. He asked if we were camping, and we told him we were, but that we were leaving pretty soon. 

Then, he pointed at Grig's  head out in the middle of the lake and asked if he was drowning. I told him that was my husband and he was just swimming. 

He said bye and left. 

We finished swimming and went home to shower quickly before my meeting. 

Thus ended our first family camping trip. 

I think it was a great success, and everyone had a great time.

Here's an American Avocet that we saw.

Why We're Not Going to the Grand Canyon

A couple months ago, Grig decided he needed a vacation. I agree. He's been working really hard, and has been in near-constant pain for the last couple of months.

We decided that we would take our vacation after he finishes his class. We didn't have enough money this year to go back to Virginia, so we decided that we were going to go to the Grand Canyon. We picked our week, but everytime we went to make reservations (we were just going to camp there for $18 a day), we hesitated and decided not too. Soon we found that there are campsites that don't allow reservations, and we decided to try our luck with those. They are first come, first serve, and we felt good about gambling on getting a spot.

http://publicdomainclip-art.blogspot.com/2009/11/grand-canyon.html

We had a bit in savings, and so we weren't too worried about paying for our trip to Arizona, especially since there is an extra payday in May for us.

However, the more I thought about it, the more the Grand Canyon began to feel wrong. Grig and I talked about it, and we decided that we probably should just stay close to home and go camping nearby. It would be a lot cheaper, we could bring the dogs, and if something was forgotten or something went wrong, we could just go home.

Once we had decided that, I began to feel a lot better.

And that's when things started to go wrong.

First, we found out that the L5 vertebrae in Grig's back is out of alignment. It has a really technical name, but essentially it means that he is in pain all the time and his only options are stretches or surgery. We're hoping he can build the strength back up without fusing his vertebrae together, but we'll see what the Lord has planned. Anyway, so that took some of our savings.

Then, a few days after that discovery, the battery light came on in the car. Our registration was expiring anyway, so when we took the car in for a safety inspection, we had them check that as well. It turns out that our alternator was dying. We ended up having to buy a new one, and then register that car for another $60+.

There went our entire savings. Then, we found out that Grig doesn't have work next week. Sometimes Grig's employer is very frustrating. They will just tell all their employees not to come in and they won't pay them for the time off. It can make things pretty scary.

Now, the extra paycheck in May is just going to be a regular paycheck to make up for the 1/2 of a paycheck in June.

This blog isn't written to complain, but rather to explain our situation.

We'd decided before all these bad things happened that we should stay closer to home, and now we know why.

I am so grateful that we were listening to the Spirit. I'm so glad we didn't make reservations at the Grand Canyon. If we had, we wouldn't have money to pay for our bills, and we would have been in trouble. We'll have more opportunities to go there, but for now, we can enjoy this wonderful home that we've been blessed with.

We can be grateful that my husband has a job, and is still capable of working and going to school.

We can be grateful that we have sufficient money to pay our bills and buy groceries. We can be grateful that my sister-in-law lives with us and helps out as much as she can.

We have so many blessings that every time I start to worry about money, I feel a little guilty. I KNOW the Lord will provide, but sometimes I can't help but stress. I don't like living paycheck to paycheck. It is stressful, but it also makes me much more aware of the blessings that the Lord gives us.

Though I am a bit disappointed, I am grateful that we're not going to the Grand Canyon this year. If we had to have car problems again, we do have money right now to take care of them, and that is also a blessing.

So, yeah, our vacation isn't going to be what we planned, but we're still going to have fun anyway. As long as I'm with Grig and Kevin, we can pretty much do anything and have a good time.

Kevin's face doesn't look like he's having a good time :)

Driving Tanks Across the Country: Part 1

Here is part 1 of our grand adventure across the country. I'll be putting up correlating videos as well!

Day 1:

We began our trip on June 6, 2014. We had intended to leave at 4:00 a.m. in the morning so we could get some hours under us before Kevin woke up. However, preparations had taken much longer than we had intended and we didn't end up going to bed until 1:30. We had printed off our instructions the night before from Google Maps and we had a road atlas, so we felt pretty prepared. We slept in until about 5:30 and left about 6:15 a.m. instead. We had a 12 and a 1/2 hour trip that day, so we wanted to get an early start.

Kevin slept for a couple of hours, and we had a pretty peaceful beginning. We drove past the Great Bear Lake which was absolutely stunning, except for the fact that we couldn't really look at it. The sun was glinting off of the waters, so we had to look away or go blind. It was still beautiful though.

After a couple of hours we came to Little America in Wyoming. We had heard (and seen) a lot about this place and my grandparents had told me that you could get ice cream for 50 cents. It turned out to be an awesome stop. We went inside and looked around. It had a lot of really neat things on sale, and we bought a piece of bismuth crystal.

Pretty cool, huh?

We had been intending to get a type of native stone from each state we went to, but Wyoming was the only state where we had success. Oh, well.

After we purchased our crystal, we went out to their playground and found a large life-sized bison statue. Kevin was a little worried about it at first, but after a while, he began to enjoy it. 

They had a little playground out there, and after he finished waking up he really began to enjoy running around. 

After Grig and I finished using the restroom, we purchased an ice cream cone. They were a pretty impressive size for only 50 cents. 

I had started off driving, and Grig wanted to take over next. However, he didn't want to try to eat ice cream and drive at the same time, so we hung around the front of the building for a while and shared our ice cream with Kevin. He wasn't sure he liked it at first, but eventually he decided it was pretty great. 

As we waited for Grig to finish eating, we saw a cicada on a wall, which surprised us because we didn't think they were this far west. 

As we were leaving to get back on the road, I spotted something ahead of us. It had a tawny back and I said, "Is that a cow?" We drove closer and realized it wasn't a cow.

It was an antelope.

This is the picture Grig took of the antelope.

We drove pretty close, and it got a little nervous, but we got a couple of great pictures. Then, we drove away and left it in peace.

Once we got back on the highway, we presented Kevin with a gift that we had purchased for him. It was a small laptop computer. It had only been about $20, but he instantly loved it. That purchase was phenomenal! Kevin kept himself entertained for a long time just pushing the buttons and singing along with the songs. 

Eventually, he got tired, and fell asleep. 

With a cracker in his mouth, I might add.

We switched drivers again after a while, and kept going. People tell me that Wyoming is the worst state to drive through, but I found it to be one of the greatest! There were pronghorn everywhere! I counted over 60 pronghorn antelope. That was quite delightful for me. We saw at least two mothers with their fawns. One gave a little leap as we drove past, like a giddy lamb. It was really cute. 

We also saw two female elk, but we were driving so we didn't get a picture. I love Wyoming!

Our next stop was at Laramie, Wyoming at the Lincoln Highway Monument just off of I-80.

We actually didn't know we were stopping at a monument. We just saw a sign for a rest area, and Kevin had just woken up, so we decided to take a break. We had been driving for about 6 hours at that point. It also had a nice visitor's center and we enjoyed taking a break from driving. 

Shortly after that, we passed out of Wyoming. We started off the trip listening to Ray Bradbury's Something Wicked This Way Comes, but the audio book we had borrowed from the library only worked through the third disc, and then it stopped working. We then switched to Jonathan Stroud's Amulet of Samarkand which I had read before, but Grig hadn't. That book kept us going for a long time, and we really enjoyed it.

We made another short rest stop in Nebraska before reaching our destination at about 10:00 at night (partially due to the time change). We were staying with family who live in Nebraska, and the day went really quickly. We enjoyed talking to them for a while, and then we went to sleep. 

Day 2:

 The next day, we started off about 10:00 a.m. It was our short day, and so we weren't as worried about leaving early. We were traveling to Nauvoo, IL which was only about 8 hours away. As we drove away from my uncle and aunt's home, we had only been on the road a little over 2 hours when we saw a sign for a dinosaur museum at Milford, Nebraska. Grig was driving, and he asked me, "Should we stop there?" I wasn't sure. We both love dinosaurs, but we weren't sure if it would be worth it.

Then we saw the life-sized statue of a tyrannosaurus rex, and we couldn't resist. We pulled off the highway and turned at a gas station just off the exit. We could see the dinosaur museum from the gas station, and you take a little dirt road through the back of the gas station parking lot to get to the museum. As we looked at the size of the building, we both thought, "This isn't very big."

We decided to go in anyway. We asked them how much it was, and they told us about $9 each. Again, we kind of looked at each other. From the outside, how much could there be? Was it really worth the price of admission?

Again, we decided to go for it, and we were so glad we did. It ended up being one of the highlights of our trip. I don't know how they fit so much into such a small-seeming building, but we were very impressed. The woman later told us that the sculptor who owned the building was tired of having nothing to do with his kids when they went on roadtrips, so he decided to make this museum so people would have something to do when they were driving along I-80 in Nebraska. He doesn't live anywhere nearby, but I think he had an excellent idea.

At first, Kevin was rather terrified of the displays. They were huge with rather large teeth, after all. Who could blame him?

However, he quickly got over it, and soon he was right in the middle of the dinosaurs as cool as a cucumber.

Museum's Facebook Page (in case you want to check them out)

We all had a fantastic time. In fact, we had a really hard time wanting to leave.

There was also a mirror maze, which neither Grig nor I had ever been to before. It was rather exciting and difficult. That was one of our favorite parts of the museum. We had to go through it twice. There was also a cinematic area where you could watch Walking with Dinosaurs (which we own, so we didn't need to watch it). At the end, we took Kevin back to the beginning to see if he would touch the teeth of the carnivore who had first terrified him.

He did.

Our boy is awesome.

We bought him a tiny dinosaur toy who squirts water, and Kevin drank water from its mouth for the next little while during our travels. The people in charge were super nice, and they let Grig go through the Heartland Haunt. While Grig was going through, the lady told me, "He's going to be so scared! He's totally going to jump and to be wide-awake to drive after this."

She was right. the haunt made Grig jump, and the adrenaline kept him going for a while.

Our next stop was in Omaha. We stopped at the Cabela's there. Grig had never been to a Cabela's before.

They have some incredible displays. Grig especially enjoyed the wolverine and I really liked the wolves. However, our favorite part was probably the aquarium with the live fish. They had some huge and incredible specimens there! Grig's favorite was the blue catfish that was close to five feet long. 

We tried really hard to find a native stone there, but there was nothing available. So, we decided to buy a fishing net for when we went to the beach in Virginia.

After these two stops, we found that it was around 4:00 in the afternoon and we hadn't even left Nebraska yet. Whoops. We were staying in a hotel that night, but we had been intending to visit Nauvoo before we went to bed.

We did our best to get there early, but we didn't arrive until about 9:00 p.m. We decided to get groceries in Keokuk, Iowa for the next day and go to bed. At the Wal-mart there, I was surprised to run into someone from Idaho who knew my aunt. Small world. Grig also felt prompted to get some cash when he was checking out our groceries.

We were tired, and everything was already closed in Nauvoo anyway. As we drove to our hotel, I contacted my cousin.

Our original plan the next day was to get up early, go see the sites, and then go to church at 10:00 and leave after Sacrament Meeting to drive the 14 1/2 hours to Virginia. However, my cousin who has lived in Nauvoo more recently than I had told me that the missionaries met for church at 8:00 a.m. and then they went to open the sites.

We decided to go to church then instead, and we went to our apartment. We stayed that night at the Rivers Inn in Fort Madison, Iowa. It was inexpensive, but fairly nice. We'd probably stay there again. We relaxed for a little while and then we went to sleep.

Beautiful sunset

Day 3:

We got up early and quickly packed our belongings. Most of our stuff was in a larger suitcase, but we packed three days worth of clothes (including our church clothes) into a duffel bag so we only had to pull that out of our car at night. It made packing and unpacking much easier. Then, we took the toll bridge across the Mississippi (which was awesome) and went to church with the missionaries. The cash that Grig had taken out the night before suddenly became essential, as they only took cash on the toll bridge. A blessing from the Lord. I was worried we wouldn't make it on time, but we did great.

As we walked in, I glanced through the doors into the chapel, and saw my kindergarten teacher! Randomness. They had some really good talks about following the prophet. It was a wonderful meeting. Afterwards, Kevin played outside and then we walked around Nauvoo a bit. I changed into pants for the walking part (and the drive afterward). I didn't feel like wearing my skirt and Sunday shoes. 

We walked up to the temple and the Joseph and Hyrum Smith statues across from it.

 It was beautiful there, and I've really missed it. Back in 2005, I'd lived there for a few months through BYU's travel study program. It's a small town, but it has a lot of significance for Latter-day Saints (Mormons). After we visited the temple, we decided to go back to our car and drive around. We didn't have much time and we had a long drive ahead of us.

We took a quick tour of the historic sites (which were all closed because it was Sunday morning and they didn't open until 12:30), and then we went and visited Joseph and Hyrum's graves.

Kevin is always adorable

As we were leaving the graves, we spotted some geese. Kevin and Grig decided to go see how close they could get. I was filming and they were getting pretty close when suddenly we heard a loud racket. A new group of geese was creating quite a commotion in the sky, and they soared in and landed right in front of Kevin and Grig. They were only a few feet over their heads at one point. It was rather exciting. (Look to the video to see this scene, it was pretty cool.) 

After that, we went back to the visitor's center briefly to use their facilities, and then we took off. 

The drive was pretty long, but we had a few exciting moments when we thought we'd missed our turn off. We would pray, and soon we would find out that we were still on track. As the day grew later, Kevin eventually fell asleep and Grig and I continued to travel from state to state. We crossed from Illinois to Indiana to Ohio to Pennsylvania to West Virginia to Virginia. It was a long trip. We stopped for a rest stop at about 10:00, and then we kept going through the night until we reached our destination. We passed through some heavy rain at one point, but for the most part we had fantastic weather. As we entered Virginia, I began to feel claustrophobic. Mist was all around us, it was dark, and trees loomed out of the darkness like ghostly figures. It was kind of creepy. 

At one point, we were traveling through a national forest, and we didn't know where we were. We thought we had missed our turn, and it was kind of scary. A couple times we saw deer just off of the side of the road and we were grateful that they hadn't jumped into the road. We prayed, and soon we found that we were right on track. 

A little while later, Grig began to grow tired and I took the wheel. We knew we were on the right road, but then the signs for the town we were heading to disappeared. I shook him awake and we found that we had missed our exit a few miles back. I turned around at the next exit and went back. Grig slept and I drove through the mist listening to our book on tape. Sometimes as I would dip down a hill, the fog would form a lid over my head, and it looked like I was driving into a wall of mist. It was kind of eerie.

Finally, we reached a place that Grig recognized and the last 45 minutes seemed to take forever. It was not after 4:00 in the morning, and we were exhausted. On the second to the last road, I glanced at the trees to the side of the road for an instant and didn't see the skunk in our path. We hit the already dead skunk and a pungent odor filled the interior of our car. The smell clung to our car for days. 

We reached our destination at 5:00 a.m. Grig's parents were already awake because his dad had to leave for work in a couple of hours and Kevin woke up as we arrived. Carmen, Grig's dog, didn't recognize us at first, but she soon remembered him. Grig, Kevin, and his parents talked for a while, but I hadn't slept at all and I was exhausted. I stayed up for a few minutes, and then I went upstairs and collapsed on our bed. I quickly fell asleep, grateful that our long drive was over.

Carmen

That's it for part 1. I'll write more about our trip tomorrow.

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4
Part 5