Ned and Steve's Trip to Salt Lake City
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Day 1
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Day 2
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Day 3.1
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Day 3.2
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Day 4
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My brother, Steve Flaspoehler, and I planned a 10 day drive from Dallas to Salt Lake City and back, to visit our brother Bob, who is in a nursing home there because of an accident in July 2002 which resulted in a Traumatic Brain Injury.
Steve flew into Dallas from Greenville, SC, on Tuesday morning, September 28. I picked him up at the airport and we headed west for Albuquerque, NM, via Amarillo, TX, and I-40 to spend the night. On Wednesday, we made a full day visit to the Grand Canyon, and then spent the night in Page, AZ. After a visit to Lake Powell and the Glen Canyon Dam Visitor Center, we headed up to SLC on Thursday afternoon, driving through Zion National Park in southern Utah, and then up I-15, about 10 hours.
We arrived in Salt Lake City area Thursday night, and spent the entire weekend there. During our visit, we stayed with our sister-in-law, Carol Flaspoehler and her daughters, Brittney, Anastasia and Christina, in West Jordan, UT, a suburb of Salt Lake City. That gave us three full days to visit with Bob before we headed back to Dallas on Monday morning, to get Steve on a plane home on Thursday morning. As you can see, we made it a three day drive each way, instead of a pushed two day drive, so we could get in as much sight-seeing as possible coming and going and still have plenty of time to see Bob.
While we were in SLC, Steve and I visited with Pamela Hart and her son, Eric. Pamela was a friend of Bob's before his accident, and has been a great help to the family since then. She and Steve enjoyed meeting each other and we all enjoyed the time we were able to spend together with her and Bob. We spent as much time as we could with Bob, and tried to get him out and about as much as he was up to.
Our visit with Rob went extremely well. Steve and Rob bonded almost immediately. As kids, they shared a lot of personal experiences that reawakened a lot of old memories for Rob. I can only think of this as a positive thing. Plus, Rob is MUCH BETTER than he was a year ago. We were able to take him out for meals at Taco Bell and family visits. We even did a family outing to Temple Square on Sunday afternoon, and Rob was with us the whole time. It was loads of fun, and he kept up without any trouble.
Steve and I enjoyed visiting many of the great national parks out west, and as this was all new to him, he was quite impressed with it all. Along the way, we visited Sandia Peak in Albuquerque, had a fine Mexican meal in Old Town Albuquerque, drove to the Grand Canyon for a full day visit, spent the night in Page, AZ, including a stop at Glen Canyon Dam and Lake Powell, and then a drive through Zion National Park. One the way back to Dallas, we drove through I-70 in Colorado, had a meal stop in Vail, spent the night in Boulder, and had a visit with Don Campbell, author of The Mozart Effect, for breakfast the next morning. On our last leg, we stopped at the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs. Steve seemed to love it all.
We had a great trip. Steve and I got to know each other better, and as brothers, we share a lot of similarities, as well as some significant differences in things like personal interests and personality. But being Flaspoehlers, we are also quite flexible over all, and the trip was a great success.
Edward P. Flaspoehler, Jr
P.O. Box 7981
Dallas, TX 75209
(214) 357-2744
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