One of the funnest parts of being single was being able to take my kids and go someplace when I wanted, without having to work around someone else's schedule. Not that I could do it very often, I did still have to work myself, but once in awhile I would take a personal leave day, and we would go off on a long weekend. Usually we did this at conference time.
In our church, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, we have an annual, and a semi-annual conference up in Salt Lake City, where the prophet, the 12 Apostles, and other General Authorities address the whole church. Because we can't all attend, the two-day conference is broadcast on television all around the world. When I was a kid we were able to go to Salt Lake for conference a couple of times, but usually we watched it from home. As a mom, I wanted to make conference something my children looked forward to as much as I did. I couldn't afford the time or the expense of taking them to Salt Lake twice a year, but I could afford a cheap hotel room for the weekend closer to home. So while I was a single mom we made it our tradition to chose somewhere we wanted to visit every six months, get a hotel there, and spend conference weekend exploring new places in between sessions. Since there were only two sessions each day, and they each lasted two hours, we had lots of time to play in between.
One year we got a hotel in Springerville, AZ, up in the White Mountains. It sure wasn't a very fancy hotel, but that didn't matter to us. All we needed were beds to sleep on and a TV to watch conference. In between sessions we explored the local museum and some Indian Ruins I had been reading about in Arizona Highways. Casa Malapais was built along a bluff next to the Little Colorado River, and had just recently been in the news. Archeologists were in the process of exploring caverns in the malapais which formed catacombs. It had been interesting to read about, but was twice as much fun to explore with my kids.
A couple of years we stayed at the Swiss Village Lodge in Payson. The kids loved going there, Payson was a favorite town of ours anyway, and they had a pool at the hotel the kids got a kick out of swimming in. Plus, we explored forest trails where we gathered geodes right along the side of the road, a lookout point high above the Mogollon Rim where we found crystals that looked like real diamonds, and a pull off right next to the highway where we found rocks with fossils in them. We'd never taken time to actually explore the town itself before, either, and we had a ball walking through a candle shop, antique stores, and other out of the way places.
One year I made arrangements ahead of time for us to ride the Grand Canyon Railway from Williams to the South Rim of the Grand Canyon, and we stayed in a hotel on the edge of the Grand Canyon. Only when we got there we discovered they had no TV access, so we only spent Friday night, then drove to Prescott to spend the rest of the weekend so we could watch conference.
Another time we stayed in Flagstaff, and explored Indian Ruins in nearby Walnut Canyon between sessions on Saturday, then explored Montezuma's Castle and Fort Whipple in Camp Verde on the way home.
Everywhere we went, we visited museums and learned about Arizona History. The kids were good sports, very seldom complaining, but they did tell their friends that that their mom was a history nut and they were getting tired of all the stuff I dragged them to explore. I had a ball. I discovered that looking forward to this break in the routine in April and then again in October gave me the energy to keep on teaching school, day after day, week after week, when I really wanted to be staying home taking care of my house and family. It also gave me and the kids time to make memories, learn, and have lots of fun together. Looking back, I wouldn't trade our conference weekends for all the money in the world, and I think my kids felt the same way.
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