Mr. Australia and my day in Provo.

A few weeks ago we had a house guest. A nice, young, Australian boy… accent and all. I have to say I’ve very much enjoyed listening to him talk…and apparently a few others did as well. Steve has bewitched the Utahn’s. The girls at Best Buy were just giving him free stuff. Those accents can make a woman weak in the knees. Jon thought we should have really used that to our benefit and scored more free stuff, but I didn’t feel right about using Steve for his Australian charm.

Although Steve is going to see some big things while he is in the states…New York, Las Vegas, Boston, he was very excited to head down to Provo, UT. It was a very good thing that Jon attended BYU and knows the in’s and out’s of the town. I, however, don’t care much for Provo…or so I thought. Let’s be honest….I had a Provo prejudice. I’m not happy to admit it, but I did.

Our Provo adventure started with a trip to the Cougar Stadium. It was locked of course, so Jon suggested that Steve jump the fence and take a look around. So he did. He snuck in right here.



Take notice the sign


Then he spent a few minutes inside, took some pictures, smelled the grass, sat in a seat, soaked in the cougar stadium experience. Then hopped the fence again and we were on our way.

As we were finishing up some pictures of Steve straddling the cougar, we had a visitor. The BYU campus police.

How nice.

A tall, lanky officer stopped us and said,

“Hello folks, I just wanted to ask you how you got into the Stadium. We had our security cameras catch you.”

Steve frankly replied, “I jumped the fence.”

So the lanky officer asked some other questions and informed us that he was going to talk to his partner. A typical, I-ate-too-many-donuts-and-now-I’m-a-bit-chubby officer. I swear it was Horice and Jasper chatting over there.

A secret photo

After the discussion, Horice came over and, using his rent-a-cop authority, tried to threaten us.

“You seem like a very nice young man and I don’t want to ruin your vacation, so I’m going to issue you a warning today, but I want you to be aware of what could have happened today.”

Then he goes on and on about how he could have arrested Steve and because it was a weekend that the jail would have kept him over the weekend until the judge could see him, and how he would be put on the international flight risk list and they could possibly not make his international flights because of this misdemeanor.It was painful not to laugh at him throwing his campus police authority around.

As we were walking away from the office, Steve said, “I’m pretty sure that could be the highlight of my whole trip.” Steve’s spunky. He fit in well at our house.

The rest of the day consisted checking out the MTC, Provo Temple, and a J-Dawg. I’m pretty sure it was the first hot dog I’ve had in about 12 years. I was nervous, it was intimidating and also….(surprising?)delicious.






After the J-Dawg we attempted to hike the Y.



We made it this far. Do you still see the parking lot? Yep. I was proud. Good for us.




My Provo prejudice has changed. Well done Provonians. I thoroughly enjoyed your quaint town and hope to go back soon....and maybe get a real arrest this time.