Tell Me That This World is no Place for the Weak

And today I was so tired. I think it was post vacation let down and financial stress, but I took a three hour nap this afternoon and I can barely keep my eyes open right now. Don't get me wrong, I loved our trip and it's something that Coadster's wanted to do since she was a little kid (that and a Cubs game and I'll try really hard to make that happen for her next Summer), it's just that I did a hell of a lot of driving and had absolutely no alone time for two weeks and I'm broker than broke, so I just think my body needs to shut-down for a bit. Anyway, wah, fucking, wah. I know. On a less whiny note, here is the account of the first two days of our trip:

The storm a'brewin' off the interstate.

We got out of town right at eight. I had a two day long playlist, a cooler full of drinks and a ton of food. We were set. There was so much promise, so many possibilities. Then just a couple of miles out of the Dubuque Street exit, I must have been in the blind spot of the gigantic semi driver and he started to merge into our lane. As usual, my first instinct was to spaz, and so I honked like crazy and he corrected himself and got back in his lane until I was safely past him. Coadster and I joked about how tragically funny it would have been if the semi had crashed into us and we all died only minutes out of town.

I drove twelve hours on my first day. I didn't know I could even sit still that long, but I did it. I have no idea what Nebraska's fucking problem is, but I've never been able to drive through that state without getting caught in a horrible, terrifying storm. We were close this time, but right before we hit Wyoming, we got slammed. My girls were both awesome about reminding me to turn on the defrost and helping me see all the trucks pulled over on the side of the road. I realized too late that the one thing I forgot to pack was Valium. Damn it. It's always something. Anyway, we made it to Laramie and went almost straight to sleep...And that concludes our first day of the trip.


The second day, we drove only six hours to Salt Lake City. We checked into our Motel 6, Which Stinky described as ghetto, and not in the good way. We tried to get to The Great Salt Lake, but couldn't find it. Even when we stopped and asked for directions, the guy at the convenience store said he knew how to get there, but couldn't give us directions. Huh? Whatever. We went back to our room and after an hour of resting, I made the girls get out and walk around town with me.

Our motel was only a block away from the projects, and a lovely liquor store, but after that, we were right by the Mormon temple.

Coadster decided we should take a free tour of Brigham Young's house. As I've said before, I grew up in Mormon town, so I didn't think I needed the tutorial, but I went along for the ride. Imagine that, us going to the doors of Mormons and bugging them in their home. Only we weren't wearing suits and riding bikes. The tour was actually interesting.

Then we did our usual dorking-out around the Mormon Temple. Here's Coadster and I doing our obnoxious show choir moves around a reverent, important Mormon statue. So respectful.

And here are the girls at the fountain in front of the temple.

This is the temple itself. They don't let commoners in the temple very often. I was inside one when I was a kid right after they opened it, but that was a special deal. We did have fun wandering around outside of it until I almost fell trying to photograph it and said, "Shit," too loudly. Coadster tried to cover for me, "You meant shoot, right mom?" Why, yes I did.

We finally left in search of cheap eats. There were tons of really expensive restaurants by the temple, but we were on the look-out for a reasonably priced slice of pizza. We found it after we walked through a train station and found this. That's right, we stumbled upon the church of Stinky - a gigantic outdoor mall. I think Stinky may even have genuflected at the sight of it.

The girls wandered around all the stores that we don't have here in Iowa City and we actually did get some cheap pizza. Then on the walk back to our room, we found this sweet ride and I took a photo of it. I figured it would be a nice image to keep in our heads as we walked past the projects on our way to our ghetto fabulous Motel 6.