Heading to Paradise (Valley)

Yet another day spent in the car! By this point Catherine was done with her official position as Elijah's entertainment: 

(don't miss that she's tied his foot to Jon's chair so he can't kick her)

The plan was to stop at the salt flats rest stop for lunch. Since we detoured to the mine, Aaron & Ashley were an hour or two ahead of us. They sent us this picture and challenged us to top it:

Well, we made it to the salt flats.

And then I told my family it was time to take a winning family picture.

This was their reaction:

(using the cool app Aunt Ashley showed her to ID some bug)

So...I had to force everyone onto the flats. 

Elise was the first to cooperate and (kind of ) smile:

This was our first submission to the competition.

It's titled "we reject your capitalist, colonialist, patriarchal, system of judgement":

Jon's grand idea was that we would take a family picture of all of us jumping into the air simultaneously. It turns out that we are either really bad at jumping all together or Jon is really bad about taking a picture when we're all in the air:

Submission 1: Elise missed the memo to jump

Submission 2: Everyone is actually in the air but it doesn't look like it.

Besides Elijah. 

He is bulldozing the salt flats.

Submission 3: Aaron the Dolphin King

Solo shot of the photographer

We clearly lost the competition.

Enjoy your capitalist. colonialist, patriarchal victory, Aaron & Ashley.

This was a fun delay on our drive:

It was burning right along the freeway.

Thankfully it wasn't too intense so we could still get through.

And then we finally made it to Paradise Valley!

Elijah was literally in paradise:

Kade took Elijah and Jonny out on his combine (?) almost as soon as we arrived.

A very, very happy Elijah

Jonny also went back out with Kade later that evening to put down poison for the hoards of giant black Mormon crickets that were all over the land this year. But sometimes a guy just needs a little snack while out killing crickets:

Delicious.

Those crickets are a childhood phobia thanks to my time in Oak City at the Alldredge cabin. I'd take snakes or spiders over crickets any day. So this was a good opportunity to get over myself since they were all over the place every time we went outside.