ROAD TRIP!

Six temples, two musical productions, six cities, several old houses, six stars because of six cannon balls, six cousins, four capitol cities, many friends, two president’s homes, and lots and lots of fun. That’s just a bit of the adventures we had on our road trip over the past week. Our main purpose in going to South Carolina was to celebrate my cousin’s baptism, but since I was going, I added a few adventures to our list even though visiting my cousins is already fraught with adventures.

In this post, I’ll share with you a bit in general about our trip then in a few subsequent posts I’ll write about adventures in Nashville, Memphis and Columbia, SC. The fastest route to Columbia, South Carolina where my cousins live is I-20. It just so happens that this freeway passes through Birmingham, Alabama and Atlanta, and both of those cities are home to one of the 130+ temples for my church so I wanted to make pit stops at each.

These temples are considered holy places in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints being called the House of the Lord. In them sacred ordinances are performed, covenants are made and eternal principles are taught and learned. They are more than an average church building for weekly Sunday worship. For this reason, I’ve made a point of visiting as many as possible. Most of them I’ve been to, I’ve only seen on the outside because of time restrictions. On this road trip we ended up visiting six different temples.

In Birmingham we made a pit stop for pictures. Our next stop was the Atlanta temple, the first of these sacred buildings in the South dedicated in 1983. This was more than a pit stop since it just so happens that while we were there a public open house was being held after extensive renovations and updates. We took a tour of this beautiful building. From there we continued up to South Carolina where we were warmly welcomed.

Over the next few days we explored Columbia, hung out with the cousins and participated in a great baptismal service for my 8-year-old cousin, Rylan. I’ll share more about our adventures in Columbia in another post. After a few days there, we traveled north to Durham, North Carolina mostly for the purpose of seeing the BYU Young Ambassadors‘ show at Duke. I toured with them for three years as their stage manager so it was good to see their new show and say hi to old friends. The show is fun and very well done. If you’re in one of the cities on their tour, be sure to go see the show. Since we were in the area, we stopped at the Raleigh Temple. We didn’t have much time in the area but did see a bit of the Duke University campus and its beautiful chapel.

From North Carolina we traveled west through Tennessee stopping in Nashville and Memphis. Each of these cities will get a blog post full of our adventures. Overall the trip was very fun. I learned a lot, saw a lot and enjoyed almost every moment of it, just not the sleeping in the car or driving through the torrential downpours that ravaged across the region.

Road Trip Tips:

• When using GPS, make sure you have the most recent updates on your unit and that you know how to operate it. It would also be smart to enter addresses of all of your potential stops before you leave.
• Be flexible! You never know how long something will really take, how much you’re really going to like something, how long it will take to park, etc. so be flexible if you have to change plans on the go.
• Research the places you are going to know what there is to see. Locals may not know of everything.
• Research the places you are driving through to see if there is anything interesting to stop and see. This will break up your driving so it’s not so monotonous.

Stay tuned for more about my adventures in Columbia, Nashville and Memphis.