This took me totally by surprise (December 23)

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I lived here for ten years. This kind of weather should have come as no big surprise to be...but it did. This is the night we drove into Payson..December 23, right around 4 pm. I'm a couple of blocks from the little house I used to live in and in a little bit, we're going over to Pat's house to visit for a while and then crash out at the hotel. All of this traveling has just knocked me out.

This is what it looked like when we parked the CAR outside the hotel. You can barely see the hotel!






December 24
We are going to Homestead to go diving at the Crater. When I was at BYU, my sorority used to come here for the weekend. There was llittle of nothing to do--cross country ski, snowshoe, go horseback riding. There was a big hot springs pool and the food was great, but there were no televisons, no radios, no telephones. These are stock photos from the Homestead website. It was SO COLD that it looked like we were walking into the gates of Hell. The water is 96 degrees and the outside air was around 15 degrees. If you ever are in the Provo area, I highly reccomend going up Provo Canyon and spending some time at Homestead. It is wonderful; close to Heber, which has lots of neat shops and activities and you can take the highway around the mountain and circle back towards Salt Lake and drop down into Park City and Emmigration Canyon on your way into town.











After we got home from diving, Pat came and got be so we could juke around. Payson is a lot bigger than it used to be--it even has a Walmart! There's a Subway and a McDonald's but that's about it for fast food. we stopped at a drive up liquor store and got cokes, drove around and gossiped. Drove out to Wilsonville, past Big I's place and Up Yours, over to Angee's...who RAISES ELK! Like a whole herd of them! Is that crazy or what? And Angee looks like Miss America (even after three boys). She lives in one of those big family-cenric houses where there is only one tv, where she can keep an eye on it. The boys are polite and like to hunt. They have snake skins and other critters they've hunted down in their bedrooms (which were tidy and clean). Angee is exactly the way she was when she was 10 and just as sweet. Love her and her mom to bits. I've know them...since 1975 and probably talk to them once a week and email almost every day...usually over nothing; just to keep in touch.