Northwest adventure (day 2)

Thursday, July 31, 2008

Idaho

I awoke this morning about 6:30 and used the time while others in our room were still sleeping to read five chapters from the Book of Mormon and to finish Are We There Yet?, one of the books I received for my recent birthday. A little before eight o'clock I drove Shauna to the place in downtown Boise where her Scentsy convention began.

When we were all up and fed and ready for the day, somewhere around ten, we headed out for our day's adventures. We drove through downtown and then along Warm Springs Avenue to visit the site of the old penitentiary, which operated from 1870 (seven years after Idaho was organized as a territory) until 1973 (when the facility was replaced by a new state prison built at another location). After we paid our entry fee, we joined a tour group that was already in process. The older gentleman who conducted the tour was a wealth of information and stories about what had happened at the penitentiary during the century of its operation. He was fascinating to listen to, and we didn't mind that his tour lasted far longer than it was supposed to. (During the evening, after Shauna was back with us, the children were recounting some of the stories to her in great detail.)

Also housed at the penitentiary site, not because they had anything to do with the prison but because space was available, were museums relating to early transportation and to the development of electricity in the state of Idaho. There was also a firearms museum, but we did not go into that.

Michael called a friend of his (TJ Eardley), who used to work with him at Deseret Book and who now lives here in Meridian, just west of Boise. They agreed to meet for lunch at 1:00 at a place on Broadway across from Julia Davis Park called The Ram. I called my brother Jerry, and he and his roommate Jim were already in downtown Boise, just minutes away from The Ram, so I invited them to lunch as my guests. When we got to the restaurant, the three of them (TJ, Jerry, and Jim) were sitting in front visiting with each other. They had already figured out that they were waiting for the same people.

The food was good (I had a garlic swiss burger that TJ recommended as being good, and it was), and the visit even nicer.

After lunch and good-byes, we found the Discovery Center of Idaho and spent the rest of the afternoon there. The children participated in a tower building contest using plastic straws and masking tape. Caleb tied for second place in the most creative category. We then spent a couple of hours with the numerous hands-on exhibits throughout the center. It was both enjoyable and educational.

The center closed at five o-clock, and we were supposed to pick Shauna up thirty minutes later. Since the Discovery Center, located just at the edge of Julia Davis Park, was only a couple blocks from where we were to meet Shauna, we decided to use the half hour we had to drive up to the freeway to show the kids the Boise Idaho Temple and then back into downtown to find Shauna. She had had a thoroughly enjoyable day at her convention.

We returned to the motel for about an hour, then headed again through downtown and along Warm Springs Avenue to the Municipal Park along Walnut Street and the Boise River to attend the family picnic being held in conjunction with Shauna's Scentsy convention. Boise has a lot of urban park space and an impressive greenbelt through much (perhaps all) of the town along both sides of the Boise River. We ate our picnic dinner, which consisted of green salad, potato salad, coleslaw, baked beans, corn-on-the-cob, beef or chicken barbecue, and drinks. There were ice cream, popsicles, or watermelon for dessert. We met another person Michael knew from Intermountain Healthcare, Ryan Day, whose wife is also involved in Scentsy, and they were up for the convention from Herriman, Utah. We ate at the same picnic table, just a stone's throw from the Boise River, and visited with the Days. After eating, Caleb, Jacob, and Andrew went and played on the big inflated bouncy toys that had been set up throughout the park.

After we left the park, we drove a little further along Warm Springs Avenue and showed Shauna where the penitentiary was that we had visited this morning. The children shared their stories from the guide we had there. We then went looking for a Wal-Mart, somewhere on Overland Road, filled the car with gas, which is cheaper here in Idaho than in Utah, and returned after dark to the motel. It had been a fun and memorable day.

Northwest adventure (day 1)

Wednesday, July 30, 2008

Utah, Idaho

Our trip to Boise and beyond began this morning a little after ten o'clock as we pulled out of our driveway in Bountiful. Michael and Shauna had come from Layton to Bountiful to drop the twins off with Grandma, who bravely agreed to tend the 18-month-olds for the next four days. That left seven of us in our traveling party: Michael, Shauna, Meghan, Caleb, Jacob, Andrew, and me.

Our first stop was at the post office in Bountiful, where we stopped to buy first-class stamps, pasted them in the travel books Michael had published for this trip, and had them hand cancelled with a Bountiful postmark.

Then we headed north on I-15 until it was joined just south of Ogden by I-84 and continued on through Weber and Box Elder counties until we reached the Idaho border. The children were busy looking for various things: the air museum just off the freeway near Hill Air Force Base, cows, horses, sheep (for which they substituted llamas), airplanes, busses, letters of the alphabet on signs, old barns, etc. as a part of travel packets their aunt had prepared for them. As they completed various items they could open little gifts she had prepared for them.

We stopped at the first rest stop we came to in Idaho, about five miles after we left Utah, and then continued along I-84 toward Twin Falls. Michael had driven until we came to the rest stop. I drove until we came to Twin Falls.

Our purpose in stopping at Twin Falls was to attend the open house for the newly completed Twin Falls Idaho Temple of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. New temples are opened up for public tours before they are dedicated to their sacred purposes of ordinance work and instruction. We were scheduled for a 1:30 tour, which we were about ten minutes late for, not bad for having driven all the way from northern Utah.

At the open house we started in the adjacent stake center, where we received a brief orientation and watched a short video about the purpose of temples and the history of the Church in the Twin Falls area. Then tour guides took us through the temple. At the front entrance into the temple they had us put plastic foot coverings over our shoes (so as not to unduly soil the carpets throughout the temple). We proceeded through the entry and waiting areas to the baptistry in the rear part of the temple. We explained to the children why the baptismal font is placed on the backs of twelve oxen, following the pattern used in Solomon's Temple anciently as recorded in the Old Testament, the oxen representing the twelve tribes of Israel. We then walked up a staircase to the upper level, where we walked through the women's dressing room, the bride's dressing room, the ordinance rooms used for the endowment (the one we were in had a gorgeous mural showing the Shoshone Falls on the Snake River), the celestial room, and a sealing room. One of the nice touches was use of a symbolized version of the Idaho state flower, the syringa or mock orange, throughout the temple in the woodwork, the windows, in designs in the carpets, etc. We then left the temple and returned to the cultural hall of the stake center for light refreshments (cookies and water).

While in the temple one of the ushers asked me if I were Dean Cleverly, and it turned out that I was. And the thought popped into my head that his last name was Jensen, and it turned out that it was. He was Gary Jensen, who had served with me in Brazil nearly forty years ago when we were missionaries in the Brazil North Mission. He now lives here in Twin Falls. A small world.

After leaving the temple, we stopped to eat a late lunch/early dinner at the Perkins restaurant. We then found the Twin Falls post office and bought postage stamps, affixed them to our travel books, and had them hand cancelled with a Twin Falls postmark.

We had talked about taking the scenic drive through the Snake River Canyon but decided to continue along I-84 toward Boise. Michael was driving again. We stopped at the Malad River Gorge State Park, just off the freeway near the town of Bliss, for about ten or fifteen minutes, our version of scenic lite. The deep chasm carved into the lava rock was impressive, even a little erie as we stood on the foot bridge that spans the chasm. The kids were not sure they liked that feeling.

We stopped at the rest stop just before the freeway exit to King Hill and just before the highway crosses the Snake River again. I resumed driving from there to Boise.

We reached Boise a little before seven o'clock and dropped Shauna off to pick up the registration materials for the Scentsy convention she is attending the next three days. We went and found our motel, a low-end EconoLodge not far from the downtown site where the convention is being held. When Shauna called, I drove over and picked her up. The only challenge with navigating downtown Boise are all the one-way streets that we are not particularly familiar with.

We had two adjoining rooms at the motel, numbers 316 and 318 on the top floor of the motel. Michael, Caleb, Jacob, and I stayed in room 318, which had two queen-sized beds. Shauna, Meghan, and Andrew stayed in room 316, which had one king-sized bed. Each room had a microwave and a refrigerator and was adequate for our needs, clean, but definitely not spacious or fancy or very up-to-date. Our idea of roughing it.

A bit of ingenuity

Paul and Eliza and their little Peter are currently making their way across the country from Utah to Georgia. Two days ago they called from Sidney, Nebraska, to report they had successfully completed their first day of travel. Last night they called from St. Joseph, Missouri, to report completion of their second day.

They were planning to have Hot Pockets for dinner, but the motel where they were staying had no microwaves or toasters in the room or even in the lobby area. So, in a burst of creative ingenuity, Paul took out the iron and ironed their dinner. Eliza said it worked. And thus the hungry travelers were filled.

Bryce Canyon half marathon

Over the course of our lives Claudia and I have made the drive along I-15 from northern to southern Utah many, many times—some of them before there even was an I-15. Most were a part of the regular trips to southern California when Grandma and Grandpa Lange still lived there. Nowadays a trip to California is more likely to be by airplane, particularly since there are just the two of us and not a whole carload of kids too.

In more recent years trips to southern Utah were exactly that: trips to southern Utah, for such things as visiting our daughter and hubby when they lived in Hurricane, or watching various of our children run in the St. George Marathon a couple different times, or more recently visiting my brother and his wife first in St. George and now in Hurricane.

The past two days took us to southern Utah again, this time to the Bryce Canyon area, where our youngest daughter was running a half marathon. We left midday on Friday and headed south through the various familiar counties—Davis, Salt Lake, Utah, Juab, Millard, Beaver, Iron—that I-15 runs through. We took a short break at Scipio and continued on until we exited the freeway south of Beaver on Utah highway 20, which happens to be just twenty miles long as it heads east from I-15, through some mountains, and ends at U.S. 89 of the other side. A pleasant, scenic drive.

With the high price of gasoline (at now over $4.00 a gallon), I decided to employ some of the elements of hypermiling that our younger son uses so effectively to boost his gas mileage in his ten-year-old Saturn. I decided to drive only 65 miles per hour while still on the freeway, even after the speed limit increases to 75 south of Spanish Fork. Most cars were going faster, but I was surprised to encounter an occasional fellow traveler who was driving slower like we were.

Once we were on U.S. 89 we continued south to Panguitch. About seven miles south of there, we intersected with Utah highway 12, the route that runs toward Bryce Canyon. We turned east onto highway 12, and near the intersection of 89 and 12, perhaps a third or half a mile east of the intersection, we found our motel, Harold's Place Inn, and checked in. The entire drive from Bountiful to our motel had taken only four hours and fifteen minutes, including our brief stop in Scipio.

After we had made our original reservation at Harold's Place, my assistant at work (whose grandparents live in nearby Tropic) told me that there were many places much closer to Bryce Canyon and gave me a list of ten other motels to try. I called every single one of them, and none had vacancies for this particular weekend. That is not surprising, given that July has to be the normal height of the tourist season for the Bryce area, not to mention all the additional people in town for the half marathon.

We then drove the seventeen miles or so on to Bryce Canyon. The road goes through the very scenic Red Canyon, and we greatly enjoyed the drive, which incidentally only took us about fifteen minutes rather than the half hour my assistant had suggested.

Near Bryce Canyon we called Mary on her cell phone, and she directed us to where they were camping in the large campground just south of Ruby's Inn. She and Vince had driven down this morning to make sure they were early enough to find a suitable campsite before the campground filled up. There were two other couples staying with them. The husbands were friends that grew up with Vince.

After visiting a while, Claudia and I went to eat dinner at the Ruby's Inn restaurant. We had the cowboy buffet. The restaurant was very crowded, and we heard a lot of tourists speaking German, but the whole arrangement was very efficient, and we did not have to wait long to be seated. After we ate, we looked through the general store and some other little shops trying to find some balloons for the race Saturday morning, but apparently balloons don't sell well in such touristy places.

We returned to the campground, and Peter and Anna had also arrived, and we visited briefly with them before driving back to our motel. The drive through Red Canyon at dusk was also very pretty.

We watched the first episode of the new season of Monk on the TV in our motel room. It was followed by the first episode of Psych, but I fell asleep and did not see much of that.

The alarm on my cell phone went off at 5:00 Saturday morning, way too early for anyone to be up, except that we had to pack up our things, check out of the motel, and drive back through Red Canyon to Ruby's Inn for the 6:00 start of the half marathon. Mary was running with the wives of Vince's two friends. The elevation is above 7,000 feet, and it was downright cold at 6:00 in the morning. (On the drive between Red Canyon and Ruby's Inn we passed a sign saying "Summit 7,777 feet.")

We watched the race start, and then drove part way along the race route and parked to wait for the three girls to come by, and held out our signs that Claudia made many years ago when we watched Anna and Eliza run in the Lake Tahoe Marathon. It was in a gorgeous setting as we watched the sun come up and spread across the intricate red rock formations. We listened to a new Tabernacle Choir CD, "Called to Serve," that Claudia had given me before we left the motel as my birthday present. We were somewhere between miles 4 and 5 of the 13.1-mile course when Mary and her two friends passed.

When the traffic was allowed to continue in an eastbound direction along highway 12 (police officers alternatively piloted east- and then westbound traffic along the half of the road the runners were not using), we continued down through Tropic and beyond to Cannonville, where the finish line was. I say down because the elevation drop from the start to the finish of the race was some 2,000 feet. It's hard to image a marathon route with more breath-taking scenery than this one had.

We parked within a block of the finish line in Cannonville and waited for Mary to come in. Pete and Anna had joined us, and Vince and his two friends were there too.

After Mary finished the race, Mary and Vince, Peter and Anna, and Claudia and I went to breakfast at a restaurant back in Tropic. Pete and Anna treated Claudia and me for my birthday. We all had some sort of omelet, except Anna who had pancakes and scrambled eggs on the side. The service was exceedingly slow; it appeared they were severely understaffed. So it was late morning by the time we finished eating.

We drove Vince and Mary back to their campground, said our good-byes, and we headed for home, a final time through the beautiful Red Canyon, and back to Panguitch, where we stopped to fill the minivan with gas. Rather than travel back along the familiar I-15, we decided to stay on the more scenic (and for us different) U.S. 89. I was glad we did. This route took us through parts of Garfield, Piute, and Sevier counties.

Around Marysville (and just before the battery on my cell phone died) Camilla, Chris, and Sam called from Everett to wish me a happy birthday. Camilla had just returned herself from a week of training at the Great Harvest headquarters in Dillon, Montana. She finished Friday afternoon and drove to Spokane, where she stayed overnight, before waking up early Saturday morning and continuing on home to Everett.

We traveled north on U.S. 89, Claudia sleeping much of the way, until it merged with I-70 heading eastbound. We exited at Salina and continued northward on U.S. 50 until we came to Scipio and rejoined I-15 northbound.

And then on home, with a brief rest stop in Nephi, continuing at our 65 miles per hour. I was very tired by the time we reached home. Claudia felt it took us forever to drive just through Utah Valley.

Interestingly, our return trip from Panguitch to Bountiful took only four hours and five minutes. So, both routes—our more conventional I-15 and the more scenic combination of U.S. 89, I-70, and U.S. 50—were fairly comparable in terms of distance and time.