Could the Holiday have been any better!!

Ahh...Thanksgiving, food, fun, family, getting lost in the CA desert? Not usually what we do at Thanksgiving, but that's what happened this year, along with all the other things that are normal Thanksgiving events. I was able to leave SD early, the Saturday before Thanksgiving, to drive home to Concord. I made it in great time, pulling into my parents yard about 2:30, still enough time to go shopping! I stayed there, visiting with friends and having my mom wait on me hand and foot(she wanted to!) and hung out with my brother,till Tuesday, when we packed up my parents car and my car to head to St. George, UT!. My sister and brother in law from American Fork and another sister from BYU, drove down to meet us at my aunts house.
My grandma, mom, dad, and me drove out through the CA desert (anyone recognize the towns of North Edwards, California City, Mojave? if you do, you'll know right where I was). The traffic came to a halt about 5 miles past the turnoff for CA city. For whatever reason, Highway 58 was closed from Boron for 7 miles. How were we going to get around the stalled traffic! We crossed the dirt median, and went back to the California City exit, where our map said there was "another route" that would take us to Highway 395, then south to 58 again, past the 7 mile closure. Well, those "other routes" are unmaintained roads! We were following my dad's GPS system that showed us in the middle of a big yellow screen, with the highway we wanted off on the edge of his screen. The system said, "we were off the map." Great.
Well, we drove California City Blvd. to Rutgers Road to Osdick Road, all ATV/camper roads. At one point, I had 4 wheelers passing me on this washed out dirt/sand road. What fun. My car, not 4 wheel drive, made it over some dunes and what felt like bike jumps! Pearl took flight a couple times. Finally we made it to Highway 395 and found out, that Twenty Mule Team Road, another road taking off from CA city, was an even more direct route to 395, but how were we to know. Now we do. Take the "Team road" when in doubt. So we got to St. George about 2 hours later than we had hoped, a little worn down. But we did find out later as we were talking to a lady pumping gas in front of me at the next gas station, that the wait on Highway 58 had been 3 hours! So we saved some time and saw some scenes!
The rest of the vacation was awesome, with aunts, uncles, cousins, babies, grandma, siblings, niece(cutest one ever!), parents and of course, 2 turkeys, a ham, veggies, dips, potatoes, stuffing, asparagus wrapped in bacon(looked nice and tasted great!), pies, cheesecakes and anything else you wanted to eat. Throw in the trip to the local Dinosaur tracks museum and the entire week was one of the best Thanksgivings ever!