The day started early with Mom and Lincoln driving me to the airport. It was really hard to say goodbye, knowing I won't see them for so long. Lincoln was way too excited to be at a new place to say a proper goodbye, so he just kind of mouthed me on the arm and then sniffed and took in all the information of this new, crazy place.
My flight to Salt Lake City went well. Huge plane packed full of people, but nothing to complain about. In fact, I'm pretty sure our pilot had a lead foot and sped the whole way there because we arrived quite early (and I have never landed on the tarmac going so fast! Yikes!). This was very good because I only had a half an hour to make it to my connecting flight to St. George. Of course, the gate I arrived at and the gate I was going to depart from were at complete opposite ends of the airport. But, thanks to my first pilot's speeding, I made it to my gate in time.
The second leg of the trip was a tiny little plane (not a fan of small planes), but we hardly reached our highest altitude before it was time to descend. Very quick flight. I couldn't even finish one sudoku puzzle on the flight! So here was the nose of my tiny plane:
You know it's way too small of a plane when you can see the pilot controls this easily from your seat...
Before I knew it, we landed it St. George, UT. I stepped down from the plane and found myself on the tarmac in what could only be described as the middle of nowhere. This is the picture I snapped as I deplaned:
It was pretty much 360 degrees of this beautiful view of mountains and blue sky. The airport itself was honestly tinier than I could have imagined, but it was so cute and it had a giant cake in it, so I'm a fan. It took a while to get my rental car because there was only one rental agent and I'm pretty sure she drove in to the airport just in order to get me hooked up with my car. She was quite late. I saw her leaving as I was pulling out of the airport driveway.
So then I proceeded to get lost no fewer than 5 times as I tried to make my way from St. George to Kanab. It is really not hard at all, I just have a super crazy ability to get lost no matter what. The main part of the drive is absolutely beautiful, with mountains all around and subtly changing foliage throughout the drive. In about 2 hours, I found myself in Kanab. Now the only tricky thing was finding my way around town. It is a very small town, but yet again, I managed to miss my turns and get turned around several times. There was a cop car hanging out in the shoulder of one of the roads and I literally drove by him about 5 times back and forth as I tried to get my bearings. He must have thought I was very sketchy! I later found out that Kanab has a plastic life-sized doll that sits in a cop car around town to deter people from speeding, but there is no real cop in the car. I sure hope that's who I was driving past!
I made it to the house where I'll be staying and was very warmly welcomed by the couple who live here (and their 9 amazingly friendly wonderful animals). I honestly could not have asked for sweeter, more genuine people to stay with. They are so considerate and friendly and we actually have quite a bit in common! It's been so fun talking to them. They even prepared a dinner for us to eat (along with some of their family) and they took special consideration to make sure I could eat the food with my very strict dietary needs. I also stopped by the local grocery store tonight to pick up a few essentials, and luckily, it has a lot of what I need!
After dinner, I sat on the floor (by choice) and the animals wandered by for snuggles and pets while I talked with my host family. I can't say that I don't miss Lincoln with all my heart, but having so many sweet animals who love affection definitely helps distract me!
So as far as my travel and my home away from home go, things couldn't have gone better. It is absolutely gorgeous here and everyone is so kind. As far as my health is handling it, that's not going as well as I would wish, but I kind of expected that. My anxiety is pretty high as I'm wondering if I really am healthy enough to do this, having just come out of such a long, difficult illness. My body is not as strong as it usually is when I'm not recovery from chronic illness, so I feel pretty affected by my drastic change. The altitude is much higher, which means I'm supposed to drink a lot of water to combat altitude sickness. Well, no matter how much water I chug, I still have a parched dry mouth. It's crazy! My stomach is also a bit off due to different foods (I had to improvise lunch at the airport) than it's used to. And of course, I'm exhausted. So as it stands right now, there's a part of me that feels like I took on way too much too fast and that my body just isn't ready for this and I may need to go home early. There's another part of me though, the part that's wanted to come to Best Friends forever, that tells me to just get a good night's rest and see how I'm doing tomorrow. Things often look a little less daunting in the morning.
So with that, I'll close out the detailed report of my first day (I told you I am incapable of keeping it short!) and I'm going to try to get some sleep. I'm trying to use all the strength I have within me, but I'm afraid, like oxygen at high altitude, that it feels a little sparse right now. My whole body feels weak. I'll have to try some little tricks here and there to replenish my inner strength somehow, but that can wait until tomorrow!
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