The Shortest Road Trip in the History of Road Trips

Over the weekend, I went on the shortest road trip in the history of road trips.

I don't mean short like, "Oh look! We drove for half an hour and now we're there!" I mean short as in we scarcely spent any time at our destination. This is because we were road tripping for one reason and one reason only: to attend my grandfather's funeral in Arizona.

We were planning to leave around 6:30 a.m. on Friday (we actually left closer to 7:30). Due to a busy week at work, I had little time to pack, and I was still tossing things into my suitcase at 6. I'd planned to tidy the apartment a little before leaving, but in the end I only had time to grab my folded laundry from the couch and place it on my bed. The idea was that Future Awkward Mormon Girl would be forced to fold the laundry before she could go to sleep on Sunday night.

My parents' Mormon Assault Vehicle recently met its demise, so we'd rented some kind of SUV that had a radio with a Bluetooth connection. We took a somewhat circuitous route that took us to Arizona, then Nevada, then Arizona again. Favorite pastimes on the long drive included:

-Singing along to the music we played through the Bluetooth
-Sleeping while leaning against one another
-Passing the Hoover Dam and making semi-inappropriate jokes.

DAD: I thought we'd be able to see the dam from here, but I guess not.

LITTLE BROTHER: Well now we can't see the dam view!

My brothers haven't been on that many road trips, and they were lapping the experience up. Little Brother called hotel breakfasts "interesting and captivating." Baby Brother was obsessed with the cacti in Arizona and took many a picture. He screeched with delight whenever he got a good shot.

It took thirteen hours, give or take, to get to Arizona. My parents went to pick up Older Sister, who was flying in from New York, while the little sisters and I practiced a musical number for the funeral with our cousins.

The next day was the funeral itself. Because all of my grandpa's descendants are LDS (or were raised LDS, even if they aren't active right now), and because the only non-LDS people we were expecting were my grandpa's brother and his family, my uncle arranged an LDS-style funeral. My grandpa was adamant that the funeral not be held in a church, so it took place in the funeral home, but apart from that it was very like my mom's dad's funeral a few years ago. We sang religious songs. My dad dedicated the grave in a religious ceremony. The biggest difference was that Grandpa served in the military, so there was a flag and some military representatives at the grave site.

After the funeral, the members of my grandma's ward served us lunch at their meetinghouse. Grandma had the food catered from a Mexican food place nearby. I'm not a huge fan of Mexican food, but this food was quite good. There were tons of desserts to follow, including lemon meringue pie, Grandpa's favorite.

We were at the church building for about three hours, visiting with family members. When our time in the cultural hall was up, our conversations spilled into the hallways and into the foyers. We were sad because we missed Grandpa, but we were happy to be spending time together. It had been a while since my dad and his siblings and all 23 of the Obnoxious cousins got together. Happily, every single one of them was able to make it to the funeral. The time we spent together that afternoon still wasn't enough, and several of us got together that night for dinner at Buca di Beppo.

"Are we celebrating something?" the waitress asked brightly, and there was an awkward silence as we tried to figure out how to respond.

The next day, my family got back into the car and went back to Utah (except for Older Sister, who took a very early flight back to New York). Pastimes of the way home included:

-More sleeping

-More singing

-Thai dancing (Little Brother taught us some dance moves in the parking lot of a gas station. People driving by stared at us.)

-Poetry

Baby Brother started declaiming dramatic poetry. It went as follows:

In the 11th hour when the chickens are dying, and the roller coasters are being closed for...repairs.

As the pudding goes down the esophagus, the chocolate being regurgitated into the depths and darkness of the soul.

As the screams are echoing down the hall...lunchtime in the junior high cafeteria.

The frog lays the eggs, and then they hatch. Are they are a frog? No. They are a tadpole.

The crunch of a spoon and the ding of a chomp.

The crocodile swims to the adoption center and adopts a crocodile but fails. The crocodile dies, both of them, and their skeletons remain while the fish eat them because the fish are piranhas and they have sharp teeth.

By the time Baby Brother stopped gracing us with these masterpieces, we were nearly home. We pulled into the parents' driveway about 12 hours after leaving Arizona.

When I got back to my apartment, I was hungry and very tired. I ate my dinner and went to my room...and discovered all of the laundry that Past Awkward Mormon Girl had left on my bed for me to put away.

AWKWARD MORMON GIRL: Worst idea ever!