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.
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