What do you call a vacation when you are so busy that there’s no time or energy to write a blog? 

We arrived at Toni’s home in Reno late afternoon with plenty of time to blog and kick back.  She said she’d back after a medical procedure about 6PM.  The lawn chairs in the front yard were perfect for this scenario; when lo and behold she pulled up with a friend neighbor as her chauffeur.  The exchange of stories about before Alaska, after Alaska and during our time as neighbors in Trapper Creek kept us energized until dark and bedtime.

 

Toni’s latest best friend after four marriages is “Jimmy to the Rescue,” if I remember right, a poodle type who received his name because he rescued her from her fifth marriage.  Her three kids, now of course, adults, are scattered about: Tony’s in the Carolina’s living a secluded life after some major effects from injuries in a Gulf war, Elizabeth’s in Eugene and Greg’s a captain in the fire fighting professional.  We visited Greg on the other side of town and had a chance to see his collection of Coleman lanterns throughout the house and garage.  The second evening her friend Willie joined us for a salmon dinner (see about image).

 

Paul, Toni and Willie all shared a common theme regarding Nevada – “I love Nevada, I love the desert.”  I thought it ironic when told that one of the joys of Nevada was climbing into one of the many isolated mountain ranges finding water and trees.  In Oregon we also find the beauty in water and trees and we don’t have to climb a mountain range to find it.  It’s so great that different individuals enjoy different environments so we can scatter about.

 

Sunday we left early for an eight-hour drive to Salt Lake which was exaggerated by crossing into an earlier time zone making it an hour later when we arrived at my cousin’s house.  Hundreds of miles of sagebrush with some grass land on the alluvial fans coming out of the mountains backdropped with mountains leading up to scattered snow and then solid white peaks, were our scenic views for most of Nevada’s 400-mile crossing.

 

We crossed into Utah at Wendover which straddles the states’ border with casinos on the Nevada side of town and everything else on the other side.  Leaving Wendover one drops down in to flatlands, really flat flatlands, the Bonneville Salt Flats flatland which reaches for nearly another hundred miles until the sage brush and mountains reappear on the edge of Salt Lake.  There’s a temptation to drive off the road and race down the flats but DOT had already thought of that having put a fence along the shoulder of the road that lasted forever.

 

The salt flats also offered a wind, a strong wind, fortunately coming from the rear left, rocking the van from time to time.  The skies were clear or polka-dotted with fluffy white clouds in a deep dark blue sky.  Cheryl however texted and said that they were experiencing a snow/rain mixture which we discovered in the last ten miles.  That evening was cool and breezy which was OK.  However, the next morning the water on the vehicles was ice and our outside thermometer read 30˚.  Fortunately we’ve mastered the van furnace so life is good.

 

Cheryl’s husband had been a lawyer which took them to multiple houses and apartments over the years.  Being Mormons doing mission work contributed to frequent moves.  Murphy, an almost three-year old puddle mix keeps them active and entertained.  One of their three daughters, Britta, a twin, joined us for our first evening meal; a relative I had never really met before.  What a joy, and what a delight she is.  Her twin is in the LA and their sister and family are in Hong Kong with plans to leave soon, neither of whom we will meet this trip.

 

One goal in this trip is to visit the Mormon genealogy library and Cheryl graciously took me there this morning (Monday).  What an active place that is!  On level B1 we were escorted to computers and joined shortly by a helper.  My question was with regard to the confusion about our first adopted daughter and why our names were listed as parents of a person with a totally different name but the same birthdate as our daughter.  Apparently a computer in a different agency accumulated this data and we couldn’t do anything about from this angle.  A specialist joined me but we couldn’t get much further than we already had gotten.  It’s great to know that one is doing well in one’s research and disappointing that we couldn’t get further.

 

Now we are allocated free time and blogging is possible.  The sun is shining, the wind is blowing, the van is comfortable, and we’re kicking back.  Oh, by the way, I have no answer to my original question.