Traveling With The Whites

The White Family took off on our annual summer vacation. This year we are headed to Washington. My dad has always said, "When you die you can't take things with you, but you can take your memories." So, we've always gone on great vacations to create fun memories. Carol and Everett are our willing hosts this summer. We're all excited to see them again.
It's a 2 day drive from Salt Lake City, it's a good thing we are all so used to road trips and that we actually enjoy them.

Wednesday July 21st we left Salt Lake and headed north. As we drove through Idaho Dad chose to stop in Twin Falls to look at the new temple. It's a beautiful area and building! It reminded me a lot of the Oquirrh Mountain Temple.

We stopped to put gas in the car and look who (well, actually what) we saw driving this huge motorhome!

We got up Thursday morning and Emma and I had managed to pack the exact same outfit for today (we even have matching shoes, black polka dot flip flops). It totally was NOT planned. Because we're both wearing our University of Utah pants Mom said we looked like we were on a team together. I decided that we are part of the U of U basketball team. Wouldn't you mistake us for basketball players???

We stopped in Ellensburg, Washington for lunch and to put gas in the car. We got a short way down the road and I started to hear a weird sound from the back of the car. I asked if anyone could hear that just as the noise got louder. My mom heard it and then I said, "Pull over now." Sure enough, the tire had completely blown out! It was shredded! Really scary!

Surprisingly, each of us kept calm. We worked together to locate the spare tire and Dad started working to get the shredded tire off.

We had to completely unload all our luggage. Kind of a funny sight on the side of the freeway. Here's a request, if you are driving past someone pulled off to the side of the road please move to the lane furthest away. It's super scary to have all those cars zooming past that close!

This is our tire!

Emma wanted a try on the jack!

Some really nice state road crew workers stopped to help us. We were maybe 50 yards past an exit, so they helped us back up to the exit and then escorted us through town to a repair shop. We were the only car there for tires, so they had us in and out in a flash. Very nice people! We were blessed that we heard the noise from the tire when we did. We were blessed that the wheel wasn't damaged, just the tire. We were blessed that we all remained calm and were able to work together so well. We were blessed that there wasn't an accident. Heavenly Father was certainly looking out for us!

Tire Heaven...

My mom was convinced it was Tire Hell. You can decide for yourself.

A huge trailer pulled into the repair shop on the way to the Hydroplane museum. This is a hyrdoplane. The cute lady at the repair shop came running out to find us when it pulled up and told us to go take a picture with it. Honestly, I'm not really sure what this is, so I probably didn't appreciate it as much as I should have.

Today was definitely not boring! We made it to Carol and Everett's safely and are looking forward to a funfilled and relaxing vacation.