road trippin it for spring break part uno

Two weeks ago I left for my first ever road trip. with friends. for spring break.
It started out with a few long nights before we left.  We had to pack, move, scrub the apartment, and hit the road.
We left Rexburg at 2:00 Saturday afternoon to drive to Mesa Arizona.  My roommate Elisabeth is student teaching there in the fall and had to go meet the school.  We were pretty sure we just had to drive down to Las Vegas and then go over to Mesa.
Elisabeth drove for the first 5 hours and I passed out.
I woke at one point to her screaming because the tumbleweeds were attacking the car and she was yelling, "the tumbleweed army is coming!"  When I woke up there was a beautiful sunset and we were really excited to be on an adventure.  Although, we didn't really know it was going to be so much of an adventure in one night.

 (The cheshire cat moon) 

At about 11:30 we stopped for gas and there was a petting zoo with an alpaca and a zebra!  They were closed so we tried to take pictures but the zebra was playing with a horse and the alpaca ran away.
I drove after this and then we got a teensy bit lost. In the mountains.

 We drove through a town with beautiful white trees all lit up but the road took us to a mountain pass.  In the middle of the night in the pitch black.  Elisabeth and I may have screamed a little bit as we travelled along our path but Alix calmed us down, put EFY music on and got elisabeth to sleep.  Then she made up stories to tell me to keep me calm.  It just so happens I hate heights and there it alternated giant rock faces on both sides of us, and steep drop offs.
Then came one of the most beautiful scenes of my life.  We stopped in the middle of nowhere after the mountain pass while we were in a flat open space, turned off the car and all the lights, opened the sunroof and poked our heads out to look at the stars that surrounded us.  They were beautiful and majestic.  I have always loved the stars and this was such a beautiful place to be.  I wanted to stay forever but we still had so far to go.
Alix switched me and drove so that I could sleep, and before I fell asleep we stopped at a circle K to get gas and go to the washroom.  I would just like to say, sketchiest bathroom I have been in, in a long time. When we were getting back in the car, a really creepy guy was standing in the doorway of the store so we jumped back in and panicked as we drove away.
About 2 miles out of town we hit a detour and had to drive through a Reservation to go around back to the regular highway.  Our GPS was telling us to go down a dirt road in the middle of the night and I didn't like it so I went to sleep. When I woke up we were on said dirt road turning around because the GPS was wrong... of course.
From that point on the GPS kept telling us that we only had three hours left until our destination.  This started at one and we didn't arrive until 7:30 in the morning.

 The sun finally came up when I was driving again in Arizona.  When it rose it was gorgeous.  There were fields of cactuses everywhere.  They just grow in the wild like a forest.  I was highly impressed with them.  When the sun was rising I made Elisabeth switch with me because we were once again on a mountain, and I wanted to see the sunrise.

When we got into Mesa we realized how wonderful Arizona is.  There are palm trees and cactuses (or cactupuses as elisabeth started calling them) lining the streets, and the architecture is incredible.  Every building followed the design of the area, and everything just fit together.  

We were so tired and needed to sleep so the only safe place we could think of to park the car and sleep for a little while was the Visitors center at the Temple.  So we parked under some palm trees, curled up and fell into the deepest sleep I have ever had.  We woke up when the security guard tapped on our window and asked if we were okay.  We just explained that we had driven all night and needed to sleep for just a little while.  We asked if there was anywhere we could go to find out about where the singles ward met and he said we should just go to one of the church buildings and ask for directions.  He also said just one of us should go in so we weren't embarrassed.  At this point we were in our pj's and were running on little sleep.  So we got cleaned up as much as we could in the car and changed into church clothes. 

The since it was Sunday and we were trying to not break the sabbath we went into a church building and made hotdogs in the kitchen microwave. 

We found the right church after a while and went for two hours but once Elisabeths head wouldn't stay up we decided to head out.  We stayed the night at Elisabeth's old roommates families house and they took us for a delicious dinner at their grandparents house.
Stay tuned for the next episode in this three (or four) part series.

Conference

This year I have decided to stay at school for the spring semester, which I am really excited about, and my mom is really excited about, but she is sad too because I won't be going home anytime soon.  This meant that she needed to come see me and so she came for General Conference (An annual conference for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints) She had never been to Utah before so it was an exciting adventure involving being lost, going to two sessions of conference, making new friends, delicious food, chasing mountains, and quality time.

My momma decided to go for a walk while I was sleeping Saturday morning and when she saw the mountain she decided to walk to it.  A later statement on mountains she made went like this "it  is like chasing a rainbow!"  She walked about 5km each way and didn't quite make it to the mountain.

After the first day of Conference I went to the mall in Sandy and I managed to get lost for about an hour trying to get there.  On my way I met a ton of very... interesting people.  At one point when I was walking I thought I saw a mirage of a forever 21 sign but it turned out to be real.

We ate breakfast at the Little America buffet and it was the most amazing buffet I have ever been to.

At temple square we met two kindred spirits and made wishes in the fountain with them.

I may have forgotten to bring church shoes for conference so this is what i had to wear instead.

On our way back we may or may not have gotten lost and ended up hours off course by Twin Falls.  I fell asleep and when I woke up I had no idea where we were and I had an assignment (final project) due online at midnight, that I had put off submitting.  So we stopped at a McDonalds and stole some of their internet for me to submit the project and then we made it home just before midnight.

Lions don't lose sleep...

I have been going to school in Idaho for three years now, which means this is mainly where my life is, and for the first time my mom is coming to visit me and see everything here.  I cannot wait for her to get here because I love her so much and it is just easy and fun with her.  The one thing though, is I just want her to know I am doing good, and I am growing up.  I have changed a lot over the past few years, and while I have gone home in between semesters, I am in my element here.  This is my home and where I do best.

I hope I have done the best that I can and I hope I am making people proud of me.  I never want to disappoint the people that I care about.  The truth is that I know the people that care about me are going to be proud of me and like Dr. Seuss says, "those that matter don't mind, and those that mind don't matter".  

I have also been loving the saying, "Lions don't lose sleep over the opinions of sheep".  We don't need to worry about what people think of us, as long as we are doing our best.