Our personal stimulus package

After a grueling semester, Landon left last Monday morning for his seven week field camp seminar. This week he was in Wendover, Nevada. He'll be going to various locations and coming home for visits in between for the rest of Spring semester.

In light of this, we decided that we deserved what we have dubbed a "superdate." We didn't have a lot of time or $$, but we wanted to get out of everyday life - which for us means neither of the adjoining counties to our home count. The winning attraction? Manti, UT!

Neither of us had ever been there before. It's just one gorgeous 2-hour drive away. I took a day off work and we left on Thursday night for our adventure. We checked into a quaint and very historical bed and breakfast, spent the night enjoying cable TV, relaxing and laughing, and enjoying this remarkable view from our window:

The next morning, we slept in for a good long time (well deserved, I have to say). We checked out at 11 a.m. and started wandering the town.

We loved the temple so much and were sad that it was closed (We knew this beforehand, but we decided to go anyway, and we're really glad we did). We'll definitely be going back to do a session there. If the inside is anything like the outside, it must be breath-taking.

We found a very cool old cemetery with plenty of pioneers, including those from the Willie Handcart company, Isaac Morely - who founded Manti, lots of casualties from the Indian wars, and two of Butch Cassidy's sidekicks. It was beautiful.

We also found this fabulous old door - and now have plans to reconstruct it in our backyard someday for photo shoots. I wish I would have had my tripod, so I could have gotten a proper photo of us - but the camera perched on an old crate balanced at the right angle by my purse was passable.

After wandering Manti for several hours, touring old homes, looking in fun little shops, and buying some delicious ice cream, we began our trek back home. But we couldn't leave without taking a peak at...

(Molly, this picture is dedicated to you)

We had packed a picnic lunch and stopped in a little park on the way home for a really late lunch/dinner. We made it back home by seven, in time to catch a movie to round off our "superdate." We weren't sure how the one-day trip was going to work out, but it was enough to recharge out batteries and give us some fun time and memories together before Landon headed out. We're thinking of making this an annual tradition. And we may even head back to catch the pageant (although I don't know that it will measure up to Palmyra, despite what the lady at City Hall told us)!