Summer Jambo #5: Terrorizing the Southwest

The past three weeks have been filled with all sorts of excitement and grand adventures for me. I feel really blessed to know and be consistently seeing the hand of the Lord in my life, and how he has protected me from serious situations on several occasions recently. My list of adventures are far too long for me to list in one post, so I'll try to get them posted in portions. So here goes:

The second week of August, I essentially began a Peter Pan lifestyle. I quit my job, moved out of my apartment in Provo (with all the pomp and majesty involved thereby), and began a four day road trip across the desert southwest with my little brother on our way to Houston. One of our first stops was at Arches National Park in eastern Utah, which I am ashamed to admit I had never visited before, despite my living in Utah for the majority of my life. We did the lame tourist thing by just stopping at the scenic viewpoints, but we did make a point to take the short, 10-minute hike up to the Delicate Arch viewpoint. There's nothing that builds confidence and pride in one's physique quite like passing up lazy, foreign tourists panting in the desert heat!


We also stopped by the Monticello Temple (which was the first small temple of the church to open) before crossing the Colorado boarder. Again, it's embarrassing to admit that I'd never been to Colorado before, even though I'd been to Europe and over half of the states in the union. We stayed that night in Cortez, CO, which coincidentally was a town that Elder Roman Matthew served in.

The next morning, Friday, we found ourselves crossing into New Mexico and driving through the endless wastes of the Ute Mountain and Navajo reservations. This was by far the worst terrain we saw the entire trip...the sand was soo terrible, not even sagebrush or grass could grow in it. It was a terrible reminder of the atrocities the Untied States Government had committed by confining these people to this desolate land.

Once we left the Navajo territory, we entered Albuquerque, NM. Daniel and I had been quite excited to come here since we'd heard the "Albuquerque" song by Weird Al Yankovic and even got to see the world famous Albuquerque Holiday Inn! Daniel and I both agreed that Albuquerque is in fact a magical place, and can confirm that it really does smell like "warm Root Beer."


Leaving Albuquerque, we kept heading east until we hit the junction with the road that went to Roswell. Again, it had been a life-long dream to visit the infamous town of Roswell ever since our old roommate, Chris Porter, had told me about his adventures there. The story he told me was about how his tour guide had shown him a picture of a nuclear blast that had occurred after an Alien spacecraft crashed at the Pittsburgh airport, and some foolish firemen had put "Earth water" on the alien fire, "which as we all know," will cause a nuclear reaction that destroyed Pittsburgh.

Daniel and I were quite excited to meet some "true believers" there in Roswell...probably a little too excited. We'd planned out our day so that we'd be able to arrive in town in time for us to visit the International UFO Museum and Research Center about an hour before it closed, and we rushed throughout the rest of the day to ensure we would stick to our schedule. As part of this rush though, Daniel insisted we pass the first gas station we'd seen in about 100 miles. According to his calcuations, we should be able to reach Roswell with 40 miles to spare before runing out of gas. Dispite the bad feeling I had in my gut, and about a quarter tank of gas left, we passed this station, only to later realize it was the last gas station for another 100 miles.

About 35 miles outside of Roswell, the low fuel light came on. To say the least, Daniel and I became quite concerned about this. The endless hills and fields stretched on for miles in every direction, with no end in sight. I began pulling out every trick I'd ever learned to save gasoline to save as much as possible. Daniel later told me that as the minutes passed, he kept telling himself "30 miles! I don't want to walk 30 miles!....20 miles! I don't want to walk 20 miles!...10 miles! I don't want to walk 10 miles!...5 miles! I don't want to walk 5 miles!...3 miles! Ok...I can walk 3 miles!" Of course, we were praying the entire time that God would help us to get to the next gas station.

Somehow, we miraculously rolled into a gas station on the outskirts of Roswell. I made Daniel get me an ice cream for the emotional trauma he'd caused me, and I also claimed dictatorial powers when it came to matters of safety for our trip.

Brian - "You owe me an ice cream!"

While in Roswell, we lived our dream of attending the UFO Museum, which was a joke. The science was crazy, and they would take comments out of context to try to prove points. I was left unconvinced of the existense of alien life on the earth. We also watched the Star Wars: Clone Wars movie on it's opening day there at the town mall.

Daniel outside the International UFO Museum and Research Center

The next day, Saturday, we entered Texas, where it really began to pour down on us. It began to flood very badly just outside of Odessa, TX, and we even hydroplaned a few times on the freeway, so we decided to pull off the road and take shelter at the local Dairy Queen until the storm passed. We eventually were able to arrive at Lampasas, TX, an area where Daniel had served his mission, and have dinner with Dean Howard. The next morning we were able to attend church there and then drive the rest of the way to Houston. We had more rain on the way, but the flooding wasn't as bad as it had been in Odessa. We safely arrived at our cousin's home that night and had a fun time staying with them.

There are a lot of ruins in Texas. Sometimes all of the buildings on one side of the road would be fine while all of the ones on the other side were destroyed. Daniel hypothesized it was a parable about tithing.

My cousin, Jennifer Thomas, had moved to Houston with her husband, Orren, who works for NASA. Considering Daniel was doing an internship with NASA, it was the perfect situation, and they're also really fun to talk to. Jennifer had grown up in Sacramento, so I didn't know her very well, but in spending time with her, I was amazed at how much she reminded me of my grandmother in everything that she did. I had fun baking bread with her on that Monday, and later going to the NASA Houston Space Center with her. When our tour of NASA ran later than we had planned, she even drove like a maniac to get me to the airport on time for my flight home.

I suppose this is a good place to end before my adventures moving up to Spokane. Stay tuned for another update shortly!