Ausborne Blog

It’s been a while since I’ve gone on a nice drive.  I’ve always loved going on a nice long drive to see things that I’ve not seen in a while, or to see things which I’ve never before seen.  It’s something that I’ve always found therapeutic.  I used to do it when I lived in the Bay Area.  I’d find myself going on a late-night drive almost the whole way up to San Francisco on I-280, turn west on CA Hwy 92, then drive across to Half Moon Bay.  Once there, I’d head a little ways down CA Hwy 1, stopping along the way at a beach where I could pull the car up near the water and shine the headlights out into the waves.  The great thing about this was that my trip wasn’t complete.  I still had to do the return trip, which involved driving south on Hwy 1 all the way to Santa Cruz, where I’d then turn and head home to San Jose.  The whole loop was about 120 miles, and was a trip I probably made fifteen different times in the two years I lived there while I had a drivers license.  Like I said, I love going on long drives.

Today, since Melanie was at work, I decided to remedy my lack of long distance driving by getting in the van with Byron, Betsy, and Ryan, then heading to Utah County.  We stopped by a friend’s house in Draper to drop of a gift for his newborn son, then decided to keep driving.   We headed up and over Traverse Ridge and down into Utah County.   We drove through Alpine, Highland, and American Fork, to the Mount Timpanogos Temple, which has temple grounds that look pretty cool with so much undisturbed snow.  We then headed through Pleasant Grove and Lindon to Orem, where we stopped for lunch at Sizzler.  I got to tell the kids about how the Sizzler we were at was the same place that Melanie and I had eaten when we went on our first date back in 1996, and the kids thought that was a pretty fun story to talk about.

After lunch we stopped by and saw some good friends who we had not seen for about a year.  One of the neat things about these friends is that they have a gorgeous 24 x 36 inch framed canvas photo of the Mount Timpanogos Temple at sunset.  I’m partial to it mostly because I gave it to them as a gift.  I took the photo at sunset on 13 February 2007, and almost immediately ordered (from pictureframes.com) a large framed canvas print to give as a gift.  Here is the photo that I had printed:

Mount Timpanogos Temple at Sunset

The kids were great, I got to drive to someplace I rarely get to go, and I saw some good old friends.  All in all, it was a good day.