Summer Road Trip: Part 3- Monkey Rock, Rexburg, Twin Falls

Once we left Yellowstone we headed down memory lane towards Rexburg! For some reason I thought it was like 3 hours to Rexburg, but we were pleasantly surprised to stick the hotel's address in our GPS and see that it was just over an hour away!! We were so dirty and tired!

So, just north of Rexburg is a spot that we hit a lot as college kids: Monkey Rock! It's a place where my friends would jump off the rocks into the water below. We had to take the kids there. To our surprise the water levels were super high so no swimming in the waterfall for us!

The boys had fun exploring a bit and trying to skip rocks across the water.

And of course, there were college kids there. We hung around and watched as a few of them jumped off. They had to get pretty creative to get up top since the water was flowing quite fast.

This kid was jumping with a selfie stick! I assume he had some sort of GoPro that was waterproof

Then it was hotel time. We stayed at the AmericInn since it allowed dogs. After some much needed showers, (remember, it was Thursday, and the last time we showered was early Monday morning!) we hit the town! We drove through Rexburg, pointing out different apartments we had lived in, areas we visited, sharing memories with the kids. Then it was time to eat! We ended up eating at "Pizza Pie Cafe", which for all you BYU-Idaho alumni, you'd remember it as Craigo's. It was nothing like Craigo's used to be, but it was still good pizza and a good family restaurant.

There wasn't a lot of time that day to visit campus, so instead we stopped at the Rexburg temple. We never got to see the temple completed. We left there in 2006 and it was dedicated in 2008. What a beautiful temple up on the hills of Rexburg!

Thanks to the cute couple who took some family pictures for us! They were really sweet and thought it was awesome we were bringing our kids back to where we met.

Tried to get a good one of Cade, but didn't realize until later that his eyes were closed. Darn.

We headed back to the hotel and enjoyed swimming in the pool and sleeping in a bed instead of a tent. The continental breakfast was great and we headed to campus to show the boys all about BYU-Idaho, and see how much it had changed. I had heard how much it had changed, and while it definitely has, it still had the same feel to me. They just needed some much needed upgrades to handle the larger student body.

We started at the music building, our home away from home. We ran into old friends:

Jenna was a fellow saxophone student while we were there. She took a break when she started her family and is back finishing her degree!

Tyler was a student while we were there and now he works in the music department doing all their sound and streamed concerts and a million other amazing things! 

Explored new classrooms:

We snuck over to the Percussion suite (which I'm so jealous of BTW), and someone let me into one of the practice rooms! The boys enjoyed watching me play for a bit.

Then we just wandered around the building hoping to find lots of teachers. Unfortunately it was finals week and most students and teachers were in hibernation or gone. We were only there for a day so it's totally understandable that we only found a few. But we were SO glad when we walked into the music office and found Luwana! She has been the secretary AKA heart and soul of the music department and is still going strong. I think most music majors can tell you how much she helped us get through the music program!!

After visiting the music building we started roaming around campus. I was hoping the boys would get a feel for what college looks like so they could have something to look forward to! We did a little shopping at the MC and got us some fresh BYU-Idaho gear.

For lunch we had to eat at Millhollow, our favorite sandwich shop, and we arranged to have lunch with David Taylor, my percussion professor. We invited Dan's saxophone professor, Mark Watkins, but he was busy playing with his quartet in Europe. 

It was SO great catching up. I don't want to go that long between visits again!

After lunch we took the boys to Porter park to get some energy out before driving to Boise that night. Man, what a great park, the boys had a lot of fun!

Oh, and as we passed Idaho Falls we just had to stop at Reed's Dairy and get ice cream. The best!

Now it was time to drive...again. This time to Boise. We stopped in Twin Falls for dinner, and it just so happens some guys were getting ready to base jump off the bridge that leads into Twin Falls. We grabbed some dinner to go and watched them jump!

Could you do this?

We made it to Boise around 10pm. More to come!