Cross Country Adventures - Travel Log

We drove from Provo to Auburn, AL in our Budget truck. It took us four days. Mason drove the whole time because he hates being the passenger in any car, and I was the photographer and navigator extraordinaire.

This is us outside our door after we were done with all our packing and cleaning. It's blurry, but I'm glad we documented it. That little apartment was a great place to call home, and we really liked it there. 

We hit our first snag about 40 minutes in when the road through Spanish Fork Canyon was closed unexpectedly. I guess they had been having problems with mudslides, and since it was scheduled to rain, they didn't want to risk anybody being in the canyon if there was another one. 

SO, we took a detour to Fairview through probably the most beautiful scenery I have ever seen. We went up and up and up and up through beautiful mountains full of wildflowers and incredible views. I'm convinced I saw like 3 yaks up there behind a fence. And we saw some deer and some snow!

The road was beautiful, but it added a ton of time onto our route, and we ended up stopping in Green River for the night. We got there and stayed in a nasty room that was wayyy overpriced, but it was better than nothing!

Here's our Travel Log entries from the day:

• Day 1- Friday
• Provo -->Green River via Fairview, Utah
• Total distance: 190 miles
• Mason said, "There's no cruise control!" and we both laughed our heads off
• Tried to go to Burger king in Green River at 9:05 pm but they closed at 9. So we went to Arby's instead, got there at 9:30 pm.
• Checked into Motel 6
• Gross. Made me gag lots.
• Mason fell asleep instantly
• AC was SO LOUD. Sounded like people with velcro rubbing over our door with no particular rhythm, just randomly. 

Here's Day 2- Saturday

• Green River UT -->Topeka, Kansas
• Left Motel 6 at 7am sharp!

• Bri saw a gopher halfway in it's hole.
• We're driving next to the mighty Colorado River

• Mason keeps saying Green River instead of Grand Junction, and vice versa

• We passed a sign that said Frisco and I made up a song with Frisco, crisco, and risk-o in it and Mason thought it was real because "You just sang it with such confidence!"
• We went through some big tunnels

• It's raining outside in Colorado, and our truck is LEAKING WATER on us! Thankfully my purse was stuffed with clean rags, so we used them to catch some of the water, but we both still got really wet.
• We're mad there's not mountains in Denver.
• We stopped about 3:45 to eat Burger King in Burlington, CO and saw cute old men hanging out there.

• Bri is wearing ridiculous clothes and is embarrassed.

• Lots of corn and windmills because we're in Kansas!

• This truck is not a "quiet cab."
• Mom and Dad dropped their truck off at our new house this morning! Also, they got us a motel for tonight! They're so nice!!

• 968.5 MILES IS THE HALFWAY POINT
• Mason almost wet his pants. We stopped in Hays.

• Got to our hotel at 10:45 ish.
• The last hour and a half or so was terrible and we were so tired. So we listed all the countries we could think of in the car. 
• Mom and Dad got us our hotel room and it's AMAZING, the bed is huge and it's SO CLEAN.
• When we got to our hotel, Mason opened his door in the parking lot, heard the cicadas, got scared, and immediately shut the door again. 

Day 3- Sunday

• Topeka, Kansas --> Tupelo, Mississippi 
• We left at 9:51 am.
• We got free breakfast! I tried to make a waffle and the thing broke and made a loud clanging noise and mason took FOREVER to come and save me. He finally came and also a nice black guy came to save me. My waffle was burned and gross.
• We're on a toll road! There's no traffic
• The Elders Quorum President of our new ward texted me about helping us move in. We are grateful. 
• It rained last night. We hope our stuff in the back isn't getting leaked on.
• "We've passed into Hardee's country!" -Mason
• It's green now and there's tons of trees!
• Kansas has made 1 President (Eisenhower), like 5 astronauts, and Bob Dole. And the Chrysler guy. We know because there's big signs about them.
• Missouri looks just like GA.

• We've seen 2 dead armadillos (one was a baby)
• It rained hard and we got REALLY leaked on
• We spent $73 on gas at one gas station
• We saw our first Waffle House- Springville, MO
• We didn't see deer in Kansas or Missouri, but we saw them in Arkansas, Colorado and Utah

• Mason says there's lots of birds in Missouri
• Quality of gas station bathrooms has dropped dramatically since we got to Missouri
• We got to Tennessee and got on a big pretty bridge

• We got to Mississippi!

• We stayed at the Red Roof Inn last night, everything in the room was wet. (floors, sheets, etc.)
• It's VERY humid

Day 4- Monday, 8/12/19

• Tupelo, Missisippi -->Auburn, Alabama!
• We went to Elvis's birthplace!!! It was cool. In Tupelo.

This is the house he was born in and grew up in. It is extremely tiny!

This is the church where he used to stand outside and listen to the music

He shared this outhouse with a bunch of people on his street

• We made it!!!!!

We listened to Sweet Home Alabama when we crossed the line. Oh yeah.

First supper in our new house: Korean Beef

Summer Recap

Let's talk about our (last) summer in Provo. It was SO busy. Between me being in two classes, Mason working, all the packing, my family coming to visit two separate times, the trips to the Parkeses, the trips to the Waite's, the trip to McCall, a trip after that to Las Vegas, and the three day drive to get down to Auburn, we were pretty busy most of the time.

We didn't get to do as much hiking as we would have liked, but we still got to take in the beautiful Wasatch mountains every time we looked out our window, or left our house to go anywhere. I miss the mountains.

When I think back over the summer, what I mostly remember is driving. It seems like we were always on the road headed somewhere far away.

But we also had some fun visitors come! First Ryan and Kaylyn came out to see us. They slept on 2 twin air mattresses in our studio for a few days, and then they spent a few days up at the Waite's house. It was SO fun having them in Provo!

Fresh off the plane! (Mason is paying for parking.)

We hiked the Y (and a little beyond).

Ryan said if we stood like this we'd all look swoll.

We watched a lot of Amazing Race. ("I'll bake the cake," "Because he likes to DRINK beer.")

Played a lot of Nertz.

Walked around the new temple:

We went to Cafe Rio. Ryan and Kaylyn liked it so much, they ate it again in the Salt Lake airport on their way home!

We saw the Provo River being fuller than I've ever seen it, and went to Bridal Veil Falls. The water was freezing!

We went to a concert in Park City to see a band called Superbubble. They played funk. It was a little weird.

We took them on a tour of campus:

We went to Swig like 100 times, and somehow this is the only picture I have documenting it:

We took the train up to Shell and Nate's house, and on the way we taught ourselves to play Texas Hold 'Em. (Although Ryan pretty much knew how to play already.) Also, Kaylyn had to use the train bathroom to change her pants, and she was so afraid of it! But she did it anyway. I've never used the bathrooms on there. Or on an airplane.

Then once we were in Layton, Nate took us on a canyon adventure while Shell stayed home with the kids. It was weird doing that without Michelle there... all the rappels seemed so much scarier!

Ryan and Kaylyn both were climbing all over the place the entire time! And they enjoyed hiding behind rocks and trying to scare us. It worked one time.

Kaylyn lookin fly in the slot canyon

Team building

Smiles all around

Nate, our fearless leader

 Ryan rappelling

Mason being cute

Who's buns are those way up there?

Why, they're mine, thank you for asking. This was a big scary rappel. I think it was about 80-90 feet, if I'm remembering right. I had a nosebleed right before I went down. There were tons of biting flies at the top. And it was so scary!

SO RELIEVED TO BE DONE.

And then Kaylyn blew through this one like a total champ!

And then nate put us all to shame with the record descent.

We had to cross some really cold water!

And then Ryan stepped on a cactus in his bare foot. (His shoe and sock had a giant hole that left his big toe totally exposed!

And then on the hike back to the car, we got to see some amazing views

We explored around Temple Square in Salt Lake.

We weenie roasted and Kaylyn taught a bunch of people songs on her ukulele.

And of course I can't leave out these two gems.

It was a blast. I hope Ryan and Kaylyn consider going to BYU one day, because it is a special place, and living by the Waites ROCKS.

Then, just a little while after Ryan and Kaylyn were home in GA, the Griffioens came out to play! It was so great to see them. We did a lot of the same things with them as we did with Ryan and Kaylyn, anthough I didn't take nearly as many pictures. I did really enjoy one night when Beck and Ben met Mason and I at Swig, and then went back to our apartment to play Nertz. They are so fun! (Also, it's a good thing we saw them that night, because we reminded them their flight was the next day. They thought it was the day after. That was a close one!)

It was also so fun seeing their kids. We spent some time up at the Waite's house again with the Griffioens and it was fun to see all the kids playing together.

We also picked the neighbors raspberries, which were delicious!

The trip to McCall is always such a treat. It is fun seeing Mason's family and spending time with everyone. The highlights for me this year were playing frisbee golf with Maddie and Tony, going on the ski-do things (basically giant jet skis), and playing corn hole with my peeps. I love this reunion! Also, as an added bonus this year, Mason's parents got a sweet cabin within walking distance from the place we usually stay. Mason and I slept there the first night, but then we roughed it in our tent by the lake the rest of the week. As per tradition.

Also, Mason and I did a race! Neither of us trained too intensely for it, ha, but we both had a good time. It was called The Wasatch Half/10K. Mason did the half, I did the half of the half. It was so beautiful. It was fun to actually not care about my time and to just take it slow and have fun.

That same day (a Saturday) we drove down to Vegas to see the Parkeses for our last hurrah. Mason forgot to bring his church clothes! Luckily he had some old clothes from high school still in his closet. (Which afterward, we cleaned out thoroughly!)

On our drive back, we hit a deer on the highway outside of Fillmore. The thing totalled our car! We are so grateful we are both ok. We were going about 80 mph when we hit it!

It ended up being a tender mercy. We were both ok, we got some money from our insurance, and we didn't have to tow our car behind us on our drive to Alabama, saving us money on the trailer and the truck (we got a 12' instead of 16'). Also, everyone we had to work with after this (AAA, the highway patrol guy, Progressive...) was so nice and helpful and explained how everything works in great detail to these two ignorant college kids.

Then the rest of the summer was filled with packing and loading and taking finals and quizzes early.

 Our vacuum just decided to completely die while we were doing our final cleaning. 

All loaded up in our 12' budget truck!

I'll save pictures from the drive for another post.

The things I miss the most about Utah are:
-The dryness. It is SO HUMID HERE.
-The mountains.
-And most of all: the Waites. I miss being close to them. I wish they could move to Auburn so we could still hang out all the time.

I realize that I missed a couple things we did this summer, like hiking Horseshoe Canyon with the Waites, for example, and our last hurrah at their house where we just sat around and talked for like 4 hours. But an incomplete blog post is better than no blog post!