RV Sabbatical Trip - Day 25 through Day 27

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Day 25 - Explore Salt Lake City, UT, travel to Nephi, UT

 Day 25's Pictures
Today we got up and after the morning routine we headed down to Temple Square. The person at the KOA pointed us to a parking lot which we had no hope of getting into. The attendant garage thing was way, way too narrow and short for our RV to fit into. So we trolled around until we found a parking lot which was just a "self pay" station and it looked relatively empty. We pulled into it and took up a couple of slots. After that we walked up to Temple Square and took in all the sights! Both visitor's centers were under construction as well as are many places on the grounds. We can only assume this is in preparation for the Olympics which are coming here next year. But we got to see close-ups of the Temple, we went inside the Tabernacle building and listened to a performance (that was cool!), and then many other small places and things.

Then we walked across the street to the new conference center. That building is very, very impressive! I cannot believe how much dirt they had to excavate! The conference center itself is underground and there is a 1400-car, 7-story parking lot underneath the seats of the conference center. It was massive!

Since our next destination, Lake Powell, was so far away we decided that instead of driving the entire way the following day that we would drive as far as we could tonight. We set our sights on Nephi, UT which was about 90 minutes from Salt Lake City.

Day 26 - Travel to Lake Powell

 Day 26's Pictures

Well we made it to Nephi, which was a real hole-in-the wall town on the route down to Lake Powell. We stayed the night and began the long trek to Lake Powell after breakfast. It was a lot of driving (as the past several days prior to Logan, UT was), but we passed through some very pretty country that neither of us had been through before. If we had not been constrained by time and the need to get home, we probably would have gone through Zion National Park and also Bryce Canyon. But, at this point in the trip, we'd "seen enough National Parks" no matter how pretty they were, and were very eager to get back to our house. The country around this area is very similar to the grand canyon geology, and very pretty.

This RV park (once we found the bloody thing) had fire pits, so Samuel and his dad procured a box of firewood (for $5) and we had grilled pork chops with the charcoal that we bought back in Oregon . Then we just laid back in front of the fire and we had smores. Boy did Kaley like those! The marshmallows were really sticky (having already melted in the bag) so it was really fun.

Day 27 - Play at Lake Powell, travel back home

 Day 27's Pictures

The next morning (9/22) we drove down to the beach. We had decided the night before that we didn't really want to futz around with renting a boat or a jet ski. John woke up with another head ache that morning so that pretty much iced the decision. So, we just headed down to this little cove beach and went out with the intention of just wading in the water. Well, Samuel being the klutz he is decided to slip and totally fall in and almost drown. His clothes were saturated and Jennifer and I got our shorts wet saving him. Oh well !

After changing clothes we had another brutal drive back to Chandler which took us the better part of 6.5 hours. We got stuck behind a lot of slow people on the road from Lake Powell to the Interstate. When you are slower than we are in our RV, then you are slow!!!

The remainder of the day was spent getting the kids back into their normal homes, getting perishable materials out of the RV and trying to comprehend the magnitude of the trip that we were just on!

We were very fortunate in that we have exceptionally good neighbors who helped look out for our property and dogs while we were away so we arrived to find everything safe and sound which we were very thankful for.

And that in a nutshell is our sabbatical RV trip. We feel extremely blessed to begin with for even being able to take a sabbatical from work. As many who are in the technology industry know, it wasn't a very good year to be in the chip-selling business. So, the timing of the sabbatical away from the madness could not have been better. But on top of that we feel extremely blessed that we could spend that time together as a family. Samuel and (especially) Kaley won't remember anything about the trip--except through the pictures seen in this archive. But hopefully as they grow older we will be able to tell them the stories about how we spent a solid month on the road together.

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