a great day in Provo!

Hello from Provo, Utah!

The drive here from Salt Lake City was so pretty, there were views of the snow-capped Wasatch Mountains in every direction, for the entire trip. And as we entered Provo, we could see that the city is nestled at the base of the mountains; it's so gorgeous here. See what I mean?

(Incidentally, our hotel has Bath & Body Works toiletries in my favorite scent, coconut lime verbena ... what a nice surprise! ... if you're in B&BW, give that scent a whiff, you might just love it too!)

Sal and I were apart all day today, each doing our own thing, but we each had a fulfilling day. Sal spent the day at BYU, discussing his research with the Chemistry faculty, and then giving a seminar this afternoon. As always, it was well-received. Tonight, 2 of the professors took him to dinner, and were so kind to invite me along (faculty are generally very gracious hosts!). One of the profs was Sal's PhD advisor, so it was great to catch up with him again. We had a nice time, chatting and enjoying a delicious meal of Indian food together.

My day wasn't exactly so academically intensive. Here I am in Utah, the scrapbooking capital of the world, and I had a free day, so you can guess what I did ... yep, another "shop hop"! I did my part to $timulate the Provo economy! *wink* In total, I was able to visit 5, yes FIVE!, more stores here and I had an absolute blast! That's in addition to the 4 stores that I went to in SLC ... so, that's 9 total (so far?)! Lots of scrapbooking goodness. And I've learned that sb'ing is such a part of the culture here in Utah that even in a small town, don't be surprised to see a sb store with a huge inventory!

OK, so at this point, I know that my fellow scrappers are wondering which stores I visited in/near Provo, so here goes ... (1) Archiver's in Orem. I started there because it's 2 minutes down the road from my hotel, and they don't have any stores in Florida so I wanted to be sure to get there. Like all Archiver's stores, it was huge, full of goodies, and had a friendly staff. Me & my Archiver's loot:
(2) For Every Scrapbook in Lindon ... they have some nice page kits (and they even advertise it out front!):

(3) Scrapbook Central in Payson ... they have LOTS of 2-page kits! (4) Wild Ivy Memories in Spanish Fork ... not the greatest selection, I would skip this one. (5) Roberts in Provo, which is a general craft supplies store, and is "the Utah-based version of Michaels". They have a very large selection of sb'ing supplies, and are better than M's in that regard because they carry all the big sb'ing brand names that you'd normally only find in a sb store ... Scenic Route, Bo Bunny, Doodlebug, American Crafts, Prima, etc. And today Roberts happened to have a 50% coupon in the newspaper, how lucky was that?

On Saturday morning, we'll bid farewell to Provo and drive to southern Utah where we plan to spend all of next week visiting the national parks there. We'll begin in the southwestern part of the state, at Zion National Park, and will work our way east. I absolutely can't wait to see all of that incredible geology in person!

Some of the parks are quite remote, so a WiFi signal may not always exist, and I may not be able to blog as often as I'd like next week. But I will blog whenever possible, so please stop by to continue exploring Utah with us! :-)

XOXO to Buddy & Aruba!

Enjoy the weekend,