Western Legends (Kanab)

Busy week - but mainly with work. It's nice that I can work a little extra early on and get an early start to my weekends, but boyyyyy does it take a toll. The stress of fitting together 40 puzzle pieces that don't want to be part of the puzzle is a lot to take it and makes me frustrated. Like, the idea of home health is that you literally cannot leave your house, so why do you only have a 2 hour window on Thursday to see me?

Hidden orchard in the desert.

But I digress. Volleyball happened. The gym happened. Grudgingly, belatedly, but it did happened. Twas not an energy-filled week. But maybe I was saving up for the weekend.

Just a *free* bucket of apples. 

On the road by 1pm, I headed for Lonely Dell orchards on the way to Kanab so I could profit from the free produce on their fruit trees. You're only allowed one 5 gallon bucket per day, so I brought two so I could get more on the way back. (And boy was it a chore to get those buckets apart, but by some miracle + the internet + a hairdryer, it happened).

Lauren beat me to our hotel in Kanab, which was described as "sketchy" but turned out okay and in prime location for Western Legends this weekend - a yearly festival involving food trucks, a rodeo, battle of the bands, and a comedy gun show & bull whip expedition. The most exciting time Kanab has seen since last year. 

This is the best picture. By a large margin. 

We had dinner at the taco truck before the rodeo (good thing because food there was sparse). Too bad we didn't actually sign up for team roping because all you had to do was get it and you win, basically. We listened in on some French conversations and had some of the worst photographers known to man. It was incredible, really. 

Had to do it ourselves. 

We got some ice cream that tasted like Clorox (in a good way?) and I went to bed while Lauren learned about Hitler. 

The bakery we checked out for breakfast was subpar, but then we hung out with an elderly couple at the Western movie sets and looked at some cool rocks. We saw the parade (including my twin brother apparently) on our way to check out the vendor tents. It was the lamest parade Lauren's ever seen and my absolute favorite. 

Surprisingly a few wing sets around town. 

Brian was vicariously excited to meet Patrick Wayne (John Wayne's son) who inspired me to watch Sinbad, where he costars along with Jane Seymour. And a short brown man was jealous he could never date us. Sorry? 

Brian was crying. 

The pool water was frigid, but we enjoyed that and the sun and only got a little crispy before we got kicked out because the chlorine levels were too high. So Lauren took a nap and I played Solitaire before we went back to watch the gun show, eat burgers, chant ICE CREAM in the streets, and see how fat we could make our shadows. All things the many passersby enjoyed with us. 

She likes the Beatles and I like the Stones. 

We sat on the hardest grass ever grown and enjoyed some live music and corndogs and pretzel bites for second dinner and eventually made it back to our hotel without a nosebleed. We showered and I fell asleep exhausted and hopefully Lauren did too because she was up at 5am to go to a homecoming where she was the guest of honor. 

I chilled until church, picked some more apples, called my patients, and was home around 4pm. Just how I like it. It was a nice weekend hanging out with my BFF Lauren in the smallest town at the best time.