Family Trip

Sometime in June, my sister Janeen (or was it Dianne) and asked if I would be interested in going on a trip to tour places that my brother John had served in during his mission.  I told Janice and Darcee during the Porter reunion about it, and they volunteered to help take the kids for a few days.  I had other family members volunteer to help also, and so it was arranged to go.  By the time things were going in July, there were seven of us who went.  My Dad, sisters Janeen, Dianne, Marie, Karen, and my brother John.  My younger brother Scott and his wife were expecting a baby in August and so it would not be good for him to be gone.  We planned to leave early out of Salt Lake July 26th and come back August 4th.  I will try to do a blog for every day or two over the next several days to so what we did on the trip.

This was not a leisurely trip.  We traveled 5,000 miles through 15 states during the 10 days we were gone.  Most days we did not arrive at our hotel until 10:30 or 11:00 at night and then we were usually on the road by 8:00 in the morning.  I have to say thank you to all of my family, but especially Janeen and John who planned the trip.  We got to see as many things as we could thanks to them.  Thanks also to "Suzy" the GPS who helped us many times and only got us lost a few times.  This was a trip of a life time and one I will not forget.  There is even talk about going in the future to my mission and going through the northeast United States. 

I will start out the day before the actual trip.  We had much to prepare for and the boys had to work at the cemetary on that Monday.  We finally got on the road about 6:00and headed to Utah.  We arrived at the Waddoups about 9:30.  Alexa was not will us as she was visiting Andi and Michael and family in Arizona thanks to Grandpa Porter letting her hitch a ride down and back that week.  I was picked up by my sister Marie and brother-in-law Robert.  We headed for the Salt Lake airport Super 8.  We were able to leave two cars there the whole time we were gone for only $7.  Quite the bargin.

Offical Day 1

We got up early and headed to the airport to get checked in for our 7:15 flight to Denver.  Once checked in, we got some breakfast and got our luggage together.

We left on time and arrived in Denver with our next flight out to Dallas at 10:15.  We flew on Frontier Airlines.  Each plane has an animal painted on its wing. 

We left on time and arrived in Dallas-Forth Worth airport at 1:50.  We got a shuttle to our rental Suburban and then headed to Houston. 

It was 105 degrees that day as we travelled along.  We noticed that our Suburban had an out of balanced tire as we got above 70 mph and decided that this would not be good to drive and ride for 5,000 miles.  We phoned the rental company arranged to pick up another Suburban at the Houston airport.  That changed our plans, so we decided to go eat at IHOP for my Dad's 83rd birthday.  We then went to the Houston Temple before headed to get our Suburban exchanged. 

It took two hours to get things straightened out and then we were on our way to Beaumont, Texas for the night.  It was nice to not be shaken along the way.