Kyle’s employer is sending him on a business trip to Oregon. When he talked to his manager about it, he asked if he could make it a road trip and bring his family, and his manager said that would be fine! So yesterday we finished getting ready and we left.
I actually wanted to leave on Saturday after Wendy and John left our place, but the kids have been taking turns with a stomach bug this week and so that slowed down my preparations to leave town. Actually, after we left home yesterday, we stopped to fill the van’s gas tank just a few miles from home, and as soon as we pulled out of that parking lot to hit the road…Dinah announced that she needed to throw up. So we had to make an emergency stop at the next gas station just down the street from where we filled up. Thankfully though that was the only vomit stop we had to make. 😀
We headed north to Salt Lake City, then we headed west past the Great Salt Lake and the salt flats.
Last night we spent the night in a hotel in Winnemucca, Nevada. We haven’t done much staying in hotels with the kids. Every time we travel, it is usually to a place where we can stay with family, so they were really excited to get to stay in a hotel. Kyle and I woke early, because this bed hog kicked us out.
I guess the flash of my camera woke some of the others up, so I just went on taking more pictures. 🙂
After getting some breakfast from the hotel, we resumed our journey. Only now we weren’t using a highway, just state roads. The difference between the highway and the state roads is significant. Along a highway there are plenty of exits along the way to fill up, or get food, or to make a potty stop, but it seemed that along the state roads we took it could be over a hundred miles before there was ANY place to stop, and even then, there was no guarantee that it would have gas, food, or bathrooms!
There is also a contrast between Nevada and Oregon. As soon as we got to Oregon it was amazing to see how green everything became, compared to the deserts of Nevada.
Also driving through the forests the trees are MASSIVE!
We had planned to have my grandparents meet up with us in Springville for lunch, but we were behind schedule due to leaving a day later than intended, and we just weren’t going to make it there in time for lunch. I called Grandpa Tom to let him know and see if we could work out a visit some other way. In the end we decided to visit them on Thursday after Kyle gets off of work. So we continued on our journey to Springville and got checked into our hotel rooms, before going to dinner.
We went to dinner at Outback Steakhouse. It was right across the parking lot from our hotel rooms, so we could just walk there. I had never been to Outback Steakhouse before. I liked the small loaves of bread that they brought out for us to nibble on while we waited for our food. We figured out what the kids wanted and ordered our food and then we waited. It seemed like we waited forever too, the kids started getting impatient with the waiting. That doesn’t usually happen when we go to restaurants. We asked our waitress about when the food would be out and she responded with a comment that felt like she was blaming us. “Well it took you guys a long time to order”. Well even if it did we ordered a LONG time ago. They finally brought the food out and I helped Lydia cut up her steak bites so that it would be easier for her to eat them, but as I sliced them, I noticed they were totally red inside. I had asked for them to be medium well. As far as I’m aware, medium well means mostly BROWN with just a hint of pink in the middle. We asked the waitress about this as well and again she made us feel like we were complaining unjustly by telling us that “medium well does have red in it”. I was angry by this point. Medium well should have a slight bit of pink in the middle, but you CANNOT give a three year old RED meat! That is just not safe, and they knew that meat was going to a kid, it was a kids meal for crying out loud! They did take Lydia’s meat back and re-grill it to brown it up some. I just didn’t want to ask for well done meat because so often when you say “well” they bring you meat that you can’t chew it’s so done. Lydia being three, I wanted the meat slightly softer than that so she could actually chew it. We left the restaurant that night feeling extremely disappointed in the service to say the least.
Before returning to our hotel rooms we got in the van and headed to the store to get some food for breakfast and lunch for the next few days. Adam would have been very upset to have had to gone without milk the whole time we are in Oregon so we made sure to get some of that too. Kyle also drove around a bit to show me a bit of town so that if I want to leave the hotel while he is at work I would have some idea of where I’m going.