Day 1We left Saturday morning, July 11, for the exodus back to Utah. We planned on 5 long days of driving. Luckily, we thought ahead and had Keith bring us the 6th Harry Potter on CD so we had 20 hours of listening time right there.
On Saturday, we had the missionaries come up and help us move out the rest of our things. They lived in our building so it was pretty convenient. We gave them all of our extra food, a nice goody bag consisting of 2 large ketchup bottles (why on Earth did we think we would go through so much ketchup and mustard in 6 months), a half eaten box of Fruit Loops, and about 10 packets of Carnation Instant Breakfast, just to name of few of the items.
That first day we traveled all of the way to Dalton, GA. We stayed at the Jameson Inn where we got the Jameson discount (my middle name). That didn't really get us the discount but when I called to make a reservation, I didn't really like the price until she dropped it $30 to come out to $45/night. Here are two pictures from the first day.
We actually turned around to get a picture of this sign, because we
past it the first time
Day 2We drove from Dalton, GA to Charleston, IL. This was one of our easier days of driving. Not much to report here. We did have another fun time in Charleston though, hanging out with Erin, Jake, and Lesa.
Day 3
We drove from Charleston to Nauvoo and then on to Dyersville, IA.
Our first stop was actually Carthage jail, where the Prophet Joseph Smith was martyred. Very reverent place.
After Carthage, we moved onto to Nauvoo. We had both been there before, although I was a lot younger when I last went. We grabbed a bite to eat, took a few pictures, and made sure to get our souvenior brick.
We left Nauvoo at 7:00 and drove a few more hours to Dyersville, IA, the location where the movie Field of Dreams was filmed.
Day 4From Dyersville, IA to Rapid City, SD. We woke up pretty early so we could get out to the Field. They have done a great job of preserving it and it was worth the little detour.
"Don't wink kid"
On our first trip we got out to take a picture with every sign. Well, we were over it this time. We didn't want to get out of the car and we only took a picture of a few of the signs. New states this trip included Indiana, Iowa, Minnesota, South Dakota, and Wyoming.
We showed up to Mount Rushmore at about 9:15 that night. As we pulled in and parked, the night lighting ceremony was just finishing so about 5,000 people were leaving the park. That meant we had to stay a little while if we didn't want to fight getting out of that parking lot. John Garlock told me they had the best gift shop in the world so that is where we spent our time waiting out the crowd. We also tried getting a few night pictures.
Pretty much every hotel and motel that was close to Mount Rushmore was booked that night, except for the more expensive suite rooms. We had to drive all the way back into Rapid City and even then it was hard to find a place. We thought about just driving some more but we wanted to see Rushmore in the daytime so we decided to stay.
Thomas caught a little tad pole or fish and wanted to take it home
Jimmy making it look it easy
Making sure I cleared the rocks below
Thomas did alright getting in, it was getting out that he had trouble. He hit his head on a rock and that's when we called it a day.
We spent a couple of days at the beach house in Rockaway, Oregon. It's always a blast. Everyone was still excited after Monday night's wiffleball game so we brought it to the beach. We worked up a sweat but not enough to get us to want to get in that cold Oregon water.
Davey didn't want to get up early for breakfast to see us off but he eventually did. We think this picture above might have had something to do with it.
Jeri never likes to see us go
