Denali

Here we are on our trip to Denali State Park. We arrived in Anchorage on Tuesday night around midnight (2:00am Utah Time). After getting a rental car, we made it to sleep around 4:30am MST. The next day we met up with Jimmy and Mikensi and caravaned the 4 and a half hours to Denali Park. The night before the bus tour, we stayed at the Salmon Bake. It was kind of like a nice scout camp. Tom and Laurel's "Cabin" had a bathroom and an air conditioner in the window. The other 2 "units" were just like tens with plywood walls and carpet floors with two double beds in each one.

Here I am at a view point along the road that goes into the park. It's one road in and one road out. The buses take you a ways into the park so you can see Mount McKinley (which was covered in cloud the day we went there) and then they turn around and head back.

We saw several Grizzly Bears... (double-click to enlarge the image)


this is a picture of 3 wolves that took down a caribou and were snacking in front of us... well along way away from us. They didn't even share - how rude! Of course, Amy just said, "How gross!!" (double-click to enlarge the image)



These are our luxury buses. I think they came from a local school district and were recycled or something. And I wonder why my back hurts now :)

Caleb's B-day Party

Okay, so I'm only a month late putting these up, but I think they're still pretty good. Amy and Amber Moss did a "Astronaut" theme party for Caleb. We gave the kids all little squirt guns; they played in the blow up pool and they all got a balloon tied to their wrist.

Miss America - Caleb version

We finally bought some new couhes and it took like 10 weeks to arrive because the guy's family runs the factor in China. We went up to Salt Lake Saturday morning to pick them up and my neighbors helped me bring them down stairs - so we finally have an area in the basement where we can hang out and guests can come over. A funny story happened while we were in Salt Lake. The guy we bought the couche from (5'2" and maybe 120lbs) said that his family in China thinks every American weighs 300-400lbs. So they paid this 300lb Chinese guy over there to go "jump" on the couches to make sure they were made strong enough. Well my neighbor Mike (5'9" - 155lbs) was sitting on the couch with me and since the cushions were still pretty firm we were both boncing on them when we hear a "crack" - needless to say we stopped and nothing seems to be broken.

If any of you read this, don't tell Amy - she doesn't know yet.

So that afternoon before his nap Caleb finds Amy's swimming suite and decides to do his own Miss American swim suite display on the oversized Ottoman the living room.

Enjoy!!!





Here's the final product.

 

Caleb Crashes

 

So this last week Amy went to Park City with Jimmy and Grandma and met Nicole and her kids up there. He had such a blast and since they didn't come back until after 6pm he just kept going and going and never took a nap. We finally gave him a bath and he still seemed "wired." Well around 8pm Amy came into my office and so I went into the BIG room to check on Caleb and this is what I found.

Nauvoo - Day 2

Nauvoo - Day 1

Carthage

We stayed in Keokuk at the Hampton Inn for our first night. It took me forever to get the pack and play set up for Caleb to go to bed. Then I put the lap top on the desk and put on Nemo and he fell asleep after like 20 minutes. I laye in bed with the TV on the NBA game and the volume turned down all the way and he didn't really notice. The ext morning we didn't even wake up until 9am, we went down stairs to hear a lot of "where did he get that red hair" comments.

Then we headed out toward Nauvoo. The very first thing I wanted to do was go to Carthage. I always felt that if I was in that room where the martyrdom occured, I would have a very emotial experience knowing that The Prophet of the Restoration was killed there.


It was cool to see up close these buildings where the historic events actually occured. I kept asking, "is this original... were the floors replaced.." etc, etc. I always thought that when I entered the room where the prophet had been killed I would be overcome with emotion, but it didn't happen that way. The Senior Missionary who took us up to the room and recounted the events of those couple of days in the jail mentioned that some of the blood that had been on the floor had been cleaned up because the Church wanted people to focus on the restoration of the gospel and not on the deaths of Joseph and Hyrum. He alo mentioned that at one point there had been some glass over the blood on the floor. But when people starting bringing in their pocket knives and chipped away at it, they just had it removed.

I also wondered why there were stars on the outside of the building. When the Church came in to restore the jail, they drove steel rods throught he cabin with big nuts on the ends and the stars acted like washers to keep the building more stable, but they were really more of a decoration than anything else though.

I also didn't know that when they came to the site they couldn't find the well outside of the bedroom window where Joseph fell and and was propped up against even though he was already dead. They dug and dug and eventually found it and placed the cover that is on it today.

Far West

Our first stop was in Far West at the temple site. I didn't realize you could see all 4 of the original corner stones.

It was pretty funny because the directions Mike gave us were the "shortest route" directions and it took us through the boonies!!! Several miles of dirt/gravel roads in and out, left turn here, right turn there until finally we reached a main road and voila... there it was. Then it only took us like 5 minutes going forward to hit the free way. Oh well, now we know.


I was very surprised at how green everything is out here... just rolling hills as far as you can see and lush green grass with mixed trees everywhere. We passed so many people out mowing their lawns and ALL of them had riding lawn mowers. I know these folks are cool because they were riding "John Deere" tractors, which is the same kind I have. Except that I'm sure theirs are a lot more powerful... one guy even had ATV tires on it that had the triange-looking tread that you use on slippery ground.

Community of Christ

It was interesting to see a representation of the Community of Christ Church (formerly the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints) everywhere we went. Most of the sites are owned by them, so I took some pictures of the descriptions for your reading enjoyment :)


(double-click on the image for a larger, readable view)


Caleb sure was excited to be on the trip so far... it was probably because he fell asleep right after taking off from Denver and slept all the way until we got out of our seats in Kansas City.

Kansas City

We flew into Kansas City, MO for Amy's brother Mike's graduation from Medical School.


Once we landed we headed to Jack Stacks, we had some ribs and BBQ chicken and then we headed out for Nauvoo around 3pm.

Mothers Day 2007

Joe and Amanda were very kind to invite everyone over to their house for a little BBQ of hamburgers and polish dogs. Then the kids had too much fun playing with their little bubble blowers. Joe got Caleb to just laugh and squeal when he put his finger in the rotating foam propeller which made a "weed eater-like" noise... he would just laugh and laugh.

(double-cllick in center to play video)