Those were the places...

So it’s winter time in Utah, but it really hasn’t always felt like it.  It’s been pretty mild so far, with some sunny afternoons and very little snow.  I imagine January is going to be rough,with as nice as it’s been so far.  But when I have a day off or two, we’ve been trying to get out and see some of this massive state.  There are a lot of national parks within a days drive, but those will have to wait, though I do want to see them all.  In the meantime we’ll have to just check out some of the more local sites.  So we took a little trip down to this place called Thanksgiving Point one day, and we went up to “This is The Place” at Heritage Park a week or two ago.  

Thanksgiving Point has a resort like feel, an interesting market/shop, a dinosaur museum, and a dairy farm.  We went to check out the advertised reindeer.  It is almost Christmas you know.

Adam was impressed.  He’s a big fan of animals. Regardless of whether they actually fly or not.

“This is The Place” was the place where the first Mormon settlers came into the valley and decided that… well, this was the place they were going to stay.  We didn’t pay the entrance fee to the real part of the park (a replica town of an early Utah settlement), but we did check out the monuments and statues.  Including a replica Pony Express Depot.  Paul was terrified apparently.

 

So just a few quick stops, nothing too exciting.  Maybe slightly more exciting than a tall smoke stack, but who’s keeping track really?  Anyway, we’ll have more I’m sure… since Amber said I’ll pretty much go see anything.  Yeah, she’s probably right.  If it’s on Wikipedia, it must be worth a drive to see…  

Tall Stacks and Salty Lakes

We are now the Traveling Sellers... I guess.  From Florida to Maryland, now to Utah and a lot of places in between, the general purpose of this blog has been to share our adventures with family and friends who weren’t there at the time, and we’ve had a lot of exciting travels here and there!  Well, “exciting” is used liberally, but if you enjoy pictures of cannons and random parks, then this has definitely been at least an interesting blog to read.  Hopefully.  So here we go again… this time we took a little drive up to Magna, UT to see a couple of things.  Now Magna is a little rural area to the west of Salt Lake on I-80, and if you ask Becky… it’s her future home.  Ok, not so much, she wasn’t too impressed.  But it lies on the southern border of the Great Salt Lake (which we’d never seen from the ground), and it was home to – and this is the exciting part – the 33^rd tallest free-standing man-made structure in the world!!  And that is why I had to go check it out.  Seriously.  The Kennecott mine dominates the Oquirrh Mountains, pulling copper and other precious metals from the ground, and they built this smokestack 1,200 feet tall (more than twice the height of the Washington Monument) to spew chemicals up into the air and out of the valley.  Impressive, but it didn’t actually look that tall.  

Of course, Paul wanted his picture by the smokestack.  It's basically a cannon pointed directly up, so it only made sense.  If only we could get him to sit on it somehow...

 The Great Salt Lake was bitter, bitter cold on this day, but it was pretty impressive, and somewhat intimidating with the waves and gusts of wind.  It's the largest salt water lake in the western hemisphere they say, but at its deepest it's only 33 feet deep.  Pretty cool to see.

But we didn't stay long, the arctic winds drove us away as we ran for the cover of the car.  We'll have to go back on a warmer day, I'm sure.  But we did get to see the smokestack, and that of course was a journey only we would take… I think… I hope.  Maybe not exciting, probably not even interesting, but that’s what you get on this blog.  Ha!

Autumn under the Big Sky

So we have to send a big thank you to the State of Montana and its residents for keeping Becky and the boys for a week or so.  They had an awesome time hanging out with the Clayburn girls and the sets of grandparents up there.  I didn’t get to go this time, but hopefully next time!  I do miss Missoula in the fall.  There really is no place that feels quite like it this time of year.  Here are a few pictures from their trip.

Sophia Marie Clayburn... looking ever so excited to be the subject of Aunt Becky's photo.

And big cousin Paul pullin' the wagon 'round the field... not a driver I would necessarily trust with my safety...

"Why does she always make me do these horrible things...??"

"Oh, Adam... do you ever stop crying, screaming, and otherwise annoying me?"

The Clayburn family, with one intruder stuck in there somewhere...

Gotta love the fall leaves.

Brookie B.

Do you like my hat?  No, I do not like that hat.  Good-bye.  Good-bye.

Gotta love playing in the leaves with the cousins.

Oh Paul... these two can't get enough of bothering each other.  Hopefully they'll get to do more of it again before too long, now that we live 8 hours away instead of 45 hours away!  So thanks again to everyone up there for hanging out with the boys and making it yet another wonderful trip back home.

A stop in Idaho (Twin) Falls...

We took a little trip up to Idaho Falls (or Twin Falls as Becky referred to it 200 times and I corrected her 200 times) to make an exchange with Granny G of the boys and Becky.  Thankfully, Granny made it, since Becky told her a few times to come to Twin Falls, which is a couple hundred miles to the west.  But she got there alright and they all traveled on up to Montana on vacation and I came back to Salt Lake to work.  Sounds like I got the bad end of the deal there.  But we got to Idaho Falls a little early, so we stopped at the falls for a minute in the cold park and took a few photos.  It’d been a while since we’d been there, but we have fond memories of that wonderful city… many years ago we broke down outside of town and spent the day getting burned up by the sun waiting to get burned by the mechanic who took all day to fix the water pump on the car.  I have many great memories of a lot of Idaho’s wonderful towns… that’s why I try to get in and out of that state as quick as possible…

Adam had a good time by the falls, checking out the ducks in the water, but he was slightly afraid of the rushing water.  Maybe I shouldn't dangle him by his feet over the falls... 

The two brothers in the park.  This was after the light saber cut off Paul Skywalker's hand.  Yes, that's a Star Wars reference. 

Just a little bit cold down by the waters, but never too cold to pause for a photo opportunity.

So the exchange was made and a week later I went back up to meet Grandpa Bill on the frozen tundra that is the Montana-Idaho border.  See the next post for more on Becky’s visit to the Treasure State.

Happy Halloween again!

This year we got to spend Halloween with the Utah Sellers and their extended family and friends.  Paul had a blast running at full speed (because there can be no other way to trick or treat) through the neighborhood with Cousin Mason while the hoard of children with them followed along at equal speed.  I tried to keep up, carrying Adam, but by the time I got to the door they were already halfway to the next house.  But SuperAdam started to get the hang of things, reaching in and carefully selecting his candy of choice at each house.  It was a blast overall, and Becky and I got to eat most of Adam’s candy anyway… so it all worked out.  Here are the boys dressed and ready:

That would be SuperAdam and Ironhide the Autobot Transformer!  

Through the Gate...

So as I mentioned in the previous post, we stopped at the Gateway Arch in St. Louis on our way to Utah, and it was sort of a symbolic moment for us.  Five years ago, we packed up our little red car with everything we could fit and rolled out of Grandma’s driveway headed for the east coast and hopes for life in paradise in Florida.  At that time we’d been married for just over a year, and it was just the two of us, neither having spent much time out of Montana in our lives, and an immense amount of uncertainty went with us.  We came through Salt Lake, and crossed the flat lands of Kansas before reaching the Mississippi River in St. Louis.  That was the end of July, 2006.  In St. Louis we took the time to stop at the arch, definitely a very unique monument and a symbol of westward expansion or manifest destiny for the United States.  Historically, the Mississippi River has always been a dividing line in this country between east and west, and as we crossed over it and through the doorway of the arch, we entered the east coast and a very different life than we’d previously had.  Well, after five years, and stints in Jacksonville and Washington, DC where life lessons were learned and experiences were many, we’ve now traveled back through the gateway into the west.  So I wanted to take this time to take a look at how things have changed.

Obviously, a few differences in us in five years.  We’ve gotten old.  And, oh yeah, we’ve doubled in number.  I would have been 22 in that first photo, Becky 21.  In the second, Paul 4 and Adam 1.5 years old.  Five years doesn’t seem as long as, say ten… but it’s still a really long time.  Just imagine what five more years will bring!  We’re excited to find out.  And maybe someday we'll pass through the arch again with our grandchildren or something... we'll be sure to update the blog again with those photos!

Across the Country III

In case anybody was wondering, we made it to Utah.  But before we go too long without making a post about our journey, I’d figure I’d better do it now.  Five days it took us to cross the country, and roughly about 2500 miles passed by along the way.  Honestly, it didn’t feel as long as the previous TWO times we’ve done it (I know, you’d think this would be getting old by now).  I never imagined we would have traveled as many miles as we have in our short time, but we’re hoping sometime soon we’ll pick a spot and call it our home for the long run.  We’re in Salt Lake City now, and while we don’t know if this is the place (even if it is the land of Zion, aka the Promised Land), we’re happy to be here and we’re going to make it the best we can.  But enough about that, let’s talk about how we got here!

There it is… the Traveling Sellers caravan!  We picked up this twelve foot trailer from a friend of a friend and it pulled behind our newly purchased ’06 Chevy just fine.  Sucked the gas down faster than we could put it in, with the trailer full of all of the use(less)ful stuff we’ve acquired in the past couple of years, but the Trailblazer did just fine, even at the top of the Rockies in Colorado.  The first night, we stayed in Tennessee, after a 20 hour drive-sleep-drive-sleep night, with a lot of cold, rainy rest stops along the way.  Got to see Uncle Andy and Aunt Theresa, which was superb.  One of these days maybe all of the extended family will be within a short drive, maybe… hopefully, but for now it was great to see them, even if just for a night. 

The next day we got stuck in traffic outside of St. Louis, but took the time to stop and check out the Gateway Arch and the Big Muddy river for a minute. 

There was a defining moment along the way, in the museum under the arch, Adam Michael had his first drink of nectar from the heavens.  That is, he enjoyed his first taste of Mountain Dew.  Thanks to this blog, he’ll always remember when and where he was when he first tasted the addiction my father passed to me.

After that, we climbed into the tightly packed space pods and rode the arch to the top for a fine view of St. Louis and the road to the west.

The boys were mesmerized by the view, lying down to put their noses on the glass and glance down at the sickening height, with tiny cars moving about far below them.  The line to go up was pretty ridiculous, since it appeared short but didn’t move for about an hour, but the view at the top was pretty cool.

Then it was to Uncle Shane’s Farm in Brookfield, MO where the Miller family find’s residence these days.  There was Uncle Shane, Aunt Laura, Cousins Wyatt, Josie, Mo, Row, and Liam (aka, Miller #5 as Josh calls him).  Along with an assortment of other domesticated mammals and birds.  Always a fantastic time on the Miller farm, so we stayed a day and took some time off from the road to hang out.

Paul and Morgan enjoyed some organically grown, all natural, free range eggs, produced by happy Missouri chickens, fed off of only the most premium slop and garbage scraped off of the Miller family’s dinner plates.

Then it was off through Nebraska and into Wyoming where we stayed in Cheyenne for a night before dropping down through Colorado to Dinosaur National Monument.  We had promised Paul we’d stop along the way (hoping to get his mind off of leaving Maryland), so we checked out all the dinosaur bones for a few minutes.

 Here he is with a wall of rock and real dinosaur bones, carved out of the mountain with the visitors center built on top.  Very cool.

After that we came through the mountains and landed in the valley that the Mormons built.  For me personally, about the time we got to Wyoming it started to feel right, being back amongst the mountains and the overall feel of the west.  While we’re not technically “home” in the sense that Montana might feel, we’re as close as we may be for a while, and it feels good to be back.  So stay tuned for more from the, eh… Salt Lake Sellers?  I guess?