Our Sweet Trip To Spokane, Post Falls,The Cooks And Surrounding Areas

This was our first "post' mission trip  (I know--we took many trips while on our missions, but this seemed different somehow--a new type of traveling freedom.)  And as the planning "fell" together, I was so excited about the whole of it.  It was a fast trip, but was packed with sweet moments of connection, memories, and love.

It went like this---

On November 9 (Saturday), we headed out at 6:00 am. up I-15 until it ran into I-90 and then across to Spokane, Washington.

Along the way, there were rest stops with historical markers sharing about the land formations in the area of Idaho and parts of Montana.

Gary indulged me by turning into Idaho Falls so that I could revisit the Idaho Falls Temple.  This was the first temple that I did baptisms for the dead when I was a teenager.  We traveled about 14 hours from Richland, Washington, after hours and hours of fundraisers for the trip so we could go.  The idea of living close to a temple was so foreign to us back then.  Although my parents always had temple recommends, they probably only attended the temple 3 or 4 times during my growing up years.  We just didn't have temples close enough by Richland or where we traveled to allow that to happen.  They did do a session with the other adults here the night we arrived. Then we did baptisms in the morning.  My dad was in the bishopric so they made arrangements for both of them to go with the youth for that opportunity.  How blessed we are to be close to so many temples.

This is what I remembered--that there was a separate entry for the baptistry although I don't think that sign is that old.

The baptistry door....

The Snake River from the temple grounds

A walk around the whole temple

There were two young sister missionaries on the grounds, so of course we stopped and talked to them for a few minutes.

Our selfie shot....

It was tender moment to think back to what I can remember about that time and how I was as a 15 year old girl.  This was just months before we learned that we would be moving to Amarillo, Texas, and my whole world changing.  But even despite that (or probably because of that move), the hopes and dreams I had for myself came true--in ways more incredible that I could have even imagined at that time. God is so good.

Our route took us north through the eastern part of Idaho, then veered northwest through Montana (I missed both of our crossings into Montana while on this trip because I was sleeping, so no Montana state signs this trip.), and then crossed through Coeur d'Alene into Spokane.

At our gas stop in Dillon, Montana--we found these fun shots---

Proving that it isn't just in Arkansas that people use hay bales to dress up.  This was in front of a feed store.

A beautiful old building in this small town

And I asked Gary to make a trip around the block

to get a front view of this guy in front of a gym.

Always fun to drive through small towns.

At a rest area, they had this information sign about how citizens were encouraged to Keep Watching the Skies!  I thought it had something to do with birds like a rare eagle or something.  Nope!  Back during World War II and afterwards, citizens were trained to watch and report unusual air craft in the area. Be A Citizen Plane Spotter!  The things you can learn at a rest stop these days.

This rest area had very big crow who was enjoying the food from a garbage can.  He wasn't too concerned about us walking near him at all.

The drive through this section of the Rocky Mountains was beautiful. There was a pretty combination of green evergreens and yellow fall trees like aspens and larch trees. Less you think that I really know my trees, I googled it during the drive.  There were huge trees that were turning yellow (and not aspens) and as we saw some closer to the road, I realized that they looked like evergreens with needles and small pine cones.  I worried that they might all be dying from some disease, but when I looked it up, it turned out that they were larch trees which are not true evergreens.  They lose their needle each fall--turning a brilliant yellow before the needles fall to the ground and then they regrow them in the spring.

See the yellow and greens mixed together......

and a little fog mixed in to make the whole scene perfect for a November road trip.  So beautiful.

At a later rest stop, there was actually a patch of snow on the ground.  Then Jena and I came out from using the restrooms, we found this little guy on the hood of our car.

I didn't want Gary's work to be destroyed as we took off, so I moved him to the closest flat surface I could find.  As we were pulling out of the rest area, another car was pulling in so hopefully he brought a smile to their faces as they made their rest stop.

I was awake as we came into Idaho.

We had brought our temple clothes in hopes of doing a session in the Spokane Temple.  The last one was at 5:30 pm and it had space.  However, as we were approaching the area, I knew it would be a huge rush to make to the hotel, change clothes and then get to the temple and rushing to and in the temple is not my favorite thing.  So, we opted to just visit the temple grounds before checking into our hotel.

Spokane Temple:

It is a smaller temple like Oklahoma City and Bentonville where it shares a parking lot with a stake center.  It was fun to see it.  We interviewed many mission leaders who had served in the Washington Spokane Mission and some had shared sweet stories about this place.  It was good to see it in person, even though we didn't go inside.

We grabbed some Panda Express and headed to the hotel for the night to watch the BYU vs Utah game (although it was so poorly played in the first half that we watched The Grinch during the second half.  BYU did win, but it was a weird game overall.  (That made BYU 9-0, but they lost last night to Kansas so their "perfect" season has come to an end.  Now they need to win the rest of their games and see what happens with the playoffs.)

Moving on---:)

The reason that we came up to this area was because our friends and fellow ABM missionaries, Elder and Sister Cook, had returned from their mission and were giving their homecoming talks in their ward in Post Falls, Idaho (right across the border from Spokane. By the way, buy gas in Idaho not Washington--they have a much higher gas tax.)

They did great and we were glad that we were there.

David and Diana Cook and us

Since we were coming up to this area, we decided to visit the families of two of our wonderful sister missionaries.

Sister Leah Holding's family actually also lives in Post Falls, although they are not in the same area as Cooks and didn't know them.  Sister Holding came to their talks and then we headed to their house for a visit.

Then we hopped into our car and headed out to Deer Park, Washington which was about an hour a way through some beautiful scenic roads to get to Sister Katie Cherrington's family's home.  At both homes, we had a great time sharing about their daughters as missionaries and also learning a bit more about them as people.

What an honor it was to spend time with them and to have a glimpse into these sweet missionaries' lives.

The extra fun thing (which is also a bit sad as well) is that both of these sister missionaries come up this coming Saturday at the end of their missions.  Unfortunately, timing didn't work for us to come back to hear them talk.

Jena did make Welcome Home signs for each of them and their moms said they would put them on their beds.  We also gave them some photos of us with their daughters which they loved as well.

The Welcome Home signs

We then headed BACK to Spokane and changed our clothes and headed back into Post Falls to join the Cooks and their son and three of their couple friends for a delicious meal of chicken stew, salad, and rolls.  It was fun to talk with the Cooks and their friends--two of the couples have also served senior missions so it was fun to share some stories.  Also, one of them has a granddaughter who is 9 who also has Down syndrome so she was very interested in talking to Jena and to us about her experiences growing up. It was a great meal and fun conversations.

What a sweet day!!! And we still had tomorrow......see next post!