Vacation Time: Results Show

Monday, August the first, my parents and I set out for our official summer-vacation-get-away thing. The goal, I believe, was to visit my brother in Utah, see a few people in Idaho, and get to know said-brother's future in-laws in Oregon while we scouted out places to eat in Portland for the upcoming wedding. My own personal goals, meanwhile, were to work through some of my 'to-read' backlog, figure out our new car radio, and drive at least one leg of the trip without mom yelling at me (she's a very nervous passenger).

The drive to Utah took about ten hours, and I drove the first three. The road goes straight through the Mojave Desert, which is relatively pleasant to look at but pretty boring to drive through. Add that to the fact that I didn't know where I was going, and I was kinda stressed (I'm not used to using the overdrive button, so there were a few people riding my tail, and mom was finicky throughout), and by the end of my shift my back was sore and I was ready to stop.

Like this, but with no clouds. Ever.

We had dinner Monday night with my brother and his fiance (who, by the way, I adore), which was actually a bit difficult to organize; we got there a bit late, and it seemed like everything closed around 9:00. We stayed there in Provo for two nights (Monday night and Tuesday night), dropping off a box of stuff to my brother and visiting a spot called Thanksgiving Point.

Thanksgiving Point was an interesting stop. It's mostly a family-geared place, with gardens and a petting zoo (which we visited), and much more. They also had an art room, where the Art Institute had a glass blowing shop set up, allowing customers to help shape glass flowers, which mom reluctantly didn't wait in line for. We went into their Museum of Ancient Life, which is apparently one of the world's largest ancient life museums. They had some huge dinosaur skeletons...

If he was closer, he wouldn't reach to the dino's knee.

...Tyrannosaurus Rex skeletons...

Which, honestly, didn't look that impressive, compared to the previous bones.

 ...Ancient Giant Sea Turtles...

Which were scary huge.

...Ancient Giant Bear-Monster skeletons...

For comparison: my fist could fit in it's eye socket.

...ancient people-skeletons trying to kill ancient mammoth-skeletons...

You can't see it here, but the mammoth is crushing one of the people
under it's foot, so they're totally justified.

 ...and fishies!

Wait, what?

Also exciting what their Notion of Motion exhibit. I didn't get any good pictures, but it was essentially a giant room filled with gadgets and gizmos for people to play with, demonstrating different aspects of physics. There was a circular tank filled with sand that vibrated constantly, showing liquefaction (a subject of great concern to a desert city built on the sand by a fault line); there was a metal pendulum above a movable bed of magnets, causing the bar to swing wildly; and my favorite was probably the round, plastic tub in the center of the room, which invited kids to push down of the top, sending a puff of cloud up through the circular hole. The kids had fun making the cloud appear, but when a well coordinated group formed and pushed on the top from all sides with equal pressure, a cloud ring formed.

It didn't do cloud-ships, however. I am disappoint.

All in all, a pretty cool museum, and worth the visit.

On Wednesday, we drove through Salt Lake on our way to Rexburg, Idaho. Before getting into Idaho, however, there were a few places Mom wanted to visit, one of which was the 'Up' house. A group of builders in the Salt Lake area do a 'parade of homes' thing every year (which I don't totally get), and this year they decided to recreate the house from the movie 'Up'.

Dad and I stayed in the car while Mom went inside and got the pictures. It's a pretty cute house, and you can read more about it on the Parade of Homes website. They really tried their hardest to make it look exactly like the house in the movie, though they added a few modern touches to make it livable, as well (apparently, they're going to sell it when the event's done).

Russell's backpack, still sitting on the front porch.

Carl and Ellie's chairs, custom made.

The Paradise Falls mural, with the character's portraits on the mantle.

Elle's painting in the baby's room.

In Rexburg, we visited with my cousin, who's going to school there with her husband. With them living so far away now, we don't often get a chance to see her, so I liked being able to spend time with her, even if it was only for a couple hours.

On Thursday, we visited a woman that used to babysit for my mom, before I was born. I didn't know her at all, but she was very nice and very fun, and took us out to see Twin Falls on the Snake River. I've seen a few river gorges before (notably the Colombia River Gorge, on our trip to Oregon three years ago), and this one was pretty spectacular.

The golf course in the middle of the gorge.

The bridge we crossed over the Snake River.

The actual 'falls' part. Very misty.

We spent that night in Boise, Idaho, and the next night somewhere between there and Portland. We actually got into Portland on Saturday, and met with my brother's future in-laws (who we'd had dinner with before, so it wasn't totally awkward). They offered to let us stay at their house, which was extremely nice, especially after sleeping in hotels for almost a week.

We went to church with them on Sunday, and in the afternoon I got to practice my piano. I'm still teaching myself certain video game music, and I've even got a list to remind myself of which songs I know how to play and which songs I'm still practicing. I always love trying out different pianos, because they're all voiced and tuned slightly different.

Poster in one of the rooms, which reads "Thanks for letting me have a fish in my room.
And thanks for making something up when you had to flush it down the toilet!"

Anyway, on Monday we started heading down the coast. We visited the Tillamook cheese factory, which might have been interesting if we hadn't already been there before, and got Tillamook icecream (I ordered German Chocolate Cake flavor, only realizing later that it had coconut and pecans. Blegh).

On Tuesday, we made it to Sacremento, where mom wanted to visit the Capitol building. I'd been to Sacremento before, but I don't think I've ever visited our state capitol building, so I was willing to go. It was kind of boring. The building itself was very beautiful, but since there are actual real people trying to get their work done, you can't go in many rooms, and there isn't much to do. Maybe if they stopped letting tours come in, we'd have our budget balanced faster.

Lamps in the hallways. If they weren't old, someone would be
complaining about how state money is being spent.

The Great Seal of the State of California, in the style of a stained glass window.

Winged seahorses. I believe they symbolize 'wicked awesome'.

In the back of the building, there was a hallway with these large shadow-boxes, each one representing the counties in California. Ours was pretty great, and I was surprised to see that there was a lot of representation for the desert, from the Date Palms to the golf courses to a tiny Apatosaurus.

I have to admit, however, that I rarely see the Cabazon dinosaurs,
because whenever we drive by, I'm looking at that creepy farmhouse on the other side of the road.

The pineapples on the staircases, which symbolize 'sense of humor'.

You can't see it clearly, but the statue on the right is of a naked man on a horse fighting a bear.
I believe it's titled 'Hardcore'.

We spent two days in Sacremento, because recently while doing family history research, a brother of mine was contacted by a second cousin (or something) who was also doing genealogy in the area. We met up with him and another aunt of mine and had brunch, which I finished quickly while the adults discussed their similar grandparents or something like that. He was actually pretty cool, which is both surprising and kind of makes sense.

On Thursday we drove down to another aunt's house and spent the night there. I'm not a big dog person, but my cousin's dog is super friendly and I ended up spoiling her with my attention. I also slept.

By Friday morning, I had finished four books: Everything Bad is Good For You (which I intend to review for you), Dragon Age: The Calling, Paper Towns, and The Autobiography of FBI Special Agent Dale Cooper. If you read my Twin Peaks post, you might remember me saying that I really wanted to find and read that last one, which is a fictitious biography of the main character. I managed to find it at Powell's bookstore, in Portland.

I've been to Powell's once before; it's an amazing bookstore. It's huge. There are something like six rooms, each as large as a shop, all connected by a series of stairs and doorways, and color coded to help you find what you want (for example, the Rose room has novels for kids and teenagers, as well as parenting books and books about gaming, while the Gold room has genre books, such as sci-fi, thriller, horror, romance, etc.) At first, the layout's a bit confusing, but after wondering around for five minutes I had it memorized and was weaving around expertly to find what I was looking for.

I couldn't remember any books that I wanted to buy that Saturday, so I wandered around a bit, picking up Neil Gaiman's Stardust from a bestseller's rack before deciding to pick up a couple John Green books (he's a vlogger I follow, and I've read one of his books before - he's pretty good). I got Paper Towns and Will Grayson, Will Grayson before remembering about the Twin Peaks book.

If there's one bookstore in the western United States, I thought, that'd still carry a copy of this twenty-year-old book, it'd be Powell's, and I was right; after scouring the media-tie-in shelves of the sci-fi section, consulting a computer catalog, and twice climbing the two staircases up to the Pearl room (rare books, art, drama, and TV/Movies), I finally found it, nestled in between The Twilight Zone and Ugly Betty.

I was excited to find it, and by Friday morning, as I was saying, I'd read it, as well as one of the other books I got at Powell's and two of the books I'd brought from home.That translates into quite a successful trip, I say.

We finally got home Friday night. While we were away, we'd had a majority of the carpet in the house removed and replaced with tile, which makes the hallway now much more echo-y than before. My cat was also very happy to see us. While it's true that some cats can survive completely on their own, not caring if their human owners are there, my cat is very attached to us (me especially). Left alone for even a single day, she'll wander around the house, meowing loudly and dragging her small stuffed animal toys around.

When we came home, after leaving her alone for a week and a half, she couldn't stop purring, and even now continues to follow me around the house, begging to be picked up or pet or fed (yeah).

This is an old picture, but she looks the same.

I like getting out of the house, but I much prefer coming back home. I like having my own room, and knowing where everything is, and not feeling like I'm intruding. I like having my cat sleep at my feet every night, and being able to get up and do something else if I'm bored with what's going on. I like being at my own house, even more than being at friends' houses or shopping or anything else; I'm kind of a recluse like that. I also felt like, besides reading and seeing people, I really got nothing done during this trip, and despite what my mother may think, I like getting things done.

I'll be back to blogging regularly this week, since I've had two weeks to add to my blog-idea notebook. I've got a couple reviews for you, and a few more things in the coming weeks that I hope you'll find interesting. I hope you all had a nice two weeks while I was gone, and I hope you're having fun this summer as well!