10 Year Anniversary Trip

I think this is the longest post I have ever done with the most pictures, but I have 4 days of memories to capture/remember and it's very detailed (G-rated) because I want to remember it all so if you have an hour, or two, keep reading!

Day One - May 2nd

We were on the road (kid free) by 8am we weren't wasting any time! I didn't care where we went as long as it was warm and I was with Cody. We made it to Pocatello and decided to get something to eat. Jack in the Box was right off I-15 so we stopped there (bad idea, you'll see why later). So after some mini pancakes and a lady with some super pink hair we hit the road again.

 

This was our first "real" stop. Cody has to stop here anytime we are this far south in Utah, it must be a guy thing. Funny thing is we walk out empty handed every time because it's expensive. We did find a really awesome bed that he wants our friend to build for us so he made me take a picture of that so I guess it was worth it right? I did hide from him just to mess with him. I could see him walking around looking for me and then he pulled his phone out to call me and I knew I was going to get busted so I casually walked up to him like I had been there the entire time, but couldn't keep a straight face. = )   There were also these weird creepy fish in their aquarium that had glazed over blackish/grey eyes. The fish looked like it should be dead, but they were swimming around, CREEPY!

Delta, UT! I had never even heard of this place until we met Danny. He works with Cody in North Dakota so we detoured to his place, mostly to look at a Go Kart that he was selling. We had my dad's Garmin and it didn't even recognize Danny's address, it just kept saying "recalculating".  It was pretty funny.  Danny told us "Take the second Nephi exit and once you have made it though town drive west for an hour,...and don't get nervous. Just call me when you get to Lemming" OK if I wasn't nervous before, now I am!!

We FINALLY found Delta, at least the sign. We were still in the middle of nowhere with no town in site, but kept driving anyway and found the actual city were we bought this:

Remember how I told you we ate at Jack-in-the-Box? NEVER-DOING-IT-AGAIN!!! First of all it wasn't that good, second of all it gave both of us the Big D word and lastly we paid $5 for 6 pills! How romantic for us right?

Danny was still at his father-in-laws farm herding and cutting cattle so we decided to explore the big (pun intended) town of Delta.

We saw a full grown woman at 3 in the afternoon in her PJ's at the convenience store renting a movie at the Redbox, then we went to Dollar General were we saw 2 different kids in the store without shoes and found out that the Delta mascot is the rabbits!! We laughed about that one. Then it was off to the biggest store in town, Alsco, where we saw more kids without shoes cruising around in the store. It wasn't very big, it reminded me of a King's store like they have in Rigby and Shelley.

We went and relaxed at the park for a bit which happened to be across the street from the DI (Deseret Industries). The DI and Family History Center were combined and it was in an old house instead of a regular store. We didn't go inside,but now I wish we would've just to see what it was like. It was a weird little town and I swear everyone drives a Chevy Traverse! They were every where we looked, I have never seen so many.

 We met Danny shortly after that and went to his house were we played around on the Go Kart and then just hung out for a bit before we hit the road again. They invited us for dinner, but due to our current conditions, we gracefully declined! Also I've decided that Danny and I are going to get along great because he agrees with me that Cody has an Alka Seltzer obsession!!

(On a complete side note, I LOVED their house!! It is seriously the coolest floor plan EVER! Not to big, not to small, but lots of storage, big great room for family gatherings, amazing shower, etc. LOVED IT!! Cody and I talked about it a lot on the way to St. George and couldn't think of anything we would change about the floor plan. I'm so excited!! Now we just need to find the land and get our hands on the blue prints!)

On the way we saw deer and about a million rabbits, it's no wonder they are the Delta rabbits! We stopped at a gas station called "Love's" which is another weird thing about Utah. In Idaho the gas stations are called "Legends, Hallpark, Gas N' Grub" but in Utah it's stuff like "Harts" and "Love's". It's like being trapped in CareBear Land or something!  It was around 10pm and we decided to have our second meal of the day and got some Subway sandwiches from Love's.

We stayed at the Wingate in St. George and I know it's completely weird that I took a picture of the bed, but as soon as we walked in Cody said "I'm gonna hate those little pillows" and it made me laugh because that is soooo him! He takes an extra big suitcase with him in his luggage so he can carry his own pillow because he doesn't like the pillows at the Bear Paw Lodge. So this picture is for a funny memory NOT to show you where the magic happened.

Day 2 - May 3rd, Happy 10 Year Anniversary!!

After breakfast we spent the entire morning in the BEAUTIFUL almost 90 degree weather relaxing and talking by the pool, it was WONDERFUL!!! Warm sun on my skin, great conversations and great company.

Cody picked me this flower which smelled DELICIOUS!! It was only about the size of a quarter, but it was jam packed with yumminess. I wish I could've bottled the scent and brought it home with me.

 We ate lunch at the Cracker Barrel mostly because it was close, but also because I like to look at their little store. They always have weird, fun and random things you can't find anywhere else, like some crazy weird bottle caps for my quirky collection. When we were done we played a game of checkers out front  and I ended up winning.Cody was black and  I was red and I WON!! Oh and did I mention that I won?  ; )

After lunch we went on a tour of the Brigham Young house and then went to the St. George Temple. I could not believe how WHITE it was! It seemed even more white than white if that's even possible, it was gorgeous!

Along the way we drove past the hotel from our honeymoon that we had to stay in because I accidentally hit a curb trying to turn around and got a flat tire instantly. It happened to be at this crazy old hotel, but there wasn't a tire store open until the next day so we ended up spending night two of our honeymoon there. Cody wasn't very happy at the time,but we are laughing about it now.

We also found the outlet mall and did some shopping, mostly window shopping. I tried on a pair of Prada sunglasses and then looked at the price tag $245!! I very carefully put them back on the shelf and then put my $10 Target sunglasses back on. We found Gavin a long sleeved button up shirt and Chloe a sweater and pair of jeggings all for less than $6 at The Children's Place and then Gavin a toothpick dispenser at a Kitchen Store for $4 ( I know weird right, but he loves toothpicks and was so excited we got it for him).

We found the Fiesta Family Fun Center and spent some time in the batting cages. Cody did awesome right off, but I wasn't so lucky.

I've lost my touch since playing on my high school softball team, it took me about 3 pitches before I even his a ball. I miss playing and every spring I get the itch to play. One of these years I'll get on a team again.

Don't we look amazing in our sexy lice infested batting helmets?  We played on the bumper boats too and ended up pretty wet. They had water guns on the front and Cody figured it out before me and soaked me pretty good before I figured out how to work mine while being blinded by water.

We were both craving seafood so we went to Dead Red Lobster. We splurged since it was our anniversary and got lobster tail, crab legs, and two different kinds of shrimp, it was delicious and it actually wasn't as bad on the wallet as we thought it would be.

After our food had settled back at the hotel we walked to Wendy's and got frosty's and then played a game of Ticket to Ride. Cody beat me, I know, I know, how did I let it happen? He's actually pretty good at it and besides if I won all the time he would quit playing it with me, like he did with Monopoly. Right honey?

We ended the night by a nice long soak in the hot tub and more conversation. This was the best part of the trip, Cody all to myself!! No kids interrupting, no phone calls for his church calling or his parents, just us!! We did what we wanted, when we wanted and how we wanted.  And we had lots of time with no interruptions for other things to if you know what I mean ; )

On the way back in the hotel I pushed Cody towards the pool and if I wouldn't have hurried and grabbed his arm he totally would have went in. I wish I would've let him go because I know I would've ended up in there too and that would've been fun, maybe next time!

Day 3 - May 4th

We ate breakfast by the pool in the sunshine with the birds chirping!! I could get use to that quick!! We checked out of the hotel and then stopped at Sportman's to get Cody some new sunglasses (and I found some Teva sandals and a Columbia jacket for dirt cheap!!). 

We headed to Zion National Park and found this along the way: 

Quail Creek, the picture doesn't do the color of the water any justice at all, but believe me it was awesome!!

More Quail  Creek

Fred Flintstone, I found your table!!

Danny's Tree

This isn't really Danny's Tree, but it's just outside of a little town called Virgin where he grew up

We stopped in Springdale because they had some amazing rocks in all sorts of colors that we wanted to look at. Gavin also loves rocks so we thought it would be fun to bring him some home from here and we still needed to find the Masonater something!

You can't really tell, but the big green one in the middle was transparent

It turns out these "rocks" were really just big chunks of glass from a glass factory somewhere back east, but they were still pretty cool.

 This is an actual rock that was broke, amazing.

 Zion National Park: Ready or Not, Here we Come!!

The following picture are of Zion National Park as depicted by my little pocket Nikon camera and also keep in mind that I am NOT a photographer!! Most of these have names, but I don't remember many of them.

 Court of the Patriarchs

I was in flip flops so after we had some lunch at the lodge (which half of it blew away in the wind) we took the bus back to the van so I could change shoes. After I got a 2 minute lecture from the "nice" lady at the lodge about why they don't sell bottled water, we paid $4 for a dollar store water bottle, filled it up at their "special spring water filling station" and went on a hike! ; )

 North Fork of the Virgin River

 On our hike to the Emerald Pools

 Lower Emerald Pool

Middle Emerald Pool

 Middle Emerald Pool

 More Middle

 Upper Emerald Pool

They only turn Emerald certain times of the year due to algae formation,

 and this was not one of those times, but it was still a beautiful hike.

 Upper Emerald Pool

 Upper Emerald Pool and some hot guy ; )

 Squirrel!!

 When we first got there we were practically alone, but then people kept coming!!

 This gigantic boulder was rolling down the heal but luckily Cody was able to stop it!! He's my hero!

Lower Emerald Pool on the way back down from a different angle

 Just a cool spot

 Looks like a tear drop

 Look above Cody's head in middle, yep, that's a doe!!

 The bridge back to the lodge. We were about the only ones around that spoke English which was so weird. I heard some Russian, French and German and have no clue what the rest was.

 

 We had the whole thing to ourselves almost the entire time!! kiss kiss

 Everything was so BIG and so Beautiful

 This is a VERY BORING video of going through 1.1 miles of the tunnel, but it's Cody's new favorite movie so I had to put it on here just for him!

After Zion's we had no plan of where to go or where we were staying because that's just how we roll (at least for this trip). We were going to go to Cedar City, but were told there was road construction and we were going to get detoured clear out of our way so decided to drive to Paguitch. This should have been our first clue to keep driving:

 It was a small town and all the hotels had at least one creepy car in the parking lot. We found a place called Marianna's. I now refer to it as HORRIBLE HAGITHA'S HOUSE OF HORRORS! It didn't have any creepy vehicles in the parking lot so I felt OK about it. We checked in and paid more for the room than we paid for our super clean deluxe room in St. George. We went and looked at the room and it was clean enough but I just didn't like it, not sure why. We left to go find somewhere to eat and as we were leaving I saw a SUPER CREEPY truck behind the office and that about did me in. Cody told me to breathe. I lost my appetite and nothing sounded good. The more I thought about having to go back to that place AND SLEEP THERE the worse the knot in my stomach got. I was literally almost in tears just thinking about it. I had already decided that I was sleeping in my clothes, maybe even my shoes in case we had to make a quit get away. That place was physically making me ill just thinking about it.

I promise I am NOT the high-maintenance type at all, but I didn't feel good about it at all. Luckily Cody could tell I was super freaked out and he went and got a refund (minus a $5 just because fee) and we left HORRIBLE HAGITHA'S HOUSE OF HORRORS.

Garmin helped us find our way to Beaver. I called a few hotels, fell in love with a super nice lady named Heidi on the phone at the Quality Inn and that's were we stayed. We had some dinner at the Timberline Cafe next door and even though they were closing in 5 minutes they still let us in to eat and were super nice. We went back to the hotel and relaxed in the hot tub (if anyone want's to get me one for my birthday or Christmas, that would be just fine and dandy with me).

Day 4 - Cinco De Mayo

Slept in for the third day in a row, Heavenly!!, ate breakfast and hit the road again. We found a place called The Red Barn and stopped there to look around. They have a store, a fruit stand, ice cream, handmade chocolates, and lots of other super yummy goodies. Then we decided to head home so we could see our kids who we were really missing by this time, but we stopped here for lunch:

 McGrath's, another one of Cody's favorites although this time around it wasn't very good. : (

Mason and Chloe were pretty excited to see us, but Gavin came RUNNING to us and jumped into my arms and wanted me to hold him and I didn't mind one bit!

 My finds at the Cracker Barrel

My new bottle caps for my Quirky Obsession!

Thanks to my sister Karen and Mother-in-law Cherie for watching our kiddos for us!

Cody, thank you for being my best friend and the most amazing husband ever. I truly treasured our time together and can't wait to do it again! I love you with all my heart forever and always!! XOXOXO