Road Trip 2013: The Drive from Utah to Los Angeles

A new year, a new road trip! This year my dad and I are going up highway one, from LA to Seattle, with multiple stops in between. And it's just the two of us, with much more space in the car than I ever even though possible, after having driven this first section many, many times with six people in the car, sometimes seven.
It was raining in Provo all day, and we followed the storm to Saint George, with a brief stop for ice cream (I got maple-nut, dad got half green pineapple half lemon custard) in Beaver and dinner in Saint George at Benja's.

Past Saint George the skies cleared. We wiped off the windows and refilled our waterbottles. We passed right by the obsolete art piece, and Hoover dam, and kept driving through Vegas.

A beautiful sunset about an hour past Primm greeted us. Lovely! Yay! We navigated the streets of LA in the dark, with an orangish moon over the horizon that was both gross and fascinating (eew smog. cool orange moon.).

Until tomorrow night! Today we're going through LA, Santa Barbara, and up to San Luis Obispo.

...A Kid in a Candy Shoppe..

 We went to see the lights at Temple Square and ate chocolate at the Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory at City Creek Center Mall.

Random Photos That Are Pretty

We go to a care center for sacrament meeting every Sunday in addition to our normal ward: some people like to play (and fight over playing) on mom's phone during the session.

We had to bring a lot of tomatoes in from the garden before the frost, they're sitting on the window sill in the kitchen so that they will still get ripe.

Pizza delivery man.

Earlier this summer... but still a cool photo of Margo (who was not screaming her head off a second later)

Again, the beautiful tomatoes getting ripened in the kitchen.

On the way to California a couple of years ago, actually. Right about where Utah Lake ends and you move into the desert there are some very nice mountains that you have an unobstructed view of from the highway.

Anna's friend Nohaya playing with a green balloon... one of my favorites.

On the way to the tide-pools in California right before Corona del Mar.

This photo is ancient. Almost five years have passed since the Windhorsts moved away. Maddie is hanging up top, with me in the middle and Tessie kneeling beside me.

This was on the way back to California on that same trip that I mentioned before. There had been snow while we had been gone, and the highway all the way through Utah even down by Saint George was edged in a thin layer of snow.

The Process of Asking a Neighbor for a Snow Shovel

What would we do without kind next-door neighbors?

Happy Halloween!

The pumpkin family...

 and our

happy
dressed-up
scary
beautiful
thankful
cavity-ridden

sparkly
strong
candy-toting and
-munching
pink-winged
 fortunate
terrifying
 wild
fun
smiling 
sometimes crazy
 family.

Spoons

Moments captured from a stay of two families in Saint George and some competitive spoon-playing -- how do we ever survive family reunions?

Park City, September

 

Mom stays in the Hotel Park City for two weeks, and we get to visit her. Hooray! There is a humongous bathroom and a huenormous tub with jets! La! And a pool, and a ton of other cool stuff that we don't get at home.

Now the pregunta es... why would she miss us when she gets DirecTV at the hotel? No one knows... who can understand the crazy mind of a mother?

Maybe this has something to do with it...