Tag: vacation

Kyle and I drove down to San Diego for my younger brother Colton's graduation from boot camp (he's going into the Marine reserves). Mom and Dad flew out from Frisco, too. It was awesome fun, and we're totally exhausted.

Thursday afternoon, Kyle took off work and we drove down, stopping in LA to see Josh and have dinner with him. Thanks again, Josh, for the best hamburger of my life! It was great to catch up with Josh (which was also a nice break in the 8-hour drive).

Friday morning, we were told to be ready to leave the hotel at6:30 am, which was an even bigger deal since we didn't get into the hotel until 11:30 Thursday night. We actually did manage to get down to breakfast at 6:30, and Mom and Dad were late, so it worked out alright. We headed over to the Marine Corps Recruit Depo (MCRD) in time to see the colors ceremony at 7:30. It was neat, and we got to hear the band!

Then we had an hour or so to knock around the base and its museum before the graduation ceremony. I will just mention this once that it was very hot and we were in full sun the entire time. In good news, though, we had sunscreen. The recruits looked pretty impressive:

There was a lot of marching, by both the band and the recruits. Also a lot of flags, music, and ceremony. But they were eventually declared graduates and released!

I'm so proud of Colton and what he's accomplished already. I also really enjoyed hearing him call other people "sir." Heehee.

Lessee, after that we headed over to the PX so Colton could do some errandy-type things before leaving the base. (Apparently, the boy cannot pass a store of any kind without going in and looking around, though he rarely buys anything. Go figure.) For a little while I thought I would die, but Kyle and I got some food—right before everyone was ready for lunch. Oh well. We were both still able to eat lunch (we went to the Yard House, the same restaurant Josh had introduced Kyle and me to the night before (only in San Diego, not LA, obviously)) and it was way tasty. I had my second barbecue bacon cheeseburger in 24 hours. This was also when we started to realize how much food Colton can put away. I'm pretty sure he ate 2-3 times as much food as me at every single meal (and more on some occasions!).

After lunch, we went to see the USS Midway aircraft carrier—they've museumed it and it's super cool. My favorite was reading things sailors had said about their experiences (working in the galley or engine room, for example), but it was just really neat to be able to walk all throughout the ship and see how people lived and worked there. They also had a lot of planes in the hangar and on the flight deck that were pretty neat. Colton and I climbed inside a helicopter:

This is a shot of the top of the ship:

Mercifully, this was almost all indoors, giving us all a break from the sun.

Next we went back to the hotel so Colton could change out of his uniform (we all got free admission to the Midway if he kept his uniform on, so he did) and then headed over to see the Mormon Battalion museum. This was a lot of fun because we learned a lot about the Mormon Battalion (surprise surprise), and I just hadn't known much about it beforehand. And look! We even joined up:

After that it was dinner time, so we found a restaurant there in Old Town (the Old Town Mining Co.) and got some grub. Colton again ate a massive amount of food, and when we were all full, we decided we needed dessert, too. So I got cheesecake, Colton got an ice cream sundae thing, and Kyle ordered a slice of chocolate cake that proved to be the largest piece of cake I've ever seen (even bigger than the Great Wall of Chocolate at P.F. Chang's!). It was four layers thick, and each layer was a real layer of cake! OK, that sounds dumb, but just picture a round cake with four full layers. It was an absurd amount of cake, but Kyle managed to finish half of it. Colton, of course, polished off most of the rest.

All that was left that day was an early bedtime. Phew!

We're crossing Arizona today. We detoured across Route 66, taking the scenic route through Oatman. Just before town we came across some Christmas trees:

I include the car and surrounding area just to provide a proper sense of the middle-of-nowhere-ness of the location.

Then when we got into Oatman we had to wait for the daily gunfight to clear the road. So while we waited we got out and bought some kettle corn and watched the baby burro:
That basically made the scenic route worth it.

For Thanksgiving this year, we drove to Provo to celebrate with Erin, Bryce, Will, and Sawyer. We didn't decide until Tuesday that we were for sure going to go; weather was looking not good and we were concerned about driving through the mountains. But it cleared up a bit, and traffic cameras showed dry roads and moving traffic, so we decided to go. It was a very long drive, due to traffic where people were pulling off to put on chains, as the signs dictated. We got one tire chained before a highway patrol officer drove by saying that we didn't actually need chains. And, it turns out, chains are just as hard to remove as they are to put on. Who knew?

We made it into Provo around 10 pm, after 13 hours of driving or so. The good part was when we got to sleep in Thanksgiving morning. So nice. Anyway, then we headed over to Erin's. Kyle took a bunch of pictures of us hanging around and the feast being prepared. I'm including just a few.

Kyle's favorite part of any meal, before...

...and after. They were super tasty, too.

Horsing around with the kiddos:

After all that playing (and more with Kyle, too, though there aren't any pictures of it), the boys were ready for some quiet time. We made hand turkeys!

Lastly, some individual shots. (Nothing of Kyle, though, or Erin even. Blame Kyle!)

Dinner was great, and we spent the rest of the evening there. Included in the festivities was a showing of James and the Giant Peach, which is, I must say, a very odd movie.

On Friday, we ran some errands (including stocking up on Grandma Sycamore's bread and getting fudge from the Bookstore) and then headed up to Riverton to see Tianna and BJ. And Kessa, of course. It was fun to see them and play some games, and then it was back to Erin's for dinner: Papa John's pizza—my favorite!

Saturday was back-on-the-road day. Weather forecasts indicated that we would hit snow almost as soon as we got out of Utah, and it would be snowing all day in the mountains (which we wouldn't reach until after dark). Given this, we thought it best to abandon I-80 and head south on I-15 through Las Vegas, then, once we got into CA, north on I-5. This route had no snow forecasts, and we figured the extra time for the longer route would be balanced (if not exceeded) by the extra time for bad weather (not to mention being a lot safer).

We opted for a last-minute stop in Vegas, since I'd never been there (and our only planned trip to see it had been derailed by my stay in the hospital). Mostly, we planned to drive the Strip and then stop to see the fountains at the Bellagio. This was a great plan, but it ended up taking quite a while to implement. We parked at the Monte Carlo, 'cuz we couldn't find the Bellagio's parking. I didn't realize it at the time, but this would significantly add to the time spent. We wandered around inside the Monte Carlo for a while, trying to find the out, then finally located the tram that would take us to the Bellagio. Once there, we stopped at the Jean-Phillippe Patisserie to view the super cool chocolate fountain and share a Napoleon. Mmm, good. Then we wandered out through the conservatory and to the fountains. I had no idea that lake was so large! Lucky for us, a show was starting in just a few minutes, so we hung around and watched. It was awesome! Then we had to wend our way back to the Monte Carlo. (All this without our coats; I guess we figured that since St. George had been warm, Vegas would be too? So wrong!) All told, we spent about 3 hours in Las Vegas, and if we had known what was awaiting us, we would have skipped it altogether.

Right outside Vegas, traffic was backed up clear to the CA Agricultural Checkpoint, well over 100 miles! It was insane. Of course, the checkpoint was just waving everybody through, but we all still had to slow down, and traffic was a nightmare. Fortunately for me, Kyle was driving. 🙂

We eventually made it home at 1:30 am, after 15 hours of driving and 18 hours after we left Provo. Oy.

Josh flew into town on Friday to hang out for the weekend. On Friday we went and saw The Last Airbender. It was OK. It was incredibly rushed, which was expected since they took an entire season of storyline and tried to make a 100-minute movie. So that was a little disappointing. We found it strange that they decided to mess with the pronunciations of the names. We also found it strange how much they changed some characters, like Iroh. They also didn't include almost any of the humor from the series. It's too bad that so much of the things we didn't like could have been so easily fixed. Extending the movie to 150 minutes would have provided a lot more time to let the story line flow along rather than being hurried. And leaving in the trademark humor that each of the characters' personalities have would have been good.

Anyway. This post isn't about the movie. On Saturday we went to the Alameda County Fair. Getting in had the completely stupid and pointless process of passing through metal detectors. Apparently someone thought that so long as you make everyone walk through a metal detector nothing bad could happen at the fair. We'll just ignore the fact that the perimeter of the entire fair is unmonitored and consists almost entirely of chain-link fence. Surely someone looking to cause trouble wouldn't be bright enough to toss over their supplies and then go get them or to have an accomplice toss over their supplies.

[sigh], That's also not the point. Let's get back on track.

We started by watching the Mutton Bustin' competition. Which is where they plop kids (ages 3-6) on top of a sheep and then let it loose to see how long they can hold on. We then moved on to the chocolate-covered bacon on a stick:

Jess even tried a bite and then proceeded to do her best not to vomit. Josh finished off the whole thing though.

After wandering around for a while we watched the All-Alaskan Pig Racing:
Before leaving we took an obligatory ride on the swings:

It was a fun time. We bought some caramel apples on our way out that were incredibly good. They were Granny Smith apples, covered in caramel, with a layer of yogurt, and sprinkled in cinnamon. The flavor was called apple pie à la mode.