Twin Falls Temple

It's been 2 years since Randy & I have been to a new temple so we were long overdue to go to one.  My parents had a free weekend last week so we left the kids with them Friday night and headed back home to plan our trip.  Having flight benefits is great but it's hard to plan too far in advance since flights change so much.  Our hope was to go to Billings, MT or Medford, OR since those were places that had temples but not much else to do in the area but those flights didn't look good.  We could get to and from SLC just fine but getting back to SLC on Sunday in time for the SGU flight was proving difficult.  We started thinking we'd just have to do a temple or two in the SLC valley so we went to bed late Friday with the plan to go to the Brigham City and Bountiful temples.

When we got up Saturday morning we called Brigham City to make reservations and found out that they were full all day.  So we went to Plan B.  We decided at the last minute to fly to SLC, pick up Randy's parents car and drive to Twin Falls, ID.  We could have flown into Twin Falls but the flights back didn't look good so we decided driving wouldn't be too bad.

We got to SLC just after noon and took the train into the city and walked a couple blocks to Randy's cousins apartment where his parents leave a car in her garage.  It took us about an hour to get to the car and we had about a 3 hour drive ahead of us.  We grabbed a bit to eat and hit the road.  It really wasn't too bad of a drive and it gave us quite a bit of time to talk which doesn't seem to happen much lately so that was nice.  We planned to make it to the 5:00 session and if we didn't make that then we'd have to wait til 7:00 and we didn't want to do that since we had made hotel reservations back in Ogden for the night.  Twin Falls doesn't have many hotels that would work with our hotel points so we decided it was worth it to drive back that night.  We were pushing (as usual when we make these trips) but we barely made it for the session.  We pulled into the parking lot at 4:45, did a quick change in the parking lot (we're getting good at that) and walked in at 4:50 and had to hurry to change.  We were the last ones in but we made it.

 

 

I loved the little water fountain in the back

Twin Falls is a small temple and it reminds me of a smaller version of Boston.  It obviously if very beautiful outside and the inside didn't disappoint either.  The murals were paintings of the area with white tail deer and antelope with the Snake River running through it.  The Celestial Room was fairly plain compared to some but it was gorgeous anyway.  I love going to the temple!

I thought Randy got some great pics

Since we didn't have time to take any pics before the session, we walked around and took some after.  The sun made it difficult at times but I thought most of the pics turned out great.  We changed back into our 'normal' clothes then took a quick tour of the area.  We drove through town and stopped at an overlook of the gorge.  Since we did this trip last minute, we didn't have time to look into what all there was to see and do so we had to wing it.

Overlooking a golf course along the Snake River

A bridge leading into Twin Falls

We forgot to program our GPS back to the western US after our trip to Vermont so it was useless to us and we weren't able to find the 2 falls that give Twin Falls it's name but we think this might have been one of them. 

We also found out that Evil Knievel did a jump across the Snake River somewhere along here but after driving around for a while we gave up on trying to find it.  I wish we could have spent more time in Twin Falls but we needed to get back on the road before it got too late.  We got something to eat, called the kids to say goodnight and headed back for Utah at 9:30.  We took the drive a little more slowly on the way back so it was about midnight when we checked into our hotel.

Sunday morning we got up and had breakfast at the hotel before taking the car back to the garage and catching the train back to the airport.  When we got back to St G, we met my mom in Central to pick the kids up.  They were pretty excited to see them.  I was too but it was so nice to get away for a little while and have some much needed alone time.  Thanks to my mom and dad for watching the kids for us.  Hopefully it won't be another two years before we make it to another new temple.  We're starting to really fall behind with all the new temples that are being dedicated.  Randy's now at 36 temples and I'm at 33.  We'll try to do better. ;)