Road Trip-March 2023

I love road trips and I am excited about what we have planned---if the weather cooperates.  We will see how it goes...

First is our trip to Mesa, Arizona, to my sister, Valerie's wedding to Austin Willcox!

We left Thursday morning and the roads were clear although evidences of the recent snow storms were evident along the sides of the roads and on the countryside.  We were very glad we had waited a day to start.

On the road ..without needing permission from our
mission president to be out of the 60 mile range of our mission

And sitting in the Wendy's for lunch in Beaver, Utah, who did Gary spot but (Sister) Judy McKee.  She served in our mission until last September.  She is from Centerville, Utah and was heading down to visit her brother in Kanab.  She is putting in papers to serve a second mission right now.  It was fun to catch up and we took this picture to share with other missionaries who knew her.

Since Gary was doing most of the driving, I took more scenery photos than normal.  I love the patterns of red rock in southern Utah and northern Arizona---

and the unusual shapres....

The world is a beautiful place and traveling the roads reminds me just how pretty everywhere is.  We are lucky to live in a place where it is safe to travel between places and there are roads which make that possible.

Snow in Arizona as well.

We stopped in Flagstaff for the night.  They had had 24-31 inches of snow in the storm on Wednesday.  The roads were clear but the parking lots and side streets still had lots of snow.  This is heading out of Denny's after dinner.

The morning view out our hotel window...there was a beautiful "picture" of a train on the track half way up the mountainside.  However, I enjoyed it and forgot to take the picture until too late.

Blue skies and fluffy white clouds...and warmer weather ahead.

We decided to stop for a quick car wash before going to Valerie's and for some reason, we got a free car wash...and we weren't even wearing missionary tags.

Not snow this time

We arrived....and let the parties begin......