When we got here on Monday afternoon around four, we were surprised--no, shocked--to find the Visitor Center closed and the parking lot gone. Well, the land was still there of course, but the pavement and sidewalk had been ripped up and there was a barrier preventing cars from entering. No one had mentioned this to Budd, so we were a bit perplexed. Before trying to find where everyone was, we drove past the house and tried a key that Budd had been carrying around, knowing it was a Park Service key but unable to determine what it fit. Thankfully, it fit the house! So we started unloading the car. About an hour later the park superintendent, who lives in the second house to the west, dropped by with another key and the DSL modem. I was very happy about that, having understood from the last conversation with the phone company that it would be delivered on Tuesday.
After getting everything into the house, Budd turned his attention to setting up the DSL. That's when elation turned to disappointment, as the modem didn't detect any signal on the line. The next day, I missed a phone call on my cell phone by a second or two, racing out of the shower to pick it up. There is insufficient cell signal here to actually talk, but I was able to pick up enough broken fragments of the message to understand that the tech had decided to reschedule because I wasn't home! NOOOOO!!! I threw my clothes on and raced the car up to the top of the hill to call him back, but no luck...he didn't answer. Left a message that I was home, please don't reschedule, need it TODAY! And didn't hear from him again.
Finally this morning I took matters into my own hands and walked far enough down the road (Budd had taken the car) to get two bars so I could call him again. This time I made him understand that just because I didn't answer the phone it didn't mean I wasn't home. Some other tech showed up about four hours later, and whew!! here I am.
Now, back to the trip. We loaded out on Friday morning in Lakewood and managed to pull away from the hotel only an hour later than we had wanted to. That's almost a record--we never get it done as fast as we think we can. Budd had meant to start loading Thursday evening, but as luck would have it tying up loose ends and a last-minute emergency phone call at the office kept him overtime about two hours. Unfortunately, he had already turned in his time sheet, so Uncle Sam gets that two hours for free. I thought Budd had said that the trip from Lakewood to Salt Lake across I-80 (rather than the I-70 route we took coming the other way in July) would be 5 1/2 hours. I realize now that he wouldn't have said that, as it is over 500 miles, but I kept thinking we were making horrible time as the day wore on. By the time we left Evanston, WY in a rainstorm at 6 p.m., I knew my plan to walk when we got to the hotel was a goner.
Between Evanston and Park City, we were treated to the most beautiful full rainbow, with a faint double just above it. We pulled in at the hotel that was to be our home for the next two nights at around 8:00. I had researched where I could find meals with my calorie and sodium requirements before leaving Lakewood, and was already off track due to not being able to find a Burger King or McDonalds (!) in Ft. Collins. We had stopped at an old-fashioned diner, where the best I could do was get the smallest burger, ask them not to season it and to substitute slices of tomato for the fries. Still, I could only approximate the nutritional information for my tracking. Now in Salt Lake, I was hungry, cranky and determined not to do any more estimating. I wanted what I had planned! Which required by-passing the six or eight restaurants nearest the hotel and traveling 3 miles in the dark and rain to Chili's. There I had my grilled chicken Caribbean salad, which was delicious!
Next morning I was happily texting my son and making arrangements to visit with the kids all day when Budd threw a monkey wrench in that plan. He wanted to go to Springville where we had left our trailer and make sure we could get everything we wanted to bring here into the car. I thought that was terribly inefficient, as Springville would be on the way when we left, but he didn't want to leave it until the last minute to find out we couldn't pack that efficiently and would have to take the pickup. He won.
Still texting the kids, we headed for Springville. Heather and Chris had gone to Wendover the night before and were on their way back. Jared was hanging out with his boys and would be free all day. Laurie and her husband were planning on going to his dad's inspection and emissions shop to get her car registered. Wait...did I remember that my plates were expiring on the 31st? Yes! Could Huggy's dad do mine too? YES!!! Who would have thought, on a Saturday...?
At the trailer, we pulled everything out of the car and began to re-pack more efficiently, but did have to give up on some of the items we had wanted to retrieve, either because we couldn't remember exactly where in the tightly-packed trailer we had left them, or we couldn't get to them without taking out the king-sized mattress, something we needed one more guy to help with. One thing that definitely wasn't going to fit was our tv. It looked like we would finally get that flat-screen we had decided to buy with Budd's bonus from the first Canyon de Chelly detail.
I was still texting back and forth with Laurie trying to get the address for the inspection shop when lunchtime rolled around. My research once again paid off and we went to Taco Bell, where I had beef tacos fresco-style, which meant without cheese or sour cream. Just as we finished, Laurie came through with the address, so we headed out to meet them there. After the inspection and registration were taken care of, we stole Laurie and her husband went to keep a promise to his nephew. Laurie had called us a couple of nights previously to tell us we had won something from a car dealership and it might be a new pickup or $25,000. We tried to convince her that it was probably the MP3-style radio that was the booby prize, but she insisted that we go try our key to see what we had won. 45 minutes later, we arrived at the dealership to discover we were right. And the MP3-style radio turned out to be a pink plastic affair that "looked" like an MP3 player. With Laurie apologizing profusely for the waste of time, we headed back to Draper where she and I had a date to look at baby afghan pattern books so I can crochet a gift for her firstborn, due March 1. Budd dropped us off at the store and headed out to look for the new tv. We had a date to meet up with my son-in-law at Olive Garden, where I had another pre-researched meal planned.
The day was capped by a grand visit with my other daughter, Heather, her son and a couple of her stepsons at her house. Her husband had taken his son and some friends to a varsity football game for their high school, where the son plays junior varsity ball, but when we got to the house, we found the game was being televised and had just started, four hours later than expected! Laurie and Huggy arrived shortly afterward, having gone to pick up Jared and his boys. We all visited, watched the game, and had a great time, although we never got to see Chris or his son or daughter. It was so late by the time the game ended, that we elected not to wait for them to get home, and went on back to the hotel.
Next morning found us up and in the car by 8:30 a.m., but with a trip to WalMart still to do to pick up some supplies I needed and that tv Budd had spotted the day before. We literally had a 6-inch wide hole across 2/3 of the car to in which to fit it, and could have found no other room at all without dumping a suitcase or two. As I shopped for my nutritional supplements and shampoo, a yoga mat and small hand weights (all of which were going to have to ride under my feet in the car), he was debating between a cheap, small tv (that would become a bedroom tv if and when we ever land somewhere permanently) and a 42-inch, state-of-the-art LCD tv that was on sale. Once I had all my purchases ready, I went to find him and he laid out the choices. We were still debating when the salesman said, "Did he tell you this one comes with a Blu-Ray player?" I was already leaning toward the larger one, as long as it would fit in the car. That tipped the balance, and we made the purchase. The look on the salesman's face when he helped us out to the car and we showed him where to put the tv was priceless! We did have to shift a couple of things to make the hole go all the way across the car, but we managed, and were on our way south by 11 a.m.
We stopped in Green River for one of their famous watermelons and continued on to Grand Junction. Between Thompson and Grand Junction we were once more nearly involved in an accident with a driver who wasn't paying attention or possibly was drunk. He passed us on the left, but then swung back into our lane before he was completely past. Budd said we had to stop going to Grand Junction, because every time we do someone tries to kill us.
We spent the night in Grand Junction, which isn't really on the way but gives us a chance to see his mom, stepdad, sister Gaylene and her kids and grandkids. There, for the first time since the lunch at Ft. Collins, I ate something that wasn't in the plan. It was just too much trouble to figure out what else to do when my mother-in-law suggested pizza. I did find that one slice, after a slice of that wonderful watermelon, satisfied my hunger and evidently didn't do much damage to my weight-loss effort as I was on-track when we arrived here.
Next morning I found my father-in-law up and waiting when I rose at six to get in a much-needed walk in the park across the road from their neighborhood. He and his brother routinely walk this park, but as the brother had a doctor appointment, Jim was happy to have someone else to walk with, and we had a very pleasant walk and conversation as we dodged raindrops. After a quick breakfast, Budd and I were on our way again, planning to stop in Moab for a quick visit with his sister and niece.
He called his sister before we set out, saying we'd be there in a couple of hours. I called his niece when we were about half an hour out. During that small period of time, Budd's sister's best friend had passed away after a long battle with cancer. Staying longer than planned to give her a little moral support, we left late and had to grab something quickly for lunch at McDonald's, the only drive-thru on the right side of the road on our way out of town. Mentally counting calories and grams of sodium and not wanting another hamburger, I threw caution to the wind and ordered a classic chicken sandwich, Southern style, and fries. That sandwich turned out to be a fried piece of chicken breast on a lightly-buttered bun with two pickle slices and NOTHING else. I was glad for the grease in the chicken as otherwise it would have been too dry to eat. They didn't include ketchup for our fries, and for the first time in years I forgot to ask if the iced tea was brewed...it wasn't. What a disappointing lunch!
Now I'm back to where I started, arriving here around 4 p.m. on Monday. One of our neighbors kindly invited us to dinner, and I resigned myself to once more eating something I shouldn't, but this time I was very pleasantly surprised. He served grilled farmed catfish (much milder than the wild version I remembered from my childhood), brown and wild rice, steamed kale and carrot slices from his garden, and steamed green beans, also from his garden and garnished with a bit of bacon and onion. It was delicious! To add to the great surprise, he had a package of green beans, kale, a large green onion, and three yellow squash for us to take home.
Yesterday and earlier today were spent getting situated, taking my walk in the campground, which turns out to also be under reconstruction, and grocery shopping. To my dismay but not surprise, I found that there is virtually no healthy-alternative food in the local market. The fruit and vegetables are still from Mexico or points beyond, they don't sell any fish (!) and I found only one vegetable that comes in no-salt-added canned form. The lady that I asked about tilapia for my fish tacos told me their 'grandmothers' are afraid of fish--I guess being a desert tribe they aren't familiar with it at all. She said when they used to stock it, the old women would give it a wide berth in the aisle, walking on the other side and refusing to look at it. I guess I'll have to stock up on weekend trips.
Saving the best for last, I got on the Wii Fit balance board for weigh-in this morning and discovered I'm just under a two-pound loss for this week, despite all the barriers and challenges. I guess moving is good for the program!
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