Birthday Adventures

My mother's birthday always falls at the same time as the deer hunt, so, while her husband John goes hunting we always go for a birthday adventure. Usually we head south, to the warmth, but this year she wanted to check out Lava Hot Springs in Idaho. After two weekends of horrible weather (one even involving snow) we were blessed with the perfect Indian Summer ever! We left Friday night to go up to Greg's where we were going to be spending the night. Of course, in usual birthday adventure, we accidentally got off the freeway, got lost, found our way back, and then ended up scaring the guy tailgating us with Mom's crazy driving, but we eventually got there in one piece.

The next day, after a leisurely morning, we headed off to Idaho. We stopped in Preston for lunch at this fun little diner (it's across from the bowling alley that was filmed in Napoleon Dynamite). What made it so fun is that it's also an antique store so you're eating amongst all the old prizes.













Since this was very much a road trip we just enjoyed ourselves with stops at random pumpkin patches or a juant down a dirt road to get that perfect Autumn shot. Here's some of the places we saw...







































Finally we got to our destination. It was so nice. We went to the hot springs that were at the inn rather than the public ones so that it was a bit quieter. The water was awesome! The big pool was like bathwater and they got hotter from there. How nice is it to be out in your swimsuit in October, in Idaho! It was the best afternoon ever...

The old man comes to town...

Ok so I've been a very lazy blogger lately, truthfully not much has been going on, but a week ago my dad did make one of his stops in Utah. Actually, this is the first time that he has come for a significant time, more than just a weekend that is, so I figured I would post some of the pictures from our time together. We went up to Greg's house so that we could all be together. We had grand plans of all the fun outdoor Autumn type things we could do but Mother Nature had a different idea for us. Saturday morning dawned with chilly temps and a downpour of rain that lasted all day. We hung around the house for a bit but then we finally could stand it no longer and had a showery picnic in the park followed by a trip to the video store. Not very exciting but it was seriously cold! Sunday morning dawned with beautiful sunshine so we decided to go to pumpkin patch, after grabbing a quick lunch (being Sunday in Cache county there wasn't much else to do). We wanted to do some leaf peeping, however, the storm blew back in and as it was late we decided to just head for home. My ride home was more of an adventure however. As it started to rain everyone jumped into their separate vehicles. Jason had already left and Greg was making his way up the drive when I turned the key in the ignition and got...NOTHING! Making a frantic grab for the cell phone to try and stop Greg I discovered that of course I had no cell service. Luckily for Dad and I this other couple was jumping in their car at that moment and were kind enough to jump the car. (Thank goodness I had finally bought jumper cables after the dead battery incident of 2007) Well we get on our way and figure everything is ok, and since I need to get gas, pull of the road in an ugly area of Ogden and of course the car would not start again. My dad thought the battery cable connection was just corroded so after cleaning it we tried again and....still got NOTHING. Well once again we relied on the kindness of strangers and got this little teeny man driving an incredibly huge truck (seriously he couldn't even get the hood open, just had to keep shoving it upwards hoping that it would stay up with enough force behind the shove) came to our rescue. At this time my dad was just puzzling away trying to figure out what was wrong with the car, and since we didn't know we decided it was wise to turn off all other power suckers in the car. It made for a harrowing last few miles when the sun had finally set and we were running without lights. Of course the next day when we had Jason come over to help the thing started up just fine and ran the best it had run all year. It wasn't worth taking in, and that evening I got a small blessing in the fact that my neighbor that I park next to had his father there fixing his car and the man had a tool that he used to test both my battery and my alternator and gave them a clean bill of health. Thank goodness for kind souls! Oh and the cause of all the problems turned out to be a loose ground cable on the battery so all the stall outs and poor idling that my car has been doing were all related to that. I'm pleased to announce that the car is doing great! Anyway, here are some pictures from my weekend vacation.