UTAH

January 30 2007

Well another weekend another road trip and this time we went to Utah to visit some friends. Things didn't start out well as I spent the first half of the week in bed seriously ill. I had fever, lost my voice and was coughing and spluttering like crazy. By Friday it was time to make the fifteen hour cross country journey but I really wasn't feeling up to it. We set off anyway - me clutching my box of tissues and bottle of vaporub and Jon trying to find any way to distract himself from my grumbling. The trip consisted of a short car ride, followed by an hour and a half bus journey to Glenwood Springs, followed by a 2 hour wait (which turned into a 4 hour wait) followed by a 7 hour train ride, followed finally by a 1 hour car ride! Phew.... So we finally arrived at The Becks' house in Mount Pleasant at about midnight on Friday and we were shattered as you can well imagine.

Now I would just like to list all the cool stuff that they have at their house in no particular order: 3 horsies, 2 dogs, a duck, a hot tub outside with a television, a cinema with a Nintendo Wii, a games room ( table football, pool etc), 4 snowmobiles, 3 Quad Bikes, 2 trucks etc etc etc so it isn't really the type of place that you can get bored easily!! As we were only staying for the weekend we had a lot to fit in. Day 1 - Snowmobiling.. Mark (dad) is an excellent snowmobiler and used to race them back when he was younger. Luckily they have four of them knocking around so we all took them out for a day on the mountain. That was fun - snowmobiling is like motorbiking but without the roads and other traffic to bother you. And those things go fast (well mine didn't I like to go slooooooow) but everyone was bombing around like lunatics and there was more than one moment when I felt like I was in a Bond Film! The day wasn't without it's disasters of course, at one point Jon had managed to go the wrong way only to find himself off the beaten track and on top of a cornice that could have collapsed at any moment and sent him plunging fifty feet into the valley quickly followed by an avalanche... he bailed out and then Mark had to go and rescue his machine!!

So after that we spent the night soaking in the hot tub and watching the X-Games and then off to bed. Sunday was an interesting day as our friends are mormens and so of course they spend Sunday at church and doing nice things for people. We decided to join them and after a quick wardrobe change into all their Sunday church clothes we were off for a nice Sunday at church. Made a bit of a difference to the usual Sunday spent on the couch with a hangover.

Mark had also kindly hooked us up with an awesome Chevy Tahoe truck for us to use for the next five months and so that was another reason for our visit. Unfortunately though on Monday night when we were getting set to leave we discovered that a huge storm was about to hit Utah and we were actually going to be snowed in for an extra day! It is lucky that we didnt leave when we were planning to as there were 282 accidents reported on the stretch of road that we were heading for! So this morning we set off and the drive took 8 hours but we have just made it backsafe and sound. No more road trips for a little while as we have a ton of guests arriving in the next few weeks. (maybe I can show them the Jesus DVDs we have brought back with us ha ha)

OK well we are off to the pub there is no beer in Utah..

Caroline x