Back from Our Trip

We returned from our trip to Arizona Wednesday night to find all well here at home. It appears that Sarah, Joel, Eliza and Richard got along fine here while we were away. We appreciate Sarah and Joel running Rich back and forth to work on Saturday, Tuesday, and Wednesday morning. They all had dinner here with the Barretts on Sunday, and then they went over to the Barretts for the Cinco de Mayo on Monday. From the blog pictures, it looks like everyone had a lot of fun.

Steven and I enjoyed our session at the Mesa Temple. We were selected to be the witness couple, so that was nice. (I knew I had creaky knees, but I didn't know just how creaky until I had to keep standing up during the session. Every time I stood, my knees could be heard creaking quite loudly!) After the session, we had a good dinner in the temple cafeteria. I thought it was funny that there was a shaker of cayenne pepper along with salt and pepper on every table. At the hotel in the breakfast room were three different kinds of hot sauce on every table. Must make sure things are hot if you're in Arizona!

When we returned to the hotel, we walked around the area for awhile, then went to our room to read and relax a bit before bed. The next morning we were up and on our way by 8:00 again. That's really quite a record for us. (Too bad it was actually 9:00 Utah time, and we would lose an hour on our way home.) We enjoyed our ride home across the reservation again. From Phoenix we drove straight to Flagstaff without going by way of Holbrook, so it was a little faster on the way home. We enjoyed the Vermillion cliffs and thought we'd stop at the cafe at Cliff Dwellers for lunch. But when we got there, we decided not to stay because there were lots of other people there as well and it was really noisy because they were all drinking and having a loud old time. We had hoped to have a nice quiet lunch enjoying the beautiful scenery of the area. But since that didn't work out, we drove on up the mountain to Jacob Lake for a rest stop. When I came out of the restroom, Steven pointed at a lady sitting at the counter and said, "It looks like this is where Nedra's daughter comes when she wants to eat out." I didn't think it was Nedra Pauline because her hair and makeup weren't all fancy like they had been a few days before. But then I could see that it really was her. I told Steven I thought she could tell we were looking at her and talking about her. Anyway, we then drove down off the mountain to Kanab, ready for some good Mexican food at Nedra's Too; but it turns out that Nedra's Too is closed on Wednesday. That's why Nedra Pauline was at Jacob Lake having a bite to eat! It was her day off! (That's funny because when I worked at Jacob Lake we used to like to go to Nedra's in Fredonia to eat on our days off.) On Saturday, the lady at the tourist center had told us about another Mexican restaurant in town, Escobar's, so we decided to go there instead. Steven had some cheese enchiladas verde and I had a fish taco, which were both really tasty. I especially loved the enchiladas verde. I would go there again just to have those--plus the homemade chips and salsa. I thought the chips and salsa were so good, in fact, that I got some to take home. Yum! After Kanab we got into quite the rainy weather. The weather had been great up to that point. So it pretty much rained on us from Beaver until we got to Utah valley. We did stop in Beaver for ice cream again; at least I had ice cream--raspberry pecan, which was very delicious. How come Steven didn't have ice cream at either of our stops at the cheese factory? He said none of the flavors appealed to him. But, I'm always sure that there will be at least one flavor that appeals to me! Anyway, we had a very fun trip and enjoyed being able to spend some time together and relive a lot of old memories and make some new ones. I think of it as a tender mercy from the Lord that things could work out so that we could go away together for a few days. Thanks to everyone at home for keeping things together and taking care of everything while we were gone!