World Travels

As the semester quickly came to an end, Nate and I were off to Vegas for the Pioneer Las Vegas Bowl against UCLA. The weeks events kept the boys busy with practice and appearances and the girls busy shopping with no money since we were all newlyweds! Then we went back to St. George to spend Christmas with Nate's family. One camera and wedding band later, I would say Christmas wasn't too shabby. In other words Nate came through big time!! He is the greatest! It was nice to finally relax and have leisure time with the fam. Then it was back up to Salt Lake to take off for our honeymoon cruise. We left Saturday morning bright and early and arrived into Miami that evening. Our hotel plans were arranged the night before (or so we thought) so all we had to do was make the shuttle by 6:30 pm. As we ran to Concourse H, we made it, but then sat for the next ten minutes watching every hotel shuttle pass but the good ol' Howard Johnson. Nate went to the phone to call our hotel, but then realized he didn't have the number! Just a minor detail. So he searched through the call log and noticed another hotel number in Miami. He called and asked the guy for the number to Howard Johnson, but after the receptionist put Nate on hold for five minutes, she came back and said, "Sorry sir, but we do not have a Howard Johnson staying at this hotel." He was a little weak with the English to say the least. After that comment, Nate didn't even want to go there so he hung up...one down, several to go! As I sat on the luggage waiting for Nate to come through, I couldn't help but think how I had never gone on a trip without my father and how this would have never happened if I was with him!! I don't know if any of you have ever been on a trip with Tim Halverson, but there is definitely no curbside waiting and you better believe there is no question as to which hotel we are staying at, the number of that hotel, and the name of the person we booked through! After a few more phone calls, we finally got on the shuttle and arrived at the blessed Howard Johnson. I couldn't wait to get to the room, but let's just say after entering the ghetto I would have rather stayed on the luggage curbside. We got through the night touching as little as possible (simply out of fear that we may catch something due to the hotel accommodations) and were then off back to the hotel to catch the transfer to the ship. Little did we know that we needed tickets to board the bus transfer, but after a little persuasion the people let us on. Thank you bus driver. We made it to port 26 and shortly boarded the Westerdam of Holland America along with 2200 other cruisers. It was the biggest thing I had ever seen and quite the process...