Idaho trip

Desiree is like my little sister.  I babysat her a lot when she was little and then her family kept moving farther away and my visits became less frequent.  She lives in Idaho now.  Her baby shower was a few weeks ago. I decided to make a weekend of it and visit Nathan's sisters at BYU-Idaho too.  I haven't gone to Idaho in 12 years.  There's a lot of water.  Every time I drove by the Snake River or some other body of water, I would yell WATER very excitedly.  Lots of interesting scenery and lots of not so interesting scenery.  Finally I got to Rexburg.  Wow.  Very small college town where apparently no one locks their door and you can safely get a ride from strangers.  

I took the girls some meat and fresh fruit, for which they were very grateful.  Rebekah took me on a tour of campus while we waited for Rachel to get off work. This is the big building where they hold giant devotionals.  There were a LOT of stairs.

We walked around a lot.  I wasn't wearing the best choice of shoes.  My feet hurt.  I got sunburned.  I learned that the wind always blows in Rexburg.  I learned how to eat a taco while walking in the wind, without eating my hair or having all my lettuce blow away.  We delivered a gift to a girl that my coworker wanted to date.  Now they're dating.  :-)

Once Rachel got off work, we decided to drive somewhere, since they don't have a car.  I had passed a museum of TV and a cheese factory on the way.  There was a sign showing where to exit for the museum.  No more signs.  Finally we looked up the museum and directions on my phone and arrived just as it closed.  We looked up directions to the cheese factory.  The directions were wrong.  We finally found the cheese factory 10 minutes after it closed.  

Mind you, it wasn't late.  I think it was 5pm.  We were seriously in hicksville.  Then we went to a family fun park we passed along the way.  It had a dirt parking lot.  I felt like I was back where I grew up.  This place probably survives because it's the only entertainment option around.  It had a bunch of bounce houses, a go-kart track, bumper boats, and mini golf.  The go-karts looked cool but cost more than we were willing to pay.  The bumper boats were in a small swimming pool.  It was so windy that the golf balls would have blown away.  And by the time we spent all of 5 minutes checking everything out, it was so windy they had to deflate the bounce houses.  It was pretty pathetic.  But they had these brightly colored benches.  

We went to D.I.  We went shopping for allergy meds because Rachel was miserable.  The girls treated me to dinner at this fantastic Chinese place.  I practiced my chopstick skills.  We competed to see who could chug the most water.  We laughed.  A lot.  

Somewhere in there we played games.  I was so determined to win California Speed that I actually broke a nail slamming my hand down on the table and it went flying.  Around 10pm, Rebekah remembered that I couldn't park in visitors' parking overnight and it was too late to get a pass.  All the roommates tried desperately to think of where we could park and even called the cops asking.  The only possibility was the temple.  On the other side of campus.  Uphill.  

Rachel had the brilliant idea to put her bike in the car, drive to the temple, and ride back.  Her bike didn't really fit.  We finally got it in, sticking partway out one window.  Bek gave up her bed for me.  The next morning I walked uphill, panicked that my car had gotten locked in overnight, finally found an open gate, drove back downhill and picked up my stuff, and headed to Desiree's house.  

It was fun to catch up with the family and see their home.  The shower was in a park and I got a little more sunburned.  I won the baby bottle apple juice chugging contest, managed to hang on to my safety pins by fighting hard not to cross my arms/legs, and enjoyed talking to a fellow crunchy person.