Travel Trauma

Not a recommended way of extending your vacation.

Flying always makes me nervous. How can a huge airplane, loaded with luggage and people go so fast and so high. It just doesn't make sense to my nonscientific mind. Last week we drove to Salt Lake and then flew to San Antonio for five fantastic days with our Texas grandsons, and their parents (our son Ethan and his wife Teressa). Tuesday we made our return trip. I survived the flights much less anxious than usual. I guess I should have been saving up for later. After arriving in Salt Lake and being picked up by our ever faithful Ahlstrom transportation and lodging service (Marta and John have helped so many times when we've traveled.) we began our drive home.

Since it was a fairly early flight we contacted Neal's sister, Karen, and had her meet us at Cafe Rio in Ogden for dinner and a visit. After that we went next door to Farr's for ice cream. We were in no hurry, it was still fairly early and the weather was nice.

All was going well. We'd made it through the rush hour traffic and were blissfully headed north. Suddenly we had an abrupt change in our plans. There was a loud bang, Neal called out and the car was going frontwards, then sidewards, then careened off the freeway, down the embankment and finally stopped just eight inches from the fence. Neal was visibly shaken. I was basically dumbfounded. (More dumb than founded-- I couldn't remember much of anything I needed to over the next 30 minutes or so.) I asked what happened and Neal assumed we had a tire blow until he got out and looked. (Photos will follow.) We were grateful to good Samaritans who checked on us and stayed until the tow truck came. We ended up extending our vacation by a day. We spent the night in Logan and drove home in a rental today. Hopefully the middle of next week there will be another trip to Logan to pick up a repaired car.

There was no flat tire. But the tire was obviously nonoperational.

Talk about a close call -- we stopped no more than 8 inches from the fence.
Our Rendezvous became a trail Blazer.
The path we took.
Not a designated exit, but we took it anyway.
A daylight look at the scene of the crime.
It looks just as bad or worse in the parking lot of the repair shop the next morning as it did the night before.

Flying is a piece of cake! Driving down the freeway -- now that's a scary experience!

Slumber Party!

Three years ago when Neal was building our deck it reminded me of childhood memories of sleeping in the backyard. It was always a great adventure and I loved it. We would spread out the Korean comforter on the grass, make a bed on top of it, and sleep under the stars. Being the kind, loving husband he is, Neal was willing to sleep out on the deck with me. We opted for an air mattress and found that heavy quilts were required because no matter how hot it was during the day we would get cold at night. We've slept out every summer since.

This year I got the brilliant idea of including grandchildren in this sleep out. Since there are only two who live nearby, Rebekah and Analee, they were invited. August 7th was chosen, but the weather took a nosedive. Not to be deterred we decided to sleep on the living room floor.

When Andrea and Seth dropped the girls, their sleeping bags, and other overnight gear off Seth informed me that he thought I was crazy. He's pretty astute!

After dinner and stories read we started to get the living room ready. The girls would sleep on the blue cushions that Grandma Wirkus made many years ago to go in the back of the blue pickup. Grandpa and Grandma Scott would sleep on an air mattress.
Besides blowing up the air mattress there had to be a bit of playing around with the air pump. I'm really not the evil grandma I look like.

The girls helped get things ready. Note the book in Rebekah's hands.

The girls found books in a bookcase they either hadn't seen in a long time, or had never seen before. Rebekah was drawn to The Minpins by Roald Dahl. I tried to talk her out of it. There is so much text. I really didn't want to read a long book. She insisted and as I started to read it I was concerned. It talked about blood-thirsty wild beasts in the woods including a Spittler. The pictures included red hot smoke coming from nostrils. I noticed that when I read "woomph-woomph" Rebekah looked scared so I toned it down to a nice sounding woomph-woomph.

Ana testing the strength of the air mattress.

Guess who's the lump.
It's Ana!
We didn't have time to finish The Minpins before dinner and making beds. Rebekah asked to have the rest of it read to her for her bedtime story.
Tucked in and ready to sleep.

Rebekah was ready faster to settle down and go to sleep. Ana was up and down. I finally decided to lie down and pull her over next to me. Eventually they were both asleep, although Ana was asleep on the floor between her blue cushion and our air mattress. Rebekah had asked if Grandpa and Grandma would sleep all night in the living room and I assured her we would and if she needed anything just to let me know.

A little before 3:00 a.m. I heard "Grandma, I need to go potty." I got up with her. We tried to be quiet coming and going, but on the way back Ana stirred. After tucking Bekah in her sleeping bag I pulled Ana in next to me, and she went right back to sleep. A few minutes later I heard, "Grandma, can we turn on the light?" There was a night light so I couldn't see the need. A few minutes later I heard the same request. Because of the lovely Minpins book we'd read Bekah was sure she saw a shadow of an alligator head in the corner. It looked like a shadow in one of the pictures in the book. I told her to just come get in bed with us. She stepped over Grandpa and snuggled in between us.
After being kicked several times Grandpa got up and went to sleep in Bekah's sleeping bag. He's no dumby.

Saturday morning Ana helps feed Sophie.
Bekah gets ready for breakfast.
Andrea and Seth went to the temple then came to get the girls. Notice Rebekah has The Minpins in her hand. She asked to take it home so her mom and dad could read it to her again.

I may be crazy, but I had fun. Maybe next year we can sleep on the deck. Maybe we can even invite more of the grandkids.

Bell Hike with a Capital H

Tyson and Annette are ready to go. It's about time! Due to a comedy of errors, forgotten poles, then forgotten boots, driving the wrong direction, road construction, and going to the wrong trail head it was 11:15 a.m. before we got on the trail.

There were so many different canyons that became visible the higher we got. The scenery was incredible.

This is the top! It really isn't very big, much smaller than being on Table Rock. The sticks you can see poking out are right next to the weatherproof box that holds the register notebook. You can see where we were for the summit picture of the three of us.

Did I mention that the view was beautiful? Everything in the immediate vicinity is below you.
Here we are at the top. Notice that we all are able to smile. (It was 6:45 p.m.) This made the return very interesting considering we had only one flashlight. Thank goodness Tyson was prepared. Little did we know at this point that it would be 3:20 a.m. before we got back to the car.

Reporting from San Antonio

We're hot and humid, but loving our visit to San Antonio with Ethan, Teressa, and their three boys. We originally came for Ethan's long awaited graduation to end all graduations as he finished his residency. We also planned to tend the boys while Teressa went to girls' camp. Her recent release from YW changed the complexion of our stay. Neal has puttered around the house cutting a hole in the wall to make a new big storage space under the stairs. Ethan claims it's for the dwarfs. At least it's the right height for dwarfs.

Annette and Teressa have been shopping on more than one occasion. Annette has also done some sewing and baking.

We went swimming, walked the River Walk, toured the Japanese Tea Gardens, went to the zoo, drew pictures of animals, saw the movie UP (by the way, 4 stars), painted birdhouses, and read lots of books together.

Back to reality. We fly home Monday, June 15th.