Mini road trip

We've taken up a new hobby as a family ... listening to the Harry Potter series on c.d. in the car.  :) Elle & Paige are new fans, while the rest of us have been long time fans.  When Christian was little little, he was such a Harry Potter fan that he drew himself a lightening bolt scar on his forehead with my eyeliner on a daily basis.  We woke him up for midnight book releases at Barnes & Noble, I sewed him a cool wizard cape with a skinny little pocket just for his wand.  Aahhh … those were some good times.

So -- knowing that the kids start school next week, and knowing that Christian wasn't feeling up to doing much since he had just gotten his wisdom teeth out, and knowing that we wanted to listen to the cd's as much as we could, and knowing that my kids haven't ever seen the salt flats before … I figured we could take a field trip out west and have a little outing.  Everyone was really excited.

He was excited.  I promise.

And then we hit serious rain and gray clouds that stretched as far as the eye could see.  Not the best weather to explore the salt flats, but what could we do at this point?

We finally found the giant ball sculpture thing.  Still raining hard.

But we braved the weather and ran out onto the soggy, gray salt flats anyway.

The kids were totally humoring me by this point.  "These salt flats are amazing, mom.  Soooo glad we drove all the way here for this lovely experience."  I couldn't stop laughing.  Sorry, guys! Not what I had envisioned for our day.

By then, the signs read that Wendover was only 20 miles away.  I totally thought Wendover was like 3 hours away, not 1 1/2 hours.  So, hey -- why don't we go see the giant waving cowboy in Wendover while we're already out this far?  And we're so glad we did, because about 10 minutes outside of Wendover, the clouds parted and the sun shone out!  It was perfect. :)

 Blue skies to the west, and this to the east ….

The salt was really wet and sticky.  My car is still covered in gloppy white salt.  But it was worth it.  All of the kids agreed that the brilliant white salt was worth the soggy drive to see.

And here he is … the cowboy I remember from my childhood.  We drove the route from Salt Lake to San Francisco more times than I can even remember.

Fun little field trip.  Plus we listened to a full 4 cd's worth of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. Pretty great day. :)