BYU

Our time finally ran out at some point and it was time to take the girls to school. Christian took a couple of days off from work. We packed the trucks the evening before. We got up before the sun was up and got ready to go. Amazingly, it started raining that morning. We have not gotten rain in so long. When we finally get it, we aren't even here to enjoy it. Apparently, it was also a lot cooler while we were away.

There was a big grass fire when we finally got to Idaho. The air was thick with smoke. We camped out in our usual spot near the sand dunes. We set up camp and went directly to sleep so we could get up early to head into town.

We dropped Emily off at her apartment so that she can organize things, then went to Caitlyn's apartment to get her checked in. We then started to move her boxes into her new apartment. Caitlyn's apartment is significantly nicer than Emily's in many ways, except for her kitchen. Her kitchen is ridiculously small. While it does have two refrigerators instead of one, there is almost no counter space and very little storage space. The apartment has six girls but only a table for four and no room for four people to eat unless you moved the table. Caitlyn was getting really stressed out and was starting to really regret not just moving in with her sister.

While we were still trying to figure things out at Caitlyn's place, Emily walked over from her apartment. She looked around since she had never been there before. Eventually, Christian took Emily back to drop off the rest of her stuff. It took a while, but we finally started finding places to put everything and Caitlyn was able to relax a little bit. She still decided to send a few things home with us that she could not find room for in her kitchen. They were not really essential items for the most part.

The nice thing about her apartment is that there are actually two and a half bathrooms and each girl has their own sink in their bedroom so that is a lot nicer than what Emily has to deal with. There is one bathrooms next to the kitchen that  is actually really big. We couldn't figure out what was going on. They could easily have cut the bathroom in half to make the kitchen bigger and there would still be plenty of room in the bathroom.

One of the roommates finally informed us that their apartment is supposed to be wheelchair accessible. That is why the bathroom is so big. Caitlyn has a shared room, but all the other bedrooms are private rooms. Her roommate told us that there are more shared rooms upstairs and that she believes that the kitchens up there are bigger...so that is something to look into for next time if Caitlyn finds it too difficult to deal with the small kitchen where she is now. And if Emily decides that she wants to move there as well, then maybe they can find a room upstairs at that point.

Caitlyn's current roommate has been there for several semesters so she probably won't be moving out  any time soon unless she gets married. She also has set up her room so that she takes up the lion share of the space. We were not too happy about that but Caitlyn said that she was okay with it for now and didn't want to make waves.

They also have a basement where they can store their boxes and/or store some of their things when they are off track, as long as they sign up to stay there the next semester, which is really convenient so that they don't have to drag everything home again. Emily thought about actually having to rent a small storage unit for that purpose.

After both girls were settled, Christian brought Emily back and we heated up some lunch. We went on campus so that Caitlyn could get her student ID and both the girls could pick up their textbooks. The campus was pretty crowded so Emily said that she would bring Caitlyn back to show her her classes over the weekend. We then took the girls to a couple of stores to get a few items and some groceries for them. Groceries are pretty expensive for some things in Rexburg. I was a little dismayed. And some items we take for granted like ground pork is not even available. It was pretty frustrating. When we were done, we picked  up some dinner and ate at Emily's place since no one was really there at the time. We talked for a bit and then we had to bid Emily farewell. We went back to Caitlyn's place to say goodbye after getting her some gas. 

The plan was for us to go back to the sand dune area, spend the night and make our way back in the morning but Christian was too stressed and anxious about having to leave the girls and we ended up just heading out of town that night. We camped in Nevada near the Idaho border where we had camped before with Caitlyn.

In the morning, we continued on our way. When we finally got out of the smokey areas, it was cloudy and we caught some rain on and off during our drive.

We found some more big horn sheep along the way. Christian took a brief nap while I drove us towards California. We found some really interesting rock formation that we wanted to come back and visit one day. Christian drove us the rest of way into California where we expected to get some heavier rain. We entered California near Bishop and drove home down the 395.

We stopped by to pick up some dinner and continued on our way. We made it home to our empty house late in the evening with no other incidents.