Friday, March 27, 2009

Utah Trip - March 2009

Dorine, Kiley, and I went to Provo, Utah last Friday, March 20, staying until yesterday, March 26. The primary reason for the trip was to see our daughter Devery and her husband Easton (D&E), but we ended up seeing lots of family and old friends. We left Albuquerque at about 6:00 pm on Friday and made pretty good time, arriving in Provo at 3:15 am on Saturday morning. We crashed that first night (i.e., morning) at D&E's apartment in south Provo, but then we spent the next five nights at the Provo Super 8 Hotel on Canyon Road at University Parkway. (That particular Super 8 is a decent hotel for the price, having all the amenities that I require, anyway -- free wireless internet, a continental breakfast with waffle machines, an exercise room with a treadmill, and an indoor pool and spa.) We have acquired the habit of listening to the Harry Potter audiobooks on long trips in the car -- for which Kiley's 30-gig iPod comes in handy -- and on this trip we finished off the seventh book (Deathly Hallows) and started over on the sixth book (Half-Blood Prince).

On Saturday, after sleeping in to recover from the long drive up, we went to eat at a Village Inn, and then we did some shopping at the mall in Orem. That evening, D&E took us out to eat at a Training Table restaurant on University Parkway, and then we went back to their apartment to watch Cold Comfort Farm, a British comedy that we fell in love with (and which I have since bought on eBay and can't wait to watch again). The next morning, we went to sacrament meeting with D&E in their BYU ward, and then we had lunch with them at their apartment. That evening, we took Devery and drove out to Pleasant Grove and had dinner with my brother Roger and his wife Lynnea at their home.

On Monday, we went shopping at the Provo Towne Center in the morning. Later we went to visit my brothers Jeff and Robin (and their wives, Marlyn and Karolyn) at their place of work in Pleasant Grove before driving on to Salt Lake City, where we picked up Devery from work and then went out to Grantsville to visit Dorine's brother Brian, his wife Dona, and their kids. On Tuesday, we spent most of the day with D&E, as Devery took the day off work and Easton had only one scheduled class. We shopped around town all day, then went and had dinner with Robin and Karolyn at their home in Pleasant Grove.

Wednesday was a "guys' day out," as I spent the day with Bob Maes, my old BYU roommate, who lives in Cedar Hills with his wife Marti and works in Salt Lake City as a postal inspector. (Dorine took Kiley up to Salt Lake City to visit with Dorine's relatives.) Bob and I had lunch at Iggy's Sports Grill in Orem with Jeff Aldous and Chuck Canfield, who also lived on the seventh floor of "T" Hall in BYU's Deseret Towers dorm complex during the 1977-78 school year. (I hadn't seen Chuck -- a physician who lives just down the street in Highland from Lenard Brunsdale, one of our old bishops when he lived here in Albuquerque -- since the end of winter semester in April 1978. I also hadn't seen Jeff, a lawyer who lives in my brother Kelly's stake in north Provo, in a number of years.) We sat at Iggy's and talked for a solid three hours, catching up on the events of the last 31 years; the attached photo, taken with my cell phone's camera, shows (L-R) Chuck, Bob, and Jeff. Bob and I talked about going backpacking this summer in New Mexico's Gila Wilderness -- I need to look into possible routes. That night, Dorine, Kiley, and I went out to eat one last time with D&E, also inviting Devery's cousin Hillery John and her husband Kevin, at a decent Chinese buffet out on State Street in, I think, Pleasant Grove. And later, D&E came back to our hotel for a swim before Devery had to go home to bed.

We came home the following day, Thursday the 26th, running into some bad weather and snow-packed roads, especially in Price Canyon as we left Utah Valley. However, we took it slow and made it through the canyon okay, and the roads were clear the rest of the way to Albuquerque. (Then it snowed last night in Albuquerque.)