I will say, the drive the next day from Denver to Utah was the most scenic one yet. In Colorado it was mountain passes, lakes, streams, waterfalls, and some beautiful mountain terrain. Utah had the dessert with it's red mountains and rock formations. Goodness knows how many National Forests and National Park turn offs I drove by.
Janet and Stephanie had warned me the night before there was a segment where there would be no gas for a 100 miles. They weren't kidding. Beautiful as some of the scenery was, I really was out in the middle of nowhere.
I got into the thriving metropolis of Filmore at about 6 pm. Cousin Nathan wasn't home yet but he said to just walk right on in because he had left the front door open. What?
Nathan's wife, Lorraina, had grown up in Filmore, and that's what brought them back after they finished school. Currently his wife and him are busy running a business of a gym they opened, because the town doesn't have one. I offered to take Lorraina and him out to dinner, but Nathan said it wasn't necessary. There were only four restaurants that would still be open at this time and three of them were fast food. Okay.
Cousin Nathan isn't a cousin as much as I feel more he is a half sibling. Our mom's are sisters and when we were younger, our families were ALWAYS together. There were some years that we were in the same elementary school and the same ward. He and some of his siblings practically lived at my house growing up, which was fine by us. One of the best gifts our parents gave us was lots of playmates. We remember summers where our parents pretty much shooed us out the door to go play and we were happy to do it. Plenty of memories of swimming in my parents pool, or playing in the treehouse at the bottom of the hill. We would be outside all day long.
Nathan came from a family of 10 children. Between his nine siblings and my six, there was a lot of catching up to do.
One thing we discussed quite a bit was when Nathan's biological father left. He was three years old when his father left my aunt for another woman, and left her with eight children to raise on her own. About two years later, my aunt met Uncle Karl and they were married a short time after. Nathan and I compared notes on what we remember from the era of our families lives and with me being 9 years older, I certainly had a different version of what went on.
Nathan has only met his biological father once when he was younger. After he left, there was very little contact with any of his children. As far as he was concerned, Karl is his Dad because he is the one who raised him. Nathan told me looking back now he knows he is a different person because Karl raised him versus his biological dad. Then he said all of his siblings look back and really give Karl a huge amount of credit for being able to take on a woman and her eight children.
Next morning I woke up and was off for my last day of driving to finally get home to Escondido.
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