11/22/63

I have a love/hate relationship with Stephen King. I loved him when I was in junior high and high school because his books are just so, well, scary! Pet Sematary scared me so much I had to sleep with the light on for weeks. I was so scared my Dad wouldn't let me see the movie (I saw it anyway and the book is so much better).  I love every one of his early books (Carrie, The Stand, The Dead Zone, and The Shining are my favorites) and I even got into a heated discussion with one of my literature professors about King's literary merit.  Then came The Tommyknockers. I seriously hated this book. In my opinion, it went on and on and on...I felt like King didn't know how to end the book so he just kept going on and on with all of these strange tangents. I finally gave up in frustration. While I didn't necessarily hate his subsequent books as much as Tommyknockers, they didn't seem to have the same spark as his earlier works and I was invariably disappointed.  After Dreamcatcher, I basically stopped reading his books. Fast forward more than ten years: my Dad recommended 11/22/63 (he highly recommended it) and I was intrigued by the notion of time travel so I started reading it during my spring break trip. I couldn't put it down! I read into the early morning hours every day in my hotel room because I had to know what happened!  It is almost excruciatingly suspenseful with a final confrontation that had me reeling.  Al Templeton tells Jake Epping about a portal to the year 1958 found in his diner.  Al had tried to prevent Lee Harvey Oswald from assassinating JFK, believing that doing so would reduce America's involvement in the Vietnam war and would prevent the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. He only made it to 1962 before developing lung cancer, thus forcing his return to 2011. His dying wish is that Jake carry out his plan. Jake travels to 1958 and settles into a life as a teacher and starts a relationship with Sadie, the school's librarian. He contemplates abandoning the mission so he can stay in the past with her but eventually continues because he knows the world will be better off if Kennedy lives. Or will it?  What I enjoyed most about this story was the idea of fate and the obduracy of the past.  The more Jake tries to change the future the more the past struggles to reassert itself.  He realizes that things happen for a reason, something I have long believed.  This novel is meticulously researched and King does a brilliant job of portraying the late 1950s and early 1960s.  All of the historical characters are believable and the fictional characters are sympathetic. Even though the novel is over 800 pages long, everything builds and builds to the aforementioned conclusion which just about blew my mind.  I highly recommend this novel.  In my opinion, it is Stephen King's best work, certainly the best thing he has written in a decade.

Note:  I am now re-reading all of my favorite King books.  I have been reading It during silent reading time in my classes the past few weeks.  I keep telling my students how scary it is and I've noticed that several of them have picked it up.  This makes me happier than I can tell you!

The Great Outdoors

I am so glad that it is spring!  Now that the weather is getting warmer, and the school year is winding down, I can't wait to spend all my time outside.  Here are some of my very favorite places to go camping, hiking, and to have cookouts!

My family loves camping in the motor home at Jordanelle State Park.  It is the perfect place to relax with a good book and listen to the sound of the waves in the reservoir.  We try to go there several times in the summer and fall and my parents have been known to spend weeks at a time there.

One of the very first places we went when my parents got the motor home was to the Willard Bay KOA.  I really like the trees at this KOA and there are lots of wonderful roadside fruit stands in neighboring Brigham City.  We've been here several times.  (I am totally dying over how little Sean and Tashena are in these pictures).

Another really fun place is the Grand Tetons KOA in Wyoming.  We had a great time there in the motor home.

We have only been to Utah Lake once, but it is one of my most favorite camping trips.  The lake is beautiful and the camp sites have a lot of room.  The kids spent lots of time in the water and riding their bikes around the campground.

We love staying in cabins at the Fillmore KOA.  Go here to read about my most recent trip to these cabins.  They are extremely comfortable and all of the facilities are great.  The kids really like all of the great ATV trails.  The people who run this KOA are some of the nicest people and they know us by name!

One of my favorite sites for camping in a tent is the Granite Flats Campground at Tibble Fork Reservoir.  I used to bring my girl scouts here all of the time.  The sites are large enough for several tents and have firepits and picnic tables.  They are secluded so you have privacy and there is easy access to the water.  I have so many fond memories of fun camping trips with my girl scouts!

Two of my favorite hikes are Cascade Springs in American Fork Canyon and Donut Falls in Big Cottonwood Canyon.  Sometimes I just need to be in the mountains and both of these trailheads are about 30 minutes from my house.  They are both relatively easy hikes (when I want to challenge myself I hike Red Pine Lake).

On any random night in the summer, Marilyn and I will head up to Mill Creek Canyon for a cookout.  It is definitely my favorite place to go to get away from the world (I have so many pictures).  Sometimes we make dutch ovens, sometimes we make tin foil dinners, and sometimes we just make s'mores.  I am itching to get up there!

I am so glad that I live in such a beautiful place and that I have all of these wonderful memories of being in the great outdoors with my family!  Tashena recently told me that she loves summer because it brings us all together.  I feel the same way!  We are going on a camping trip next weekend and, even though it is only Tuesday, I am already counting the days!

Tulip Festival 2014

On Saturday I attended the Tulip Festival at Thanksgiving Point.  It is something I love and look forward to every year; a ritual of spring.  This year, however, I waited until the final day of the festival because of other commitments.  I should have known better.  It was really crowded and I am not a fan of big crowds.  It was worth it, though, because the flowers were gorgeous and the weather was spectacular!

There are over 500,000 tulips in the various gardens at Thanksgiving Point!  I think I took a picture of every one of them!

After I saw all of the tulips, I ended up at the waterfall.  It is my favorite place at Thanksgiving Point because it is so peaceful.  Even though the gardens were much too crowded to my comfort level, I ended up having a lovely time...that is until I wandered aimlessly for 20 minutes through the overflow parking lot looking for my car!

African Safari

I have been blessed (or cursed) with a serious case of wanderlust.  It began with a study abroad trip to France my senior year in college and it has only gotten worse.  Since I am a teacher, I try to take an international trip every summer (this summer I am going to Russia).  I thought I would share highlights from some of my most recent trips.  I must start with my African Safari in 2012 because it was definitely the trip of a lifetime.

Karen Blixen's house (author of Out of Africa) outside of Nairobi.

Feeding my new friend at Giraffe Manor.

Masai warriors.

Some of my favorite pictures of the animals from various game drives in Lake Nakuru, Masai Mara, and Amboseli National Parks in Kenya and Tarangire, Serengeti, and Ngorongoro National Parks in Tanzania.  I loved Amboseli for the elephants and Tarangire for the lions.

The most memorable moment on safari was watching a lioness stalk and then kill a wildebeest.  It sounds very brutal but it was exhilarating to see.  It is very rare to see a "kill" and our game driver even took pictures.

Some of the unbelievably cool places where I stayed on this trip.  My favorite was the Ark in Aberdare National Park.  To get to it, you walked along a long wooden bridge through the trees.  You were literally in the middle of a wildlife preserve.  You could leave a wake-up call for when a specific animal came near and I requested elephants.  I got my first glimpse of my favorite animals in the middle of the night wearing my pajamas.  It was magical.

The five-star resort in Tarangire National Park wasn't too shabby either!  I loved sitting on my private balcony watching the animals as I read each afternoon (game drives were early in the morning and in the evening).

When I think back on this trip it seems like a dream.  There were so many amazing moments and I was forever changed by Africa.

The Amazing Spider-Man 2

I have to admit something (and I hope that you won't think less of me):  I love superhero movies.  I really love them and I look forward to them about as much as a 13 year old boy does.  Quite often, I try to see them on opening night and a big tub of popcorn is a must.  Such was the case on Thursday night when I saw The Amazing Spider-Man 2.  Peter Parker/Spider-Man (Andrew Garfield), who is still tormented by his promise to Gwen's father to leave her alone, subdues Max Dillon (Jamie Foxx), an employee of Oscorp who falls into a tank of genetically mutated electric eels and is transformed into Electro, an electric generator, in a dramatic confrontation in Times Square.  Electro is then placed in an institution to be studied.  Meanwhile, Peter's childhood friend, Harry Osborn (Dane DeHaan), becomes CEO of Oscorp after his father, Norman Osborn (Chris Cooper), dies from a genetic disease which has been passed on to Harry.  He pleads with Peter to help him get a blood transfusion from Spider-Man because he believes that the genetically mutated spider venom with heal him.  When Spider-Man refuses, Harry helps Electro escape to wage battle against him.  However, Harry finds some spider venom at Oscorp but it doesn't cure him; it transforms him into the Green Goblin.  Spider-Man, once again, subdues Electro but has a final confrontation with the Green Goblin resulting in tragedy.  The film ends with Harry, who is now institutionalized, plotting the formation of the Sinister Six (I've heard rumors of a spinoff).  I enjoyed this movie but not as much as the first installment.  I loved Andrew Garfield's sensitive and awkward portrayal of the web-slinger in the first movie but, while he has great chemistry with Emma Stone, I felt that the on-again-off-again relationship between Peter and Gwen got a bit tedious.  There are many plots and sub-plots (including more information about the mysterious disappearance of Peter's parents) to keep straight and I will admit that I found my mind wandering; I definitely feel that 20 minutes could have been cut.  However, when all is said and done, the action sequences are visually stunning (Spider-Man swinging from building to building, an epic chase between a semi and every police car in Manhattan, and a near mid-air collision between two planes, just to name a few) and that is why I love superhero movies.  The scenes between Spider-Man and Electro are electrifying (literally) and great fun to watch.  The late night crowd I watched it with gave it a rousing round of applause and, I suspect, fans of the genre won't be disappointed.