Farewell Sister Bennion, And Farewell Utah (for a couple weeks)

~July 2014~

 My step-sister, Ashley, left on her mission this past July.  She was called to serve in the West Indies mission.  She is now sharing the gospel in Barbados.  We love her and miss her. 

 Before Ashley left, she gave a farewell talk in church, which we got to see, then we had a get-together at my dad's house for everyone to eat and see Ashley before she left.  The food was delicious, as always.

Dad's Sweet and Sour Meatballs

Meatballs, Salad, white and brown rice, Jamaican chicken legs, 5-food-group Salad, Pickles, Veggies, Dip, Fruit Salad

Cake, lemon bars, pie, ice cream, rice crispy treats, candy and fruit

 We ate our fill and said our good-byes to Ashley.  Then we said good bye to everyone else because we left from there on our trip to California.  I was able to snag a couple pics of my well-wishing brother and sister.

Joe maybe had a touch too much sugar.

Preggo April

 Then we were off for a 3 hour drive across the West Desert of Utah and into Northern Nevada.

 We passed this sculpture thing of what I believe is supposed to be an artist's rendition of the solar system in the middle of the salt flats.  I remember always passing this as a kid when we would go to California to visit Grandma and Grandpa Lauret.

 The Salt Flats are such an interesting land formation.  We saw several mirages of water.

More salt flats.  Maybe you can see the water mirage.

Wells, Nevada is "The Gateway to the East Humboldts."  Growing up, my family would drive clear through to Reno before stopping to spend the night on our way to Cali.  I thought that we would take it a little slower, and that meant not traveling as much on our first day- just a few hours.  So, we called Wells home for the evening.  It is a very small town with a couple motels, a gas station, and that's about it.  We stayed at the Super 8 because the prices were cheap, and they had 2 queen beds, a refrigerator and microwave and continental breakfast.  

We are standing in front of the building next to our motel.  It's an old rundown closed casino.

When we got there, we found out why things were so cheap.  The place was old.  The laundry was out of order (not that we needed that).  There were little tiny bugs in the bathroom sink.  I don't know how long it had been since some one had used our room.  It wasn't dusty/dirty necessarily, and I checked the beds for bugs and they were clean.  But the old front door was sorta brittle and didn't close very well, so all you had to do is push, and you were in.  In fact, we were glad we used the swinging lock thingie at the top of the door because at midnight, we had a guy try to walk into our room.  Besides giving us a heart attack, there was no harm done.  The guy was staying in the room next to ours, and he accidently got the wrong door.

Not a lot to do in Wells Nevada.

So, our accomodations were cheap, and not my favorite, but they did the job.  It was air conditioned.  We had our microwave and fridge which allowed us to have our frozen dinners that we had packed.  The TV worked and we got to watch lots of Ninja Warrior, and some dumb Big Foot show.  And in the morning, we had a decent continental breakfast.

I think the girls snapped this pic of Steve "sleeping."