Alliteration: It’s a ‘B’eautiful Thing

Every couple of years or so, we try to take a vacation of some sort. Two years ago, we spent a few days in Cedar City enjoying the Shakespearean Festival. A couple of years before that, we spent a week with my parents and my sibs and their families in Island Park and explored Yellowstone National Park. We’ve also done a few short trips in support of our kids in marching band or spent a night in Logan after enjoying one of Daniel’s concerts. But the last time we went on what I would consider an extensive vacation was when we went to Seattle seven years ago. Just over a year ago, Kevin and I started talking about planning another vacation. We have wanted to get Daniel back to Oregon ever since he came home from his mission much sooner than planned due to the unexpected arrival of Covid in our lives. We figured that if we wanted to make it happen, we’d better get a move on before he got much older and more independent so that he would actually be able to come with us. And thus, a plan was born.

While the vacation has been carefully planned, what was not planned was the fact that our first day on the road has been an English lesson, one focused on the ever-entertaining principle of alliteration. Several weeks ago, as we were planning out this first marathon day of driving, we were poring over Google maps figuring out some rest stops. It just so happened that our end goal for this first day of driving was Bend, Oregon. The last fairly civilized place to stop before we made the long, boring trek west from Idaho to Bend was in Burns, Oregon. A logical stop several hours prior to Burns was Boise, Idaho. And that was just too good to pass up. We like some whimsy in our lives, so we added Burley, Idaho and Brigham City, Utah to our list of stops. And our plan, though begun as somewhat of a joke, actually worked very well.

This morning we left home nice and early. Just over an hour into our trip, we stopped to eat breakfast in Brigham City. Our other stops also went as planned. We stopped in (almost) Burley, hitting a rest stop just prior to the actual city, Boise, and Burns before finally taking the long, boring, straight stretch to Bend. And it was all those things. Long: it was our last stretch of the day and as such, it felt longer than all the ones that came before. Boring: the scenery was lackluster, mostly scrub and juniper just like we get in Utah. Straight: the road was straight, literally stretching in an unswerving line to the horizon. And when we reached the point we saw as the horizon, the unswerving road continued, just as straight as ever. But as all roads do, eventually some curves appeared as we made our way closer to our destination.

Extending our adventure in alliteration, we added several unplanned “B’s” over the course of the day. The first was our nearly new car’s first ever travel at over 100 mph. It was only once, on that long, straight, so long, so straight road and only so that we could pass a slower vehicle. But with four bored kids, two of whom are return missionaries who learned a whole lot of missionary lingo during the time they served and are looking for anything exciting to help pass the time, I learned that passing the century mark on the speedometer is called “baptizing” the car. Our dinner stop added two more B’s by opting to eat at Black Bear Diner. I promise the selection was not made with our alliterative travel plan in mind but was a happy accident that came to mind as we filled our bellies.

Today was our longest travel day. We have learned in the past that a marathon drive on day one is fine because we are all filled with anticipation for what is to come. But an endless day in the car at the end of the vacation is torture with the fun behind us and all the weariness of said fun sitting on our shoulders. So, we made our plan with that in mind. Tomorrow the fun starts…not that spending thirteen hours in the car with my family wasn’t fun because there is always entertainment value to be had in our time together, but we only have about three hours of driving before we hit our first stop. And the first stop is an airplane museum which means all the boys are super excited. In the meantime, sitting all day is exhausting so I expect we will all sleep well!