More Travel Thoughts...

May I say that I admire anyone who has to travel for a living?!  Living in motels and out of a suitcase for days and days is beginning to pall on my spirit.  Tonight will be our ninth straight night in a motel.

Some observations (and this comes from our choice of motels, of course...we just want clean sheets, clean floors, and hopefully some sort of breakfast on site so we won't have to go searching for food in the morning...):

Some motels sound really good online.  Some motels do not live up to their advertising.

Some things I now know I do NOT like in a motel:  sandpaper towels, kleenex so thin you need three pieces to even remotely do the job, swimming pool construction, slippery tubs, torn-out smoke alarms, icky harsh carpeting, slippy slide-y toilet seats that are barely attached and cannot seem to be fixed, by me, at least!

Some things I DO like: kind, pleasant desk staff, kind, responsive housekeeping staff, a place to lie down and stretch out after many hours of driving, good air conditioning (it is summer, after all), a comfy easy chair, showers with lots of water coming out of the shower head, a sturdy handle to assist with ingress and egress at the shower.

The very first morning of this set of travel nights (eight in a row, so far, with a few more to go...) I got ready to shower.  I stepped into the tub with my left foot, which, due to the slippery tub, slid like lightening to the far side of the tub.  Fortunately I did not fall down, but my right leg below the knee slammed into the edge of the tub at breakneck speed and instantly brought up a huge painful lump.  Eight days later the pain is abating somewhat but the leg is pretty colorful. I am continuing to wear long skirts to mostly cover the accident.

I know, pretty icky to show, but...if I share the discomfort it alleviates somewhat...don't you think? Pretty much covers the leg from knee to ankle.

I LOVE the handle in this shower.  A nice sturdy grip bar makes showering so much more pleasant. We have several in our shower at home. I love them.  This last motel is the best one.  What am I saying...it is the ONLY motel which had a grab bar worth grabbing.

There was one problem with this shower, however!  

You will see the water roaring out of the shower head at full tilt.  If you know me at all, you will know that I had to jump around in the stall like a scared grasshopper to get even part of my body wet enough to lather up.  I just imagined that I was having a great shower and thought of everything we need to do today.  After a while I gave up and wiped the soap foam off with the towel then rinsed with the washcloth at the sink.  The towels and washcloths in this motel were nice and soft so this was not a trial.

Well, off to look at houses.

Today's Journey

It was hard to hop into the car this morning. We did not actually hop at all.  We sort of took some deep breaths, smiled at each other, then crawled in.  Dear One is so fabulous to do all the driving.  Of course, he is scared to death to ride with me driving, but still...

We passed some cool signs today.

We took the road to the right...

Seeing these signs that were real actual signs in front of us was great.  I love music.  It was amazing how easy it was to find music on the radio! We have spent days now with a lot of empty spaces in the landscape and static on the radio.

One thing I really like about this car is the ability to use Apple Carplay.  We had already been driving for an hour and a half when I took this picture.  I loved the idea that we would arrive at the motel just after 4:00 PM.  Nice thought.  Not even close.  But we are now here, two-plus hours later.

It is nearly impossible to see the sign, BUT we are now back in the Eastern Time Zone for the first time in nearly two years.  One son said, "Welcome home!"  I did feel like we are home.

Tomorrow we will be in South Carolina, and stopped for a few days.

A Long Day On The Road...

Today we started driving in Kansas and ended up in Illinois on our way south and east.  There were so many interesting things to see.

In Missouri, the State roads seem to be named using letters instead of numbers.  Hmmmmm.  That is interesting.

These strange route numbers kept me alert...sort of.

While we were trying to get through St Louis (it took well over an hour due to police cars blocking our lane then a little later a three-car crash which appeared to just pull bumpers off two different cars...the third one seemed to be a bystander...), I happened to see the Gateway Arch.  Out of several dozen tries, this is the best one:

It looks like cars are going to drive right up and over...but they can't.

Somewhat to the east of St. Louis it began to rain.  That was such a blessing.  Driving through St. Louis during rush hour with the already mentioned traffic issues would have been a nightmare with rain added in.  Thank You, Heavenly Father.  Seriously.

This is what we saw during the rainstorm:

It always makes me happy to see a rainbow--because they are so beautiful and because of the rainbow prophecy.  One more year at least...though I cannot remember where to find that prophecy. Someone can remind me.

Finally, we arrived at our motel after nine-plus hours on the road, I wanted to drown our sorrows in food.  Dear One just wanted to drop into bed after finding a motel for tomorrow night.  Well, with his good friend, the channel surfer...!  There was a "Grand Buffet" restaurant right next to the motel. I queried the desk attendant who said she could not recommend it. It is a Chinese and American restaurant but she said she advised against it.   Drat!  I love Chinese food.  At least, I love the Asian sauces I have eaten almost universally.  Dear One is not adventurous and thinks he does not like Chinese.  What a disappointment.  So...I crossed the road to a place called Bandanas BBQ.

This is what we ate:

This was Dear One's supper except for the coleslaw.  He LOVES garlic bread.  Also french fries.  What he doesn't love are green beans.  UNLESS they are deep fried!  He ate them ALL!  I was so surprised. I was going to get the fried okra since, after all, we are sort of in the South.  The hostess talked me into the green beans.  I guess I can wait until we get REALLY south to try some okra.  I am thinking fried okra is the way to go to put my toe into the okra-eating pond.  I mean, how can you go wrong with deep fried anything?!  Okra is really an alien food to me at the present time.

This was my bbq salad with pork on top.  They gave me a container of bbq ranch dressing with about 1/2 cup of dressing!  Can you believe that?!  Can you also believe that I used self-control and only used a little bit of that dressing?  That one you can believe. I put most of it in the trash bin. Sadly.

So, now we have an Olmec Bird Monster showing on TV as a possible UFO. I think I have had just about enough for today.  The lovely king-sized bed is calling my name.

Tomorrow we go back at it for another nearly 500 miles. Then only one more day after that to get to South Carolina, our first goal.

Family First, as President Says

We were supposed to continue serving until 21 June but our daughter was marrying on 13 June.  President said we needed to be there.  So we were.  The first day of our trip away from Utah gave us another sweet "family first" experience.

Our niece and her family live in Cheyenne, Wyoming, exactly where we needed to get to to drop down to Fort Collins for our first night of sleep.  We have not seen our niece in many years.  She has moved from a single woman working to become a social worker to a wife, and mother of two children, one of whom went to preschool this past year and one who is two.  Darling children. Sweet family.

M was so kind as to make us sandwiches for our supper to take with us (we really only stopped a few minutes because it was already 6 PM and we had miles to go before we slept, which we were definitely ready to do!  Or at least, we were ready to stop moving...!).  She also went to the work of making us a pan of homemade granola bars from the "Oh She Glows" cookbook, a cookbook I have wanted to get for years but somehow never did.  Now, because these bars are so good, I took the plunge and ordered it to be sent to my sister's home in North Carolina where we hope to end up in ten days or so.

Once again we have seen how kind people are.   We are blessed with a wonderful family.  And that is to say nothing of the fabulous friends we have had throughout our lives.  Live is so sweet with so many kind and loving people surrounding us and interacting with us.

Now...on the road again!

New Family Started!

The main reason we came to stop so long in Utah was for our daughter's wedding.  It happened last week.

The ceremony was short and sweet, made sweeter because his son who is serving a mission in Argentina was able to Skype in for it!

Our daughter and her son, our son-in-law and his daughter, plus his missionary son on the iPad!

Now we will hit the road for the East!

Food Friday: Amazing Cupcakes

We made chocolate Amazing Cupcakes with chocolate cake mix and chocolate pudding mix.  We also made chocolate cake mix with vanilla pudding mix.

We used a 24-well cupcake tin to cook them in.  It took 25 minutes at 350 degrees F to cook this large  batch.  They came out really nice.  After the fact I noted that the directions call for slightly rounded scoop but I did not do that.  Thus, there were several cupcakes with extra batter which rather over-filled the cupcake papers.  They still were just fine.

As of this writing, we have not made the lemon cupcakes with raspberry icing.  If we do make them, I am not sure there will be two dozen to take to the open house...lemon and raspberry are a fabulous taste combination. At least I imagine they are.


Amazing Cupcakes
1 box vanilla cake mix, dry
1 box (3.9 oz) instant vanilla pudding, dry
1 cup oil
1/2 cup milk
1 cup sour cream or yogurt 
4 lg eggs
1 tsp vanilla 

1. Mix all ingredients together in a large mixing bowl. The cake batter will be THICK.

2. Fill cupcake tins 2/3 of the way full. (I used the #24 scoop. Which worked perfectly). Makes 24 cupcakes. Use slightly rounded #24 scoop!

3. Bake at 350* F. For 15-18 minutes, or until cupcakes are golden in color. (Don't over bake, they will still be better than any cupcakes you've made before, but they are better not over cooked.)

(For lemon, use lemon cake and pudding also zest of one lemon to delight the senses. And make raspberry buttercream to ice them!)

Four dozen chocolate cupcakes cooling.  You might notice a "corner" missing from a little cake in the upper left part of the cooling rack.  I might have had a taste...Dear One, too!

On a side note:  there is a beautiful gray tiger cat that lives in the neighborhood.  The cat must have been friends with the old lady who lived here before daughter and family because he keeps coming around, climbing on cars, napping on the 4 by 8 trailer in the driveway, and trying to climb in the open windows in the vehicles.  Grandson adores the cat.  Sad because there will be not house pets at this residence.  The friendly kitty, though, can be a pal outside. And seems to have already bought into that relationship.

Busy Day: Getting Ready For Cupcakes

The wedding gathering is going to be very simple.  After the morning ceremony there will be delicious cinnamon buns for people to eat there or take with them back to work.  The evening activity will have cupcakes and root beer floats as well as sherbet in Sprite and other beverages.  Simple.

On Monday we went out to purchase the decorating tips for icing the cupcakes after already making several batches of the Amazing Cupcakes.  We also purchased some ready-made chocolate icing from Sam's Club and some cream cheese icing from Kent's, plus extra confectioner's sugar to use to make royal icing.

We tried out the tips and discovered which tip to use for the flowers which will go on the iced cupcakes, then we tried making swirls around the cupcakes.  (There was a learning curve for both the flowers and the swirls. We are grateful there will be helpers frosting the cupcakes!)  M stopped working long enough to watch a few YouTube videos on making the flowers.

When she was done, this is what she had done:

May I say that I was extremely impressed with her work!!!  I had gone out to do a few other errands and was stunned with her success when I came back.

Last Day in the Mission

Our last day in the mission was so lovely, so bitter, so sweet.

We went to the office for a few hours in the morning.  It has been a while ago but I think we brought some Congo Bars to share.  (If it was not that day then it was the day before...things seem to run together in my brain if I don't write them down immediately!)

After lunch Elder and Sister T and we left the office and hopped onto the Max Rail Blue Line to head to downtown to the Lloyd Center where there was a rose show. It was worth the trip!  Some day I will show some of the hundreds of pictures of roses that are now resident on my phone, but not today.

See those gorgeous roses behind us.

After viewing the roses, we went upstairs to the food court for a little food, then back on the train to head home. 

A little later Sister S came over and emptied and cleaned our refrigerator.  What a kind and generous friend she is.  I was completely exhausted and just sat on a chair and let her.

It was so hard to keep the waterworks in check...and still is all these days later.  I don't do very well at staying dry-eyed.

The Trip Home Has Begun

On Friday morning we left our apartment at Greenbrier in Hillsboro shortly after 7:00 after more help and hugs and tears with our wonderful replacements, Elder and Sister T. 

Shortly before noon we stopped at Pendleton Woolen Mills, a place I have admired from afar--both in distance and in time.

When I was in high school I entered the Make-It-Yourself-With-Wool Contest (sewed a beautiful green heather suit with knife-pleated skirt) and won in my division in Vermont.  The prize was a very beautiful length of red and black wool fabric that I used to make a car coat.  My mother had a silver fox collar that she had acquired somewhere from a relative which she gave me for the collar. I wore that coat for years, until the fox finally bit the dust.  Since that time I have wanted to visit the Pendleton Woolen Mills.  It was a beautiful place. A very expensive place.  Probably worth it but, as the trip TO Oregon, the trip home FROM Oregon finds the car also almost full to the gunwales so I could not justify even one purchase.

This shirt is close to that fabric I won as a prize in the wool contest, though I remember it being a bit more muted than this.

Friday night we stayed at a Red Lion Inn in Ontario, Oregon.  It took us about 9 hours to get there, due to stops both at Multnomah Falls and at Pendleton.

Multnomah Falls from below

Map of the Mighty Columbia River Gorge area

It was a nice trip, though the Blue Mountain pass was a bit white knuckle driving for both of us...

As I write this, we are sitting at M's table in Roy, Utah with Amazing Chocolate Cupcakes cooling on racks while M is out looking for a place to recycle the cardboard boxes she used to move her items into this house.  We are making cupcakes for the open house they will have to celebrate their marriage later this week.

We are thinking of removing some items from the car and shipping for of them home...I am sorry, J and A, for another onslaught.  It has not happened yet, though...

Munchie Monday: Cheesecake Brownies with Problems!

Sometimes things seem like they are going really well then, all of a sudden, whammo! things go the other way.  That was the case early this morning when I decided to make the cheesecake brownies that I was going to make from a mix I purchased from my friends at The Prepared Pantry in Rigby, Idaho.  

This is the story.

Yesterday I purchased the cream cheese needed for the cheesecake part of the brownies.  This morning I got up early to make the brownies in time to take them to the office for a final festive food day before returning home to Vermont.  Because I have been engrossed in packing over the last few weeks, and much more so this week, the kitchen has gone to the dogs. In fact, it was a real hellhole when I was ready to go to work this morning.  There was one counter that was somewhat empty but clean, so that is where I chose to work. 

The oven was set pre-heating to 350 degrees F.

The brownie mix went into a large bowl.

The eggs, butter, water, and oil went into another bowl and were beaten with a fork then mixed into the brownie mix and set aside.

The cream cheese and vanilla were put into a separate bowl and beaten until light.  The sugar and egg yolks were added and I started beating them into the cream cheese when ALL OF A SUDDEN, WHAM!!  The side of the bowl blew out!  That is one problem with using cheap chintzy dollar store items.  There was one bonus with this because, as I mentioned before, the counter on which I was working started out clean!

After pulling out the two pieces of broken bowl and tossing them into the trash bin, I scooped up the quarter cup of cheesecake mixture, added it back into the bowl, and finished the combining but with a spoon this time, not the little hand mixer.  As it happens, this was the first time I had used the mixer...

Note the big hole in the bowl!  Betty Crocker rigid bowl from Dollar Tree.  BUY AT YOUR OWN RISK!!

With the cheesecake mixture ready, I spread half the brownie mix into a greased and foiled 9 by 13 pan then put on half the cheesecake mix in five big dollops, then more brownie mix which I more or less smoothed out then the last of the cheesecake dollops.  At this point I sort of spread, sort of swirled everything together and put it in the oven.

Giving one last look at the brownie mix envelope before trashing it, I noticed I was supposed to be baking at 325 degrees F.  Whoops!  So I canceled the oven then turned it back on to the correct temperature.

The brownies baked for 35 minutes but I did not think they were done so I gave them another 10 minutes.  At that point I was still unsure so I shut of the heat and set the timer for an additional 10 minutes, finally removing them from the oven when the timer sounded.  I was ready to go back to bed for a nap!!

After almost two hours cooling, I brought them to the office, lifted the foil out of the pan, cut the brownies, returned them to the pan, and put the pan in the refrigerator.  I think they will be tasty when cold.

During the two hour hiatus I took about a fifteen minute nap break then leaped back up because I couldn't stand the kitchen mess on my mind one moment more.  I can stand a whole lot of mess, but today I discovered my limit!  So now as I sit here typing, I can say the kitchen is back up to a higher mess level. It is not clean and tidy, but so much better that when we get home tonight it won't take long to get things together, then I can do the final packing (and shipping) then have the last few days to do some actual apartment cleaning for the new missionary couple who will arrive on the 15th.