I roped the kids into helping me write about our summer road trip because (1) it's good to hear their perspective about these things as well—they depend on me to record memories far too much and as much as I've tried to cultivate a passion for journal keeping within their little hearts...somehow I have, so far, failed (but Zoë has started watching the Victoria series and was very impressed by Queen Victoria's record keeping skills, so I have hope that the journal writing fire will kindle within her yet).
I've rambled so much that I'm afraid my list is completely lost, but my second reason (2) is because we did so many amazing things that truly did need to be documented, and I was so swamped with getting my thesis finished that I knew I couldn't manage to write about everything in a timely manner all on my own. I mean, here we are, having been home for 46 days already and we're still not quite done (though we are so very close).
However, I think the kids are running out of steam. Zoë said she'd write about Nauvoo and this is what I managed to extract from her:
Nauvoo was our last stop on the way back to Georgia. Nauvoo was very pretty! Even Phoebe thinks so! We slept in a brick hotel, and on the outside, it looked very old. On the inside, not so much. We saw Sunset on the Mississippi, and got to dance on a stage. At first, I didn't want to dance on the stage, but then Mom said that it was my chance to be on the stage! We went to the temple at Nauvoo, and saw the real Sunset on the Mississippi. After that, we went to Carthage Jail. At Carthage Jail, I wanted to stay as close to the sister missionaries as possible. I don’t know why I did that, or I just don’t remember why, maybe it was because I thought they were pretty, I don’t know! But I do know that I was right behind them pretty much the whole time.
She didn't mention that I went up on stage with her because she was too afraid to go up on her own! Here are a few more pictures of the 'Sunset on the Mississippi' from Andrew's phone:
Winter Quarters was a slight deviation from our route to Nauvoo from...one of the Sioux places (I can't really remember whether we stopped in Sioux City or Sioux Falls, though I do remember that it was dark and storming and the roads were slick and completely dark because they'd recently been repaved but hadn't yet been repainted and we were just so glad to reach the hotel alive), but we though it was worth the extra half hour of driving to make the stop at the visitor's center.
As one of Andrew's friends commented on Twitter—they have better bathrooms than any gas station around! They're clean, they're fully functional, and you'll be greeted by no fewer than six smiling faces on your way in!
We didn't stay long, in part because we still had five hours left to drive to Nauvoo (and we wanted to be sure to get there for the 'Sunset on the Mississippi' show), but also because Alexander had just thrown up in the car the day before, if you recall, and we were nervous about whether any other kids were going to...also be sick.
Fortunately, it just seemed to be a him-thing. Everyone else was just fine!
Here are the kids exploring some pioneer things:
My children would love to have a good climbing tree in our yard, but we don't have one. The trees that would otherwise be good to climb have such a high canopy that their branches are truly unreachable. Loblolly pines, for example, easily surpass 100 feet in height and their branches usually crowd up near the top of the tree, leaving most of the trunk bare.
Trees grow upwards from their top, which means that their branches should stay wherever they first sprouted (and in fact they do), but they're often dropped as the tree gets taller. And in the case of the loblolly pines I've seen this is definitely true. All the branches are way up there. So you really can't climb them very easily.
Tulip poplars are another tree that—at least around these parts—grow impressively tall and seem to shed their lower branches.
Honestly, all the trees—maple, oak, whatever. They are all tall, tall tall.
Finding good climbing trees can be hard around here! When I was young, I don't remember it being so difficult. Perhaps trees just grow...shorter...where it's cold and snowy a good portion of the year.
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| Nancy (center) with Kelline (right) and...either David or Abra (left (there's an ongoing family disagreement about whom)) |
Our first stop on our trip back home was at Aunt Emily's house!
And, yes, you read that correctly—our first stop was Emily's house. That means we drove the whole way to Emily's house without stopping once. This was rather incredible because historically that drive hasn't always gone that smoothly for us. According to Andrew's data, that 3 hours and 31 minutes was one of our longest stretches of driving the whole trip!
The kids were so excited to hop out of the car and into the arms of their cousins! Here are a few pictures of us playing outside:
While we were in Utah, we picked strawberries with Aunt Linda. Her strawberry patch was by her front door. We could tell they were ripe, because the ripe ones were red. Phoebe only picked the green strawberries! That’s not good, because the green strawberries aren't ripe strawberries! Aunt Linda also has a strawberry rock. It fooled Phoebe! I think it’s to trick deer, chipmunks, and other animals that would try to eat the strawberry plants. Aunt Linda has a strawberry bucket that we put the strawberries in, and then, after we picked all the ripe, red, juicy ones, we brought the strawberries inside, and cut them up.
Here are some pictures of me standing in Aunt Linda's strawberry patch on the Sunday after I got baptized:
Spanish Fork has funded a number of social spaces since we moved away. They built a beautiful new library, for example, as well as this beautiful splash pad. I think they got an all-abilities playground and there's talk of building a recreation center as well. Not everyone is happy about these plans, finding public spaces to be superfluous to society (I'm friends with many of these people on Facebook), but I personally love to see my tax dollars at work in this way! Public spaces are so important to communities!
I'm sad that they didn't have anything like this while we were there, but we survived without them...and got to enjoy them when we visited!
Grandpa suggested that we spend the day at the splash pad with our cousins on Tuesday the 13th, so that's what we did! Emily had driven down from Idaho with her kids; they stayed at Uncle Jacob's house. We didn't expect Uncle Jacob to come to the splash pad (because we were under the impression that he had to work), so we were surprised when not only Emily but also Jacob showed up! It was fun to have them both there. Andrew, Emily, and Jacob had a nice little visit together while the kids played.
Carter and Dean were with Aunt Shayla this particular day. Aunt Shayla had taken the boys to go stay at her mom's house...because Jacob just recently asked her for a divorce. But Jacob hadn't yet told any of us this (silly guy), so there was some obvious tension in the air surrounding things unsaid. I believe their split is public knowledge at this point (like, I think they've signed papers and everything). Jacob is living in a friend's basement up in the SLC area and Shayla is in the house with the boys for the time being. So, yeah...that was a bit of a...tension...throughout the day. But it seems like things are going better now.
Anyway, Carter and Dean missed out on the fun, and we missed seeing Shayla. But the rest of the cousins present had fun together.
Below are some pictures of them playing (I'll try—but will probably fail—to limit the commentary):
On Tuesday night (June 20) we slept in Rexburg, a city in Idaho, at the AmericInn where I slept on a couch. The next day we had a two hour drive to Yellowstone. It took us a long time to get to the entrance gate, but once we got inside the park things were smooth sailing.
We started to drive a twisting mountain road. A few moments later we saw steam rising off of the hills.
Mom said we should probably pull over to explore, so we drove down the road to investigate and stopped at a parking lot next to a trailhead.
The drive from Devils Tower, WY, to Mount Rushmore, SD, is only 2 hours and 20 minutes (130 miles or so). Alexander, who had been feeling find at Devils Tower began wilting at Mount Rushmore.
It's been so long now that I can't quite remember which of the children got sick when. Phoebe got sick first. On a Sunday? I feel like it was on a Sunday. Was it on June 18th? Andrew ended up going home from church early with her because we realized part way through sacrament meeting that she had a fever. She was a miserable baby all day Sunday, but woke up feeling better on Monday.
Zoë was the next child to get sick. I can't quite remember when she got sick, but her illness followed the same trajectory as Phoebe's. She felt sick for a day and then felt better. She must have been sick on Monday because I don't remember her feeling sick while we were traveling and we were counting our lucky stars until Alexander started feeling sick at Yellowstone (June 21).
At first he attributed his feelings of malaise to breathing in vapours from the geysers and things, so he kept saying that he wanted to "get out of here," away from all the steam. Now, granted, "toxic gases may accumulate to dangerous levels in some hydrothermal areas"so he his assumption wasn't necessarily unwarranted. But everyone else seemed fine, so we were pretty confident it wasn't toxic gasses (and we didn't spend a ton of time at any particular hydrothermal area).
But, boy, that steam was just blowing into his face and stinging his eyes! And that sulphur smell sure was giving him a headache!
It took us an embarrassing long time to realize that he had, in fact, spiked a fever and was downright miserable. (Fortunately, all our activities were outside, so we felt we were giving others plenty of fresh air around us).
He was so happy when we finished dragging him in and out of the car at Yellowstone and let him have a big, long rest in the car while we drove through Wyoming!
The next morning he was feeling much better, as we assumed he would be (if his illness followed the same course his sisters had experienced), and was running and climbing all over everything at Devils Tower. As I mentioned, however, he began to wilt at Mount Rushmore.
Here we all are standing in front of the monument (you may also note the thunderstorm gathering behind the hills):
Uncle Rod has a lovely piece on exhibition at the Springville Museum of Art, so visiting the museum was on our list of things we had to do while in Utah. We unfortunately didn't get to see Uncle Rod in person, but it was fun to see his photograph.
First, I should warn you that there are a million pictures from our short stop in Goblin Valley. And although Goblin Valley is a whole lot of fun to visit...there's not really a big variety of things to do there. You just kind of...run around in the desert...and climb on hoodoos and things.
This means that pictures will very likely outweigh my text. This happens routinely with my Goblin Valley posts.
Even though Goblin Valley is an interesting place to hike around and explore it's apparently not a very interesting place to write about—I believe I ran into the same problem while discussing Goblin Valley last year [when I said "the trip could be summed up as: we climbed on rocks—a lot"].
In short, we climbed on things, we jumped off of things, we played in the dirt, and we got hot and sweaty.
This year was no exception. We hiked around. We climbed on things. We had a blast. And...yup.
There are, however, a few important stories to share...
The drive to the Aquarium was pretty smooth. Even though it was our first "long" drive all being crammed into our van together, there wasn't very much fighting, and Phoebe was pretty good. We got there a little earlier than Naanii, Bumpa, and Josie, so we were walking around the outside, which had an interesting structure, a surplus stage from a U2 concert that the Aquarium bought.
The time that we arrived at the monument was just perfect it was approximately two hours before all off the people and tourists started to arrive. We could just park literally anywhere, so we chose a parking spot a little walk away from the visitors center (we did not go in it; we took the booklets from a news stand outside, and mom took the badges from a box that said Junior Ranger Supplies (Mom edit: Hey, if they didn't want us to take them, then they wouldn't have left them out in public like that (and I made sure the kids did the work))).
One interesting thing is that more than twenty tribes in the area want to rename the monument because the tower which they call Bear Lodge is a sacred place for them so the word devil in the name is offensive to them. A misinterpretation made the name Bear Lodge into Bad Gods Tower, which was made into Devils Tower by some dumb interpreter.
After we got the books we realized that there were no pencils so we decided to do them in the car after we were done at the monument.
At 865 feet tall it is a behemoth but people still climb it! Wow!
It does not take days to climb but if you are adventures and like climbing and have a few spare hours on your bucket list then do it with the help of a ranger.
Another cool thing to see in June is all of the healing prayer cloths.
I know they are pretty but do not take pictures with them; it is disrespectful. The National Park Service even put signs down so that people will not do that in June, which I think is like prayer month or something (see above for a picture of one of the signs).
Another thing you can do is try to see the aliens (which Grandpa joked about a lot).
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The following is by Mom, not Ben
Me and Ben went to Antelope Island with Auntie K because two certain somebodies thought it would be funny to make me and Alex stand on a fake geyser at the playground at the zoo.😒😒
[Mom edit: That was me and Dad. We thought it would be funny to tell Alexander and Zoë to stand on the fake geyser at the splash pad because they were being mopey-dopes. So they did stand on the geyser and it was kind of funny when the geyser went off...but, boy, were they mad!]
Alex couldn’t go in Auntie K’s car, because his car seat was hard to move, so Ben took his place. My car seat was easy to move, because it’s a Mi-Fold, so I went in Auntie K’s car too.
[Mom edit: I'm not sure that this excursion was specifically to make up for getting the kids wet. I think it was more simply because Auntie K wanted to spend more time with those two. Below is a picture of them hanging out of the sunroof of her car after Zoë's baptism (the car was not moving at the time). They're just at the perfect age where they can have a lot of fun (aren't moody teens) and can buckle their own seatbelts and things (aren't toddlers).]
On our last evening in Utah, we went to my parents' house for a little pre-birthday celebration (since my birthday would be happening somewhere in South Dakota). Kelli picked up some cupcakes from a place called The Sweet Tooth Fairy (or something like that, I think). She got an assortment of cupcakes, including some individually-wrapped gluten-free cupcakes for herself.
They were very yummy!
My mom had the brilliant idea to take a group picture at the start of the evening—when everyone was (1) present and accounted for, and (2) relatively happy. My dad has a tendency to get peopled-out and sneak away, but we wanted to make sure he was there for the pictures. And goodbyes can get ugly and weepy. A third benefit was that we wouldn't end up forgetting to take them!
It's possible that my sister Kelline was the most excited person to have our family visit Utah. She must have driven down from Layton a handful of times! She came to Zoë's baptism, she came for "museum day," she came to the Heiss gathering, she drove Benjamin and Zoë back after their post-zoo excursion, she drove down to deliver birthday cupcakes and say goodbye—by my calculations, that's a handful of times! It's at least an hour one way, so that was quite a lot of driving that she did for us, not to mention all the fun things she planned for us to do!
On Monday she ended up having a couple of her grandkids for the day (long story*), so she invited us to visit some of BYU's museums with them. We ended up being late (which is quite the feat considering we were staying only 15–20 minutes away and my sister had to drive an hour), so they already enjoyed the Museum of Peoples and Cultures without us. We met them at the Museum of Paleontology.
Here are pictures of my four youngest kids:
We stayed at Aunt Linda and Uncle Trevor's house in Spanish Fork while we were in Utah. This allowed the kids to get together with their old friends (specifically Rachel, but also—though to a lesser degree—Miriam, Benjamin, and Zoë) and for us to visit our old stomping grounds.
One evening we took the kids on our old "loop" walk, where we looked for goatheads, sunflowers, thistles, and darkling beetles. We really struck out on the plants (though we weren't very sad about missing out on goatheads) but the darkling beetles were out in full force.
Benjamin bravely picked one up:
On June 14th, we planned to have a family gathering outside at the neighborhood park after a brief organ recital at the church. Unfortunately, that day it decided to rain at the exact time we’d planned to have it (it was quite stormy the whole time we were in Utah, which was strange). This complicated our plans. We hadn’t reserved the gym in the church, but we decided we’d try to gather there anyway and leave if anyone else needed it right then, which was unlikely.
While we waited for people to show up, we played duck duck goose, Simon Says, and parachute games with the kids (resulting in only minimal tears!). It took some of them a while to actually understand how Simon Says works; when Ben was it we told him that he had to try to get people out and he gasped and went, “But why would I want to trick them?!” I think all the little cousins had a lot of fun together, though!
