Thanksgiving 2011/ Texas Road Trip

     Of course we spent time with family and ate a lot of food this Thanksgiving.  That’s just what happens this time of year, so I’ll spare you those details and stick to the other ones since this post will be a long one.
     For Thanksgiving this year, it was Corey’s family’s turn.  We opted to drive to Texas this year rather than fly in order to save on expenses.  Oye!  Honestly, I was a little opposed to the idea.  I have never driven that far before and it scared me.  I thought about driving in the snow in my little front-wheel-drive car (which I found out doesn’t have an anti-lock brake system).  I thought about breaking down out in the middle of freaking nowhere (because there’s A LOT of “freaking nowhere” on the way to Texas).  I thought of running into lots of critters during the nighttime while driving.  I thought of falling asleep at the wheel after driving so many hours behind the wheel.  All legitimate concerns, right?
     I have to say, it wasn’t as bad as I had expected.  That doesn’t mean that I’m ready to do it again anytime soon, though.  That was A LOT of hours sitting in a car with a numb bum.
     We left Rigby Friday evening at 7:00 and drove to Cortez, CO where we stopped behind a grocery store at 4:30 am to sleep in the car.  At 6:00 a.m. a delivery truck started beeping and woke us up.  Since we were awake, we thought, “What the heck.  Guess we’ll just start driving again.”  We arrived in Dallas at 11:00 p.m. 
   A couple of observations from our trip:
1)  It’s IMPOSSIBLE to sleep with swing/ big band jazz music and their accompanying brass sections blaring over the speakers.  Keep that in mind should you ever want to drive long distances at night.  It works better than any dose of caffeine. 
2)  I saw more shooting stars in two nights than I have my entire life.  I guess that’s what happens when you stare out into the night for hours on end. 
3)  This is what the Monticello, UT temple looks like at 3:00 a.m.  It was the Church’s first small temple and is about the size of a stake center.

4)  New Mexico is bugly.  It has some interesting rock formations, but most of it is just dirt that blows around with the wind.  You know it’s desolate when some areas won’t even sustain sagebrush.

  Continuing with New Mexico’s weirdness…  I went into a restroom at a gas station and noticed something strange.  Now, if a ladies restroom has a vending machine in it, it usually contains feminine hygiene products for that unlucky someone who finds herself stranded without them.  Not THIS particular New Mexico bathroom.  It had adult toys in its vending machine.  Uck.  Weirdos. 
  And continuing even more with the weirdness of New Mexico…  As we were driving through Farmington, we noticed these two signs.  We flipped a “U-ie” to get a picture!

  Good for the Catholics!  It’s pretty funny that they put that billboard up!  I wonder if it affects the store’s business or not…

5)  Albuquerque isn’t as big as I thought it would be.  It doesn’t take long to drive through it.  Salt Lake is much bigger.
6)  I got to see my first armadillo, and he was big!  He was sniffing around just on the other side of the white line on the road.  I’m glad he stayed put.  It would have been a pity to squish my first armadillo (if armadillos in fact “squish” with all that armor).   
7)  You know it’s flat when the horizon is parallel with the window sill in the car.

8)  Texas cuts their trees to accommodate the trucks that drive through.

9)  Corey and I got to see one of my best friends from high school (Garett) and his wife (Larissa) and their two boys.  We went bowling, ate dinner, and then played games at their house.  It was SOOOOO good to see them!  Just like old times, complete with bantering.  :c)   Sadly, no picture of them. 
10)  We got to go to the Fort Worth Zoo while we were there.  I was super excited!  I haven’t been to a zoo (not counting the teeny one in Pocatello) since I went to the Hogle Zoo on my 6th birthday!  I think I was as excited as our nephews were!  We got to see this handsome boy in the zoo.  I think that the big cats are my favorite. 

Here are some family pictures that we took shortly before Corey and I left to drive back home.

    11)  On the way home, we discovered something about New Mexico that we actually liked.  They have a radio station called Ed-fm.  Talk about FUN music!  We heard songs that we hadn’t heard in a long time and there were some songs I forgot even existed in the 80’s until I heard them on this station.  All of the songs were upbeat, so they helped keep us awake on our drive home.  We were bummed when we started driving into no-man’s-land and lost reception.
12)  I think New Mexico lies.  We saw signs out in the middle of nowhere stating that your speed was monitored by aircraft.  A)  Why would anyone go to the expense of flying aircraft over the area just to catch speeders?  B)  The only “aircraft” I saw were crows.
13)  We stopped at Hole N’ The Rock (which is near Moab, UT) on the way home.  It’s home to a 5,000-square-foot home built into the face of the rocky hill.  This place also had the most random objects lying around, so it was fun to get pictures of them as well.  There are so many pictures of this place that I’m just going to put them in here small and you can click on them to make them bigger.

    All in all, it was actually a pretty good trip.  We were blessed that the drive went without incident, we got to spend good ol’ quality time with Corey’s family, we got to see my friends,  and we got to see lots and lots and lots and of new country, which was actually an adventure.