My Recent Adventure

WARNING, THIS IS A LONG ONE! :) THE SHORT VERSION IS: I went to Missouri to drive back with Rena, we have a good trip, and are now safely home.


I recently went to Missouri to drive home with my daughter from college. The adventure kind of starts Thursday night, because I chose to wait until after teaching the last week of classes before the recital, before I left. My students greatly appreciated that! So my husband drove me to Beaverton, where my parents live, and I stayed the night with them. In the morning....very EARLY in the morning...my very generous father got up at 4:00 with me and drove me to the airport.
I appreciate safety, but I am not thrilled with the extent to which the airports go to insure it. I did not pack any shampoo, conditioner or anything liquid; I did not bring a crochet hook to work on my projects (I sent it ahead); I made sure I didn't break any of their "rules"; but because I chose to dress comfortably, in a baggy shirt, I had to be patted down at the security. I was definitely NOT thrilled about that. But I made it through security without any problems and proceeded to my gate.
I have recently been very ill and have not regained my strength as yet and so, though I only had two bags and they weren't really that heavy, it was a bit of a struggle to get to my gate of departure. I as tired and felt like I'd had an intense workout. The flight wasn't boarding yet, so I decided to call Brian to pass the time. That's when I realized I no longer had my phone! The thought of having to go all the way back to the security area made me feel like crying; I looked around in desperation for a locker to store my bags, to no avail. I would have to carry those bags all the way back to security, and then back to my gate. I prayed for strength and began the looonnggg trudge back, I really didn't think I could do it. Then I realized I could use the human conveyor belt! Though it was not long, nor did it anywhere near cover the area I needed to go, it was so helpful! I made it to security, got my phone back and made it safely on the plane in plenty of time....no collapsing from exhaustion!
My connecting flight was in Fort Worth Texas. Now I am not a morning person, so my brain does not think straight in the morning, or when I have not had enough sleep. Just thought I'd defend myself before I say that I could not figure out what was going on with my connecting flight. I checked the huge reader board that has all the outbound flights. It didn't have the right flight number or time, but the time was close and the airline was correct and the city, so I decided to go to the gate and see what they could tell me. This was a huge airport, and they have these airrail type shuttles that take you to your gate area. So I got on one to take me to the area I thought I was suppose to be at. Thankfully, during that short ride, it occurred to me that perhaps I was not flying into St Louis MO, I looked at my ticket and, sure enough, I had the wrong city! I got off the shuttle, found another reader board, figured out the correct flight and made it to my gate just as the final boarding call was being announced. I was praising the Lord for helping me get there on time.
Rena was not at the airport when I arrived. It took her longer than anticipated to get there, so I sat down to wait for her. I told her where I'd be, so watched for her. When she got there, I stood up and waited for her to notice me. This was not a huge airport, but busy enough, numerous people around. When she saw me, she exclaimed "Mommy!" and threw her arms open for a hug. Can't begin to express how sweet it was.
We had told Rena to get everything packed, that she and I would be packing the car that night so we could leave first thing in the morning. We didn't get back to her college until almost 6 o'clock. She ran to get dinner, we went to her room and it was a mess. Only a portion had been packed, she still needed to return books to the library, and run a couple other errands. We didn't actually start backing the car until 8:00. Again I wanted to cry, there was no way we were going to fit everything in her car. She owns a '95 saturn SL1. It is a small car. She had a lot of stuff. Not the best combination. So we had to figure out what we were going to do about it. The first thing we chose to do was to take the clothing out of boxes and just stuff it in where ever we could make it fit. That helped a lot. We had saved room behind the driver's seat for her mini fridge; there was no way we were going to fit it and the rest of her things in the car. So she called a friend and asked if she could leave a couple things with her. Thankfully she said that was fine...what a relief. We packed up the rest of her junk, she did go through it and ended up giving some things away to the ladies auxillary and tossing some things, and even had time to relax a little before heading to bed.
I had tried to schedule our trip so that we would have 3 twelve hour days of driving. It isn't always easy to tell on a map how long it is going to take you to get from point "A" to point "B". I also used online information to book our hotels. We belong to AAA so I used that to guide me....not always accurate.
So really the entire trip went very well overall. We had great weather for most of it, only a little rain the last day, so we were very blessed to have decent roads, light traffic and good weather. The first day went well travel wise. We got to the town our hotel was in, it was a ways into town, as we drove farther, and farther into town, it got dirtier and more rundown. The hotel was not the in the greatest neighborhood, I feared Rena's car would get broken into. We brought in everything valuable and made sure the door was double/triple locked. I chose not to let it keep me up...it was only 'stuff' and I left in it the Lord's hands, and He kept our things safe. We were happy to shower, eat dinner (which was from the worst Taco Bell EVER!!!) and watch tv. We fell asleep, and Rena, the now heavy sleeper, slept blissfully through the night. I, however, was awakened about an hour after I fell asleep by the thundering herd above us. I actually think it was only one person, but he walked VERY heavily and seemed to find it necessary to walk back and forth MANY MANY times! Of course he got up early the next day as well! UGH!!!
The Mystery!!!
The next day on the road was as nice as the first. We were excited to be gaining an hour of time. I was driving when we passed the time zone and Rena happened to be texting, so she noticed that her phone time had changed...YAY! Soon after we stopped at a rest stop...I like to refer to it as the rest stop from the twilight zone. doodoo doodoo, doodoo, doodoo. We stopped at this rest stop and the first odd thing we noticed was in the bathroom. There toilets, sinks and hot air dryers as most rest stops, but we don't really like to use the air dryers, so we always check for paper towels. The thing is, there were paper towels in the garbage, but no paper towel holder anywhere!!! We looked and checked and searched and there just wasn't one to be found...where did they obvious restroom paper towels come from? After we got outside, Rena was checking her phone for messages, and she noticed it had the wrong time, it said it was 12:30 when it should have said 10:30...we were quite confused about the whole thing. I checked my phone and it said the same time...we had to take them off automatic adjusting and change the time for them to read right....we were fine with getting out of there! Too strange!!!!!!!
I was a little concerned about the hotel for the second night, but kind of had a good feeling about it, so reserved judgement for when we got there. It was SO nice (for the kind of hotel it was) and we loved the little town it was in...just fell in love with Logan, Utah. It was a sweet little town, with lots of character. I am hoping to go back some day with my honey and explore it a bit. It is a beautiful area, old town charm and being a mormon town, very friendly.
We made it home fine...maybe a little worse for wear physically, but had some nice mother/daughter time together, and a good adventure to add to out memories.