Casey's Blog

Just a quick update on my trip to and from Montana. The ride up there was pretty nice. I delayed leaving on Tuesday and left Wednesday instead, so that the roads had a chance to clear up before I drove on them.

Wednesday (Christmas Eve):
Drove 640 or so miles to Montana. It took me about 9.5 hours, but Bear did great on the trip up. He just chilled on the back seat of my car. We (My mom, two sisters, my sisters' boyfriends, and me) opened our gifts not long after I got stuff unpacked.

Thursday (Christmas Day):
Went to my grandma and grandpa's house (mom's side of the family, my grandparents and two uncles were there) and had dinner there. Bear came with us and wasn't too sure about that many new people and places in two days. He did fine though.

Friday:
Hung around the house with my mom, Bear, and the two cats. Attempted to fix mom's computer, but I left my laptop and crap at home.

Saturday:
Went to Billings (an hour drive from my hometown) and visited my dad and did some shopping with Mom.

Sunday:
Hung around the house again.

Monday:
Hung around the house, tried to take some pictures of the town (it was pretty slushy and I only had tennis shoes), visited one of my friends for a bit. It was good to see my friend since the last time I saw him was Christmas time last year.

Tuesday:
Drove about 640 miles home. The section of I-90 from Hardin, MT to halfway between Sheridan, WY and Buffalo, WY was pretty bad, but the rest of the trip was great. Bear and I made it home in one piece though.


It was nice just to go up there, see my family and relax for a few days. Mom and I had a lot of fun shopping Saturday. We mostly just wanted to walk through the stores. One of our favorite places to go is World Market. I saw some Julmust, so I bought a bottle of that. Yum. I'd never had that before, but it was pretty dang tasty. Mom bought a set of Asian dinner setting for two people. So we obviously had to get a variety of Asian foods to eat on it. We stuck to mostly curried noodles, chow mein, General Tso's chicken, and a rice noodle soup. We're kind of goofy like that.

We were supposed to leave at 8am Mountain Time on Friday, but it ended up being almost 9am MST before we finally left. I hate having to wait on people, but since I was just riding along I wasn't going to say too much. We needed to be in Aurora around 3pm Central Time (no later than 7pm CST since that's when the service started), so we could register and get stuff in our rooms. It's about a 3.5 hour drive from home to Aurora and that's not counting stopping for lunch, bathroom breaks, etc. Two of the gals in the vehicle I was in wanted to stop in Kearney to get a small tattoo on the top of their foot, so we stopped there for a about 30 minutes or so for that. This is kind of what their tattoo looks like. It's called an ichthys. We made it to Aurora right on time, even though we stopped for that. In fact, we were actually the first of our 3 vehicles to get there. We went to the teaching that night and afterwards our group congregated in one of our rooms and talked until about 12:30 in the morning.

***I keep mentioning my times in Mountain Standard Time (MST) and Central Standard Time (CST) for a reason. Between Paxton, NE and Sutherland, NE (about 12 miles or 19.3 kms) it switches time zones. Wreaks a bit of havok when I go over 90 miles east of where I live.

We were thrilled to find out that we got 4.5 hours after lunch to do whatever we wanted. We could have went to Grand Island about 20 miles away, but we stayed around Aurora. I'll post an album with some pictures of the Aurora tonight or tomorrow. I've never been in a town that had a town square before, so that was rather neat. One of the historic buildings was burnt down and in the process of being demolished when we were there. A few kids started it on fire and they lost three businesses from it. It was a lot of fun just to wander around for a bit. After we got back from shopping, we went and paddled around the pond in a paddleboat. We had a blast just goofing around out there. After dinner and the evening teaching we congregated in one of the rooms for a bit until the people left the indoor pool and hot tub. A few of us didn't have swimming suits, so we were improvising with what we had which was pretty much a long shirt and underwear. We had a blast though.

The morning we got packed and loaded our stuff up, ate breakfast, went to the last teaching, and left to go home. We ate lunch in Grand Island at Ruby Tuesday (never heard of them until then, but they were good) and did some shopping. A few of the ladies went over to Gordmans while the rest of us went to the mall. I got to go to Waldenbooks, it's been awhile since I'd had a chance to go to a Waldenbooks/Borders, so that made me happy. I went into Hot Topic while we were waiting on a few people and got a Dropkick Murphey's shirt that was on sale for about $3.00. Hell yeah! We went looking for the other vehicle of people to drop off some of the group that didn't belong in our vehicle, but we were having a heck of a time finding Hastings Bookstore because they weren't giving us very bad (OK totally crappy) directions. We finally found it and I got some more books. *oh so happy* Our crew left at 4:15ish pm CST while the other crew was going to still shop around. We stopped in North Platte for a bathroom break and went to Starbuck's for coffee. I got home about 6:30pm MST and put a few things away before calling my Mom to talk to her for a bit.

This morning I was a bit goofed up due to changing timezones. I was about 10 or 15 minutes late to work because I actually got to sleep more than a few hours last night. One of my roommates snored horribly. That's one of the worst that I've ever heard before.