Beach and Boat

The second day of the reunion is dominated by our time at the Pineview Reservior. We played at the beach and rented a boat for a half day. We use the board to pull a ski tube and wakeboard. Everyone who tries the wakeboard gets up finally, except me. My hands are cramping up just thinking about it again. Getting to be an old man I guess. But everyone has a great time.

Visit to a charmin' family

We had a small reunion of former Tennesseans now living back in Utah. The kids keep getting older...

Descent to Utah

After passing over the Continental divide we began the long slow descent into Utah and the high mountain desert turned more and more into mountains.



We broke from the quickest route to Salt Lake to take Emigration Canyon. A hundred memories come flooding back as we descend: of bike rides, of Ruth’s Diner, of Hogle Zoo and then we are home.





We stop at this is the place monument, now turned into a major tourist attraction. We get out and take pictures of the valley. We have completed the long journey.




We stop at the University Village to take pictures and time seems to have stood still. Only the faces in the playground are unfamiliar. They stare at us with curiosity as we take pictures on the steps in front of our old apartment. Its been nine years since we set out into the unknown from this very place.

Medicine Bow-Pole Mountain

After a long drive thru the Great Plains, slowly gaining altitude to reach the continental divide, we met up with my sister, between Laramie and Cheyenne to go hiking at Pole Mountain. The altitude here is above 7,000 feet and it definitely was giving us a bit of discomfort. We did the Turtle Rock loop, a 2.5 mile hike around a spectacular sandstone fins. ME and AM stayed near the trail head. The trail meadered past by numerous beaver ponds and through spectacular forest. Since a picture is worth a thousand words, I will let the picture speak for themselves. It was good to breathe the strong free air of the West.


We then stayed at S’s cramped apartment overnight. They are still looking for a house after their move from Rolla, MO. It s sort of like going back 20 years in their marriage to their student days.

Grand Island

We found the Motel 8 of Grand Island to be a far more accommodating place than the one in Liberty.



We pulled out a bit slowly of Grand Island, and we needed to stop to get gas. Apparently the price of gas has increased so much that they need tanks to guard the gas stations.



About 40 minutes from Grand Island we stopped at the Archway Museum, a museum that spans I-80 and uses dioramas along with a headset tour to tell the history of travel along the route. It is located precisely halfway between Boston and San Franscisco. ME got scared early on by some of the rooms that were dark with scary looking stuff, so we kind of hurried through. I think that adults would enjoy it more than kids, and those from the East more than those from the West who are more familiar with the history.



There was a bridge that spanned the Platte River from the Archway side over to the other, which is the side that was the Mormon Trail. I was pleased to find that the Mormon Trail is now a beautiful bike path.

Winter Quarters, Nebraska

A ten minute drive across the Missouri River brought us to Winter Quarters. I had last visited the place 21 years ago. Then there was a single statue in the cemetery. Now there is a full scale visitor center, the cemetery, and a small temple. There was a nice 15 minute film (which used clips from the Kanesville Mormon Battalion movie) and some standard pioneer exhibits. Most interesting to me was the number of people that were fitted into the rather small cabins.

The time spent in the cemetery is always poignant. The camps were devasted by disease (apparently primarily scurvy which means it would be primarily because of lack of citrus fruit or other vitamin C carrying food and thus simply malnutrition.) I think the plaque said that about 600 people died during the two years, out of roughly 3,000 that were encamped there. Many of these were very young children.



The stain glass on the new temple is quite interesting.

Adam-ondi-Ahman

Another 30 miles or so northeast on country roads thru Daviess County brought us to the valley of Adam-ondi-Ahman. A short drive on a gravel road and then a very short hike brought us to the overlook. There were a few picnic tables and restrooms and a couple of descriptive plaques.


Joseph Smith declared that this was the land where Adam dwelt and that at the second coming of Christ there would be a large priesthood meeting with Him. There certainly will be plenty of space. The valley is a tremendously large tract of farmland. Quiet, peaceful, with a gentle breeze. Again, a pleasant, forgotten place on the American prairie in a nation that has long forgotten these frontier battles.

It is always disappointing to me that the descendants of those stripped of their civil rights, warred against, captured and tortured because of their desire to found a society based on their religious beliefs have not been very vocal in standing against those that would once again use fear-mongering, torture and long captivity without trial as methods to suppress those that they supposed to be our enemies but would never allow to defend themselves in a fair court of law. One rather prominent descendant even said as part of his political campaign that he would double Gitmo. Ironically, apparently the "intelligence techniques" used at Gitmo come straight from the Communist Chinese methods of the Korean War. I wonder how how Eagle Forum/John Birchers reconcile that. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/02/us/02detain.html?ref=todayspaper. How very strange. Particularly when one the political faction pushing for these actions are almost literal descendants of the very factions that drove our people from Missouri and Illinois. If Joseph’s revelation was right, that all these things would be for experience, then I think God will hold us accountable for not using that experience.