Fall is in full swing here in southeastern Idaho. In our RV park, the tree beside our spot is very busy dropping bushel baskets of leaves. There are still plenty of trees still to turn, however. That just means it’s high time to hit the road and get out of here!
One big question has been what to do about transportation while we’re traveling for the next six weeks or so. The car we usually pull behind the motor home is no more (it now has a home in Seattle). Neither of the other two cars can be towed four wheels down. One option we have been considering is buying a car hauler trailer to bring a car along behind. New ones are more than $3,200, which is out of the question. I found a few used trailers on ksl.com that might fill the bill. So, today we unhooked everything and drove the motor home down to the Ogden, Utah area to look at a trailer. It would have cost about $1,900 to buy. We looked it over and clearly, it was not the right trailer for us. That pretty much sealed the decision. We’ll drive the motor home and if we need something else, we’ll rent it. We can rent a lot of cars for $1,900! The motor home itself is small enough that we can usually park it in a normal parking spot. It’s just a hassle to unhook everything, drive around, return to the campground, and hook everything back up. However, we’ll get much better gas mileage when we’re not towing anything.
The drive had another purpose as well. It’s been quite a while since we’ve gone any distance in the motor home. Since the last time we drove more than 600 miles in the motor home both Nina and I have new knees and Nina has had Achilles tendon surgery. This was a shake-down drive to be certain we had everything in order for the long distance driving. There are a couple of things we need to adjust, but over all, we’re ready to be on the road.
While we were driving back from Utah, my phone rang:
“Hello, this is Roland”
“Hi there. Is this the soon to be Elder Smith?”
“That would be me!”
“This is sister (garbled, I never did get her name) … from the visitors’ center in Hawaii. You might have a few questions?”
Wow! Did we ever!!
Since I was driving, I handed the phone to Nina who had a delightful conversation. We learned a lot. There are only a few couples at the visitors center along with a whole bunch of young Sister Missionaries. Our assignment will be to supervise one of the shifts at the center. Shifts are five hours long and when we’re not on duty, the rest of the time is ours to do as we wish (keeping with missionary standards, of course). We can work at the temple, volunteer at the cultural center (which comes with a free meal), go sightseeing, or whatever! That was very interesting information.
We also learned that we can rent a car from the mission for $150 a month, so shipping a car over isn’t needed at all. Nina will be wearing a mumu fitted to her size. I’ll be in a short-sleeved white shirt and slacks. She can wear sandals (a real boon for her!). Our apartment is nicely furnished and looks out at the Temple.
Marvelous information! Life is very good.