It was time to turn our thoughts and our wheels towards home with the holidays right around the corner. So we headed towards Utah. My niece lives in East Carbon near Price, Utah, so we stopped for a few days to see her. There was a free campground near the town and we stayed there. It was on the old property of the old coke mining operation. There are nearly 100 old coke ovens still there and an old train depot. It was an interesting place.
We had a BBQ and a dinner with my niece and her family and I was able to go for a nice drive with her. It was good to reconnect and say, “hello”.
We also visited for the first time, two places we have driven past for years and always said, “we should go there one day.” Well, that day finally came because we could with the freedom this new lifestyle affords us. We visited the Utah State University Eastern Prehistoric Museum and the Jurassic National Monument or Cleveland-Lloyd Dinosaur Quarry. The Utah Raptor, which is the inspiration for the Velociraptors in Jurassic Park, is on display at the museum. The Jurassic National Monument is the largest deposition of Jurassic era bones anywhere in the world. They were both fascinating and well worth a visit.
Then we stopped by my sister’s house in Springville and was able to join in the annual Halloween party at her home. It was a lot of fun.
While there, we got word that Mike’s uncle had passed away, so we drove down to St. George for the funeral. It when well. But it started a chain of events. His aunt (the wife of this uncle) passed away within one month of his passing. And several in Mike’s family got COVID at his uncle’s funeral. That led to another Aunt and Uncle being hospitalized and that Aunt coming to live at Mike’s parents’ house for a while until her husband got home from the hospital himself.
We came back up north to Mike’s brother’s house in West Valley City, because we had appointments. We got our haircut at our good friend in Stansbury Park where we used to live. We got our teeth cleaned at our good friend, our dentist. We had fun at the Orphan’s Gathering with my brothers and sisters and their spouses at the Brick Oven in Provo. We got to visit with other family members too.
Then our last appointment was for my 50 year old colonoscopy. Those are so fun!!! But it wasn’t as bad as the last time I had a colonoscopy because they have improved the prep process a whole lot. It was actually not that bad. The procedure went well and no worries there. So we headed south to Mike’s parents’ house to get started on projects and spend the holidays with them.
We bounced back up north again to pick-up the delivery of beef for Mike’s parents’, to attend a friend’s wedding reception and to deliver Christmas gifts, the history of my mother that I put together, to my siblings.
At Mike’s parents house, we did a whole bunce of work on the RV and Jeep, including removing the hydraulic cylinder’s for the slideout and getting them rebuilt, replacing the RV style fridge with a residential style fridge, installing more solar to power the residential fridge, and miscellaneous other projects. What a game changer the Residential style fridge proved to be over the next summer. The previous summer we were in constant concern about the fridge keeping up with the heat and keeping the food cold. After the residential fridge install, we did not worry one moment about the fridge. What a change for the better.
We celebrated Thanksgiving at Mike’s brother’s house in Mesquite, Nevada, and Christmas at his parents’ house. We got more appointments/check-ups done and had a visit from Mike’s sisters’ family and my sister.
We got sick with a cold or flu (not COVID) after one of Mike’s niece’s shared germs with us at Christmas time.
And then it was the new year–2022. It held lots of new adventures in our season 2 of our new nomadic life. Can’t wait to share what the new year brought, particularly our time in Arizona. Well, wait until next time. 😉
