Ryan and Debi Cragun’s Blog

We made it back to Tampa Tuesday, the 19th, but not without a little trouble.  We were scheduled to fly back from Utah on Tuesday, but we were supposed to arrive in Tampa Tuesday night around 10pm, which was exactly when Fay was supposed to hit Tampa (at least, that was the projection Monday afternoon). So, we called the airline (Northwest; very helpful by the way) and rescheduled to fly in to Jacksonville a bit earlier on the 19th (around 5pm) and then grabbed a rental car and drove down to Tampa (via I-10 and I-75). We skirted the storm entirely.  If you’ve been following Fay, you’re aware that the course of the storm has changed dozens of times.  When we changed our flights, Tampa was in the direct path of the storm.  Since then, Fay basically hit every other inch of the state, but skirted Tampa.  Tampa’s 100+ year avoidance of a direct hurricane hit continues!

Just for fun I used Google Maps to put together a rough outline of the traveling we did during the 2 1/2 weeks we were gone.  The total mileage (roughly, as we flew large chunks of this), is about 8,655 miles.  You can see a map of where we went here.

The last few days we were in Utah we spent some time with my parents in Morgan and visited with my two hiking buddies and their families.  I picked up some additional pictures from various people.  Here are some more photos from Lake Powell:

This first one is of my brother Danny, a highly successful lawyer in Northern Utah.  His sister-in-law put this costume together for him, and apparently he wears it regularly:

Here’s Danny’s son, Connor, “riding the bull” (a 50 gallon barrel half full of water my father rigged up).  Connor’s pretty fearless when it comes to the water:

Here are Pyper (one of Danny’s girls) and Sydney (one of my brother Mike’s daughters) playing on shore.  One of their favorite games was to throw mud at each other.

The very first day, Debi got on the houseboat and sat down next to Pyper and Sydney at the kitchen table.  We hadn’t been to Utah in almost 2 1/2 years and they didn’t remember us.  So, Pyper introduced herself to Debi, “Hi.  I don’t know you.  I’m Pyper.”  Sydney followed that up with, “And I’m Sydney.”  Debi was definitely pleased to make their acquaintance.

Here are two of my nephews, Carter and Brock:

Here’s a photo of a game we played in remembrance of my Uncle Stan.  He used to lay the Cragun kids (all 9 of us) down in a row.  The game was: he got to tickle us however he wanted and the last person to move won.  We tried it with the grandkids (Danny, Mike, and I), but we weren’t nearly as successful as Stan: almost everyone was able to withstand the tickle torture (and my licking their bellies):

Here are Danny and Don ripping it up with Guitar Hero as the grandkids look on:

Here are almost all of the grandkids on the inflatable trampoline behind the houseboat:

Next are a couple photos of our “science experiment” Ant Wars.  As you can see, the kids were very interested:

This next one is Debi going over rocks with some of the grandkids:

Another event I failed to recount in my earlier trip report was the game we played one evening - sardines.  If you’ve never played sardines, you really must - we used to play it all the time when I was growing up.  One person goes off and hides and the others have to find him/her.  But instead of telling everyone once you’ve found the person hiding, you hide with that person until everyone has found him/her.  Jake was the first to hide and he hid up on the top of the boat in a storage compartment.  As I was the last to find him (I was making sure everyone was playing), I hid next.  I knew of a bunch of groovy places to hide, but one hit me while I was walking into the main room - right behind the couch.  I figured people would walk right past my spot and not notice it for a while.  I was right, but eventually my niece, Amanda, decided for some reason to look behind the couch (mind you, it was pressed up against the wall and I was laying on my side in about 7 or 8 inches of space.  Once she found me, she just sat on the couch.  Others started to realize what was going on, but only one other person, my nephew Brock, decided he would hide WITH me.  He dropped behind the couch right onto me and layed on top of me until everyone figured it out.  But he didn’t just lay there, he chatted with me (better stated: he talked right into my ear while I tried to breath).  He went on and on about how uncomfortable I must be down there and how he was making it more uncomfortable by laying on me, “I bet you’re really uncomfortable down here.  This is a tiny place to hide in.  I bet me laying on you is making you more uncomfortable, huh?”  He thought it was pretty funny.  Thinking back on it, it was very funny, even though I was incredibly uncomfortable at the time.

The last person to hide, Carson, hid in the storage compartment underneath the boat.  Almost everyone actually got down inside the compartment to hide with him.  Here are Debi and I as the first people start to come back out.

This is a photo of the crater-like bowl my brother Mark hiked everyone up to:

Here’s a shot of my brother-in-law, Don, and sister, Tammy, working their way down the ravine to the cliff we jumped off:

And here’s a shot of a bunch of people trying to work their way down the ravine:

Here’s my sister-in-law, Kristen, cheering after her record breaking kayak run in the obstacle course.  I hope to one day be half as physically fit as she is:

Here’s my mom finishing the race:

The next two shots are of a niece and nephew kneeboarding.  The photos wouldn’t be all that amazing except they are of kids about 5 and 6 years old.  They are actually small enough that they can kneel on the kneeboard while it isn’t moving and not sink.  Here’s Pyper giving it a whirl:

And here’s Carter:

The next day I took Carter out and he was able to do it almost entirely by himself.  He was pretty proud of his kneeboarding skills.

Someone grabbed their camera to get a few shots of us tackling the tent.  As you can see, there are about five people on the tent.  That pole I’m trying to detach the tent from was actually a very stout piece of electrical conduit.  The wind bent it to about a 30 degree angle:

Here are Don and Debi during the marshmallow olympics.  Debi had just called it quits, but we got a good shot of them before they ate their marshmallows:

Debi told me later that had the marshmallows been Kraft Stay-Puffed, she probably would have tried harder.  I sense a rematch in the making.

This last one of Lake Powell is of Karlie putting the finishing touches on the girls teams’ marshmallow tower.  With a little coaching from my father, they slaughtered the boys on this one:

I know this is a pretty long post, but I have a few more photos.  These are from the hike.  Mark usually takes most of the photos as he has a smaller camera he can slide in and out of his pocket easily.  Mine is a behemoth which I usually just take out on the summit.  Here are Tom and I at the trailhead getting ready to embark:

Here we are on a saddle about an hour and a half in.  A trail runner paused just long enough to snap this for us before flying up the mountain:

Here’s a really good shot of Mark and Tom.  I stayed a bit behind them to snap this one:

Here’s a good one of Tom and I.  I like it because it gives a sense of the elevation.  We were probably 2/3rds the way up the mountain at this point, but you can see we’re above a lot of the surrounding peaks and there is only sky:

This is a great shot of Mark looking down over one of the beautiful valleys and mountain lakes:

Here’s a shot of Tom as we traversed some of the false peaks on the way to the summit.  Most of these highpoints have a number of false peaks that give you hope only to crush it once you reach the false summit and realize there is a peak just beyond it that is the actual peak:

Here we are on the summit, taking a break and trying to keep away from the gazillions of flies that were up there:

Final picture… Here’s Tom marching fearlessly through a meadow (we broke off the path for a bit) right at a herd of mountain goats (you can barely see them in the background).  We hiked pretty close to them on the way down:

The above photos are courtesy of Jeanne Cragun, Tamera Rupe, and Mark Woolley.  If anyone wants larger resolution shots, just let me know.

Our trip to Southern Utah was pretty short, just 3 days.  My in-laws wanted to see the Shakespearean festival (though Cyrano de Bergerac is not by Shakespeare), Zion National Park, and Les Miserables.  I suggested Mountain Meadows and one other stop: Colorado City.  For those not familiar with Colorado City, Arizona, it’s a town literally on the border between Utah and Arizona (strategically placed to avoid authorities when required).  It’s also the base of operations for The Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the increasingly well-known polygamist group, some of the members of which were the residents of the ranch in El Dorado Texas that was raided in April.  Debi and I recently wrote book chapters on the FLDS (the bookshould be coming out in the next 6 months or so), and I’ve heard lots of stories about the FLDS, so I figured stopping by Colorado City might be fun.  We originally planned to stop there after Zion National Park, but we spent more time in the park than originally planned, so we moved it to Wednesday and stopped there on our way home.

We didn’t really know what we wanted to see or what we could see in Colorado City, but we figured we’d drive around and see whatever we could and then hopefully stop for lunch somewhere.  Often Colorado City is referred to as Colorado City/Hilldale, as the town is kind of split right on the border - Colorado City is in Arizona and Hilldale is in Utah.  Since we were driving south from Utah, we passed through Hilldale first. Hilldale is, well, pretty much non-existent.  The majority of the city is in Arizona.  Only the very northern edge of the settlement is in Utah.  So, it really is more accurate to say Colorado City.

Without a particular plan of attack, we simply turned down a street and started driving around randomly.  As luck would have it, the best part of our trip happened at the very first house on the very first street we drove down.  I had heard stories that people in Colorado City are very distrustful of outsiders and that they will stop and stare at you if you drive into town.  I wasn’t sure if that was true, but it really is.  As we turned down the first street, we saw a woman dressed in the standard FLDS dress with her kids working on the lawn outside.  All of the kids stopped what they were doing and stared at us as we drove by.  We tried to get a picture that first time, but didn’t get a good one and felt pretty awkward doing so anyway.  So, we snuck up on them later and snapped this shot:

You can see the mother to the right, hoeing away.  The kids are all dressed in the standard outfits: girls in full-length dresses, boys in jeans and long sleeve shirts.  As we passed them this time, we waved.  Only the youngest kids waved back while all the others simply stared.  I’m not surprised by their response, but I am fascinated: the FLDS are definitely secretive and wary of outsiders.  I would kind of feel bad for my voyeurism, but I really am interested in them from a sociological perspective, so I can kind of justify snapping these photos.

We drove around the town for another 30 to 45 minutes, just seeing what we could see.  I don’t think anyone has written an article on this yet, but someone should definitely write an article on the architecture/urban planning of a secretive polygamist sect.  I was absolutely fascinated by what we saw.  If someone is interested in writing this paper, maybe the following will give you a good start (and then we can collaborate on an actual article).  I’ll begin with the most common house type we saw, something like the house in this picture:

It’s a very large home, which makes sense considering the sizes of families among the FLDS.  But there are several things that are noteworthy about these homes.  First, unlike homes for monogamous couples, they aren’t necessarily built for the aesthetic value but to maximize space.  This is particularly apparent in some of the other homes we photographed (see below), but also apparent in the above home - the more rooms the better.  Also, while you can’t see it very well in this low-resolution photo, the exterior of the house isn’t finished stucco but rather wooden particle board painted gray, which is pretty common among the homes we saw.  Second, notice the additions: the small building to the left is an addition to this home and there is a trailer to the right.  Neither of the two additions fit, aesthetically, with the larger home, reinforcing the idea that construction in the FLDS community is more about space than about architectural appeal.  I have to wonder if that is unique in residential communities.

This next photo does a better job illustrating the pragmatism of the FLDS.  Similar to the above home, but even more simplistic and less stylistic, this home is basically an enormous box with virtualy no adornments.  Also like the above home, the exterior is wooden particle board, this time painted brown, with no attempt at adding a finished exterior, like stucco or brick.  This is about the most utilitarian home you can get: it’s a massive box with tons of space for wives and kids.

Though slightly less common than traditional foundation homes, a fairly common sight was trailer homes like the one in the photo below.  There are hundreds of these homes scattered throughout Colorado City.  Again, this is probably a simple matter of utilitarianism: If you run out of space for your wives and kids, you buy a trailer and set it up in a field near your home.

The three homes above also illustrate the lack of interest in maintaining one’s yard, which was also very common in Colorado City.  Of the several hundred homes we saw, very few had any significant landscaping.  This is reaffirmed when you visit the town’s cemetery (which doubles as a monument to Prophet Leroy S. Johnson):

While we were in the cemetery there were sprinklers on and it was apparent some minor attempts at landscaping the cemetery had taken place.  But it remained mostly sandy soil and weeds.  There was virtually no grass and no clear lines demarcating sand from grass or walking areas from viewing areas.  I have a rather cynical theory to explain this that goes along with my assertions of pragmatism: The community wants to give the veneer of been clean, tidy, and well-kept, but the time required in simply handling the hundreds of kids is too much.  Additionally, while there are weak attempts at landscaping, the real interests of the community lie in maintaining their lifestyle and earning money, neither of which require nice landscaping.  Finally, maintaining a nice lawn in a desert area like Colorado City is probably both prohibitively expensive and time consuming.  It would require making that a priority, which is clearly not of interest in the community.  As a result, there is virtually no landscaping of note in the community.

Another point of architectural interest is the preponderance of abandoned homes like this one:

We probably saw one to two dozen homes just like this - framed up, but missing windows and inhabitants.  I don’t know what the explanation is for these homes, so I’m just going to propose a couple of possibilities.  First, the trust that holds the communal funds for the FLDS is now in receivership by the State of Arizona.  With limited access to the hundreds of millions in the fund, construction may have ceased on new projects.  Another explanation may be the reign of Warren Jeffs.  Once he took control of the religion he kicked out a number of men who were seen as threats.  These homes may stand as tributes to and reminders of the importance of obedience to the prophet.  I really am just guessing here, so if anyone reading this has a better explanation, I’d love to hear it.

Another element of the architecture of the community that is of interest is the preponderance of large privacy walls.  Of course you see privacy fences in cities and towns all over, but rarely do you see walls as imposing as this:

Walls like this were pretty common, though they weren’t all as tall as this one.  The walls are also pragmatic - to keep people like me from seeing what is going on behind them.

Despite having everything in common (supposedly), there are also clear class differences in the community, which are also apparent in the architecture.  Compare the home in the photo below to the homes shown earlier:

I’m guessing the quality of the homes reflects the religious hierarchy as well.

Another strange architectural feature is the lack of signage on most buildings.  By far the largest building in town, this massive white building, had no sign indicating its function.  From its architecture I’m inclined to believe this is the main church for the FLDS in the community:

The lack of signage is pretty common.  Again, I’m guessing this is a privacy thing: If you don’t know what the functions of buildings are, it’s hard to find people doing things in those buildings.  The lack of signage was also apparent on the restaurant/cafe where we ate lunch (which was the second most interesting thing we saw) - Vermillion Restaurant:

The sign is under the awning and not facing the street but between this building and another.  You really have to look for it to find it.

I knew they had a restaurant or two in town and was hoping to eat in town just to get a little bit of the experience.  We found this cafe near the center of town.  On the door was a sign that said, “We reserve the right to refuse service to anyone.”  Next to that sign was a sign that said, “Absolutely no cameras or video equipment permitted inside.”  As I was really interested in seeing how things functioned in the community, I didn’t take my camera in, though I would have loved to have gotten a photo of the inside of the cafe.  Inside was basically one large room with a counter at one end and restrooms at the other.  There were no booths, just very long tables with chairs.  It was completely open with no pillars, so you could see everyone inside.  You wrote your order on a slip of paper at the counter, they rang you up, then delivered it to your table.  The food selection was pretty interesting as much of it was simply frozen prepared food that they would heat up and deliver (e.g., mozzarella sticks, pizza sticks, chicken sticks, fish sticks, etc.).  We placed our orders and headed to a table to wait for them.

The owners of the restaurant are clearly FLDS - the woman who took our order was wearing the traditional dress and had the hairstyle that is common among the FLDS.  There were a couple of other tables occupied.  One was occupied by several men, all of whom were wearing long-sleeve shirts, jeans, and hats.  They all had cell phones and frequently made calls.  The other table was occupied by a mother with four kids, all girls and all under the age of about 8.  We were the only non-FLDS in the cafe.  It was fascinating to see the young girls respond to our presence.  There was one girl, probably around 4 or 5, who clearly recognized us as outsiders.  We were just as novel to her as she was to us.  She couldn’t stop staring at us.  She and her older sister kept running around our table to get a better look at us.  We smiled and waved and said hello, but she was reticent to respond.  We tried to be as cordial as possible, but the adults, who did glance at us furtively, didn’t really respond at all.

I did ask the person who took our order one thing about the community: I asked her if there was a monument to the 1953 Short Creek Raid.  The community used to be called Short Creek, but changed its name after it was raided by the State of Arizona in 1953 (very similar to the raid on the ranch in Texas).  If you read the entry on Wikipedia you’ll see that the polygamists in the town had forewarning about the raid and gathered in the local school to sing patriotic songs while the kids played around the flagpole outside.  I thought there would be a monument to the raid, as it was a defining moment in the community.  So, I asked her where it was.  She told us, but it was a good thing I asked or we never would have found it.  If it is a monument to the earlier raid, it is pretty neglected at this point.  Here’s a photo of the school:

The yard, like the rest of the community, is unkempt, but now it is also littered with trash and junk.  There is a sign indicating it is a historic location, but whoever is in charge of keeping it up is literally letting it die:

Debi and I got a picture at the famed flagpole, which was about the only area that seemed to be slighty well kept.  The rest of the place was really going down hill.

This was our last stop in the community before we headed back to Salt Lake City.  On our way home I asked my in-laws what there favorite part of the trip was.  Rosemary liked Les Miserables.  Gary, who didn’t understand initially why were going to visit a town on the border, said his favorite part was Colorado City.  I have to admit it was probably my favorite part, too.  It’s not every day that you get to visit a town in the heart of America that is inhabited by a people with a culture so foreign to regular Americans that you literally feel like are in a foreign country and are experiencing culture shock.  It was a fascinating chance to peek inside a reclusive, secretive sect and get a glimpse of the lifestyle that makes them so unique.

On the second day of our trip to Southern Utah we got up fairly early and headed out from St. George to Zion National Park, which is about 45 minutes away.  Debi’s parents had been to the park about 35 years earlier, but neither Debi or I had ever been.  I wasn’t sure what to expect, but was very impressed in the end.

The park has a shuttle system that moves people through the park and even into Springdale, the city just outside the park.  There are a bunch of stops and you can do a variety of things from each stop, including sightseeing, snacking, and hiking.  The shuttles cut down on congestion and are very convenient, though they were pretty busy.  We left the main parking area on our first shuttle and stopped at the Human History Museum.  The Human History Museum is a pretty small museum with a bit of information on the history of Zion as regards humans.  It talks briefly about Native Americans then goes into the history of European settlers, most of whom were Mormons.  There is also a 20 minute video that highlights many of the main features of the museum and recaps some of what the museum says.  From the Human History Museum we took theshuttle to the Court of Patriarchs.  Here’s a map showing the major stops and the attractions in the park:

More information and a more detailed map are available here.

Here’s a shot of Debi at the Court of the Patriarchs:

It’s called the Court of the Patriarchs because the three mountains you see are named after three Biblical patriarchs: from left - Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.  It’s a very short hike up to this vista point.

From the Court of the Patriarchs we took the shuttle up to Weeping Rock, which is a bit longer of a hike, but not bad at all.  Weeping Rock is a cool sandstone cliff that sits atop shale.  Water that seeps down into the sandstone eventually hits the shale layer, which it can’t penetrate, then runs laterally until it drops out the side of the cliff.  This particular cliff has a nearly constant shower of water dropping out of the cliff.  The guide on the bus said the water coming out of the cliff entered the top of the plateau between 800 and 1,200 years earlier.  That’s just a couple hundred years after the founding of Islam and hundreds of years before Columbus sailed to the Americas.  Pretty fascinating stuff.

Here are Debi and her parents at Weeping Rock:

Here’s a shot of the area where all the water drips down from the cliff:

And here’s a panoramic shot I took from Weeping Rock (it’s much better in its full resolution, but it’s also an enormous file; email me if you want to see it):

From Weeping Rock we took the shuttle up to Big Bend, which wasn’t a particularly popular stop for people, but it does have a great view of The Great White Throne, which is the white peak you see in this picture through the red and brown cliffs:

It was also at this point that another tourist said, “It’s hard to believe a little river like the Virgin River could carve all these cliffs.”  I’m not sure if he was just amazed or if he was suggesting a supernatural force was involved, but my response was, “Well, it’s also hard for us to imagine just how long millions of years are.  It took about 10 million years for that river to cut through all of these cliffs.  If we understood time frames that large, it wouldn’t be a problem to believe a little river like the Virgin River could do this.”  I’m not sure if he got the point, but he nodded.  I then offered to take a picture of him and his wife in about the same place as where Debi and I got this photo:

From Big Bend we took the shuttle to its final stop, The Temple of Sinawava.  The Temple is a large, circular area with some rocks in the middle, one of which is named the altar and one is the pulpit.  I couldn’t get a very good picture of those, but they were pretty cool.  The Temple of Sinawava is also the starting location of the River Walk, which is about a 2 mile round trip walk along the Virgin River until the canyon narrows to the point that they call it The Narrows and you have to basically walk in the river.  Debi and I double-timed it to The Narrows and snapped a few photos, then double-timed it back to catch her parents, who were walking the trail more leisurely.  It’s actualy a pretty leisurely trail and even wheelchair accessible.  It also passes a swamp, which is amazing to see in the middle of Southern Utah’s desert.  Here I am at the end of the River Walk trail and the beginning of the Narrows:

Here is Debi with her parents along the River Walk trail:

It was on our way down the River Walk that it really started to hit me what the demographics were of the park visitors.  Most of the people were middle class, of course, but more shockingly were the ratios of Europeans and Asians to Americans.  You could tell country of origin based on over-hearing languages.  I would guess there were 2 Europeans at the park for every 1 American (mostly French, German, Spanish, Italian, and Portuguese).  The ratio of Asians to Americans was about 1 to 1.  If you need any more indicators of how weak our economy and dollar are right now, just go visit Zion.  The Euro is doing so well that Europeans now outnumber us in our national parks (either that or Americans are just too lazy and indifferent to visit a park that requires walking around; I’m hoping it’s the money issue).

From The Temple of Sinawava we took the shuttle to Zion Lodge, where we stopped for lunch.  There are two restaurants there, a cafe where you order, pick up your food, and then carry it to your table and a sit down restaurant.  The cafe was swamped with people, so I suggested the other restaurant.  To our surprise, it was nearly empty.  We got a table and our food came out quickly.  It was also very good food and good service.  It was Gary’s favorite part of the park (he’s not a big fan of hiking).

Replenished, we took the shuttle back down to the parking area, hopped in the car, then drove the Mt. Carmel Road through the tunnels carved through the surrounding mountains.  I think I had seen pictures of these tunnels before, but I didn’t realize they were part of Zion National Park.  They were carved in the 1930s and are  barely big enough for an RV or tour bus to pass through right in the middle - meaning they can only allow vehicles in one direction at a time.  Here’s a shot of the entrance to the larger tunnel:

And here’s a shot of the switchbacks on our GPS as we were headed up to the tunnel (they almost double over each other):

One of the coolest features of the main tunnel is that they carved windows into it that allow you to look into the canyon.  It was almost impossible to get a good shot of the windows, but here’s one Debi snapped as I drove through:

The tunnels have basically been left in their original state, which means there are no lights inside.  You have to turn on your lights to see.  Here’s a shot of the exit of the tunnel:

Once you get through the tunnels you are driving on the tops of the plateaus that make up Zion National Park and the canyon below.  The tops of the plateaus are geologically fascinating, with sandstone lines running in all sorts of directions.  It continues for miles.  The sandstone is hundreds of millions of years old and has been raised up over millions of years to a height of nearly 10,000 feet above sea level.  Geology is awesome.  We drove a bit on the plateau, then turned around and headed back through the tunnels then back to St. George.

We got back around 4:00 and most everyone crashed for a couple hours before we headed to the outdoor theatre called Tuacahn, which is about 5 miles outside St. George.  We saw Les Miserables.  The performance was generally pretty good.  The orchestra, unfortunately, was very small, which made it sound tinny and lacking in depth.  But the actors gave pretty good performances and the singing was, for the most part, very good.  Valjean, Javier, and Eponine were all really good.  The play started at 8:30 and ran until midnight, which was pretty late for us, but it was definitely worth it.

We left around 8:30 for a trip to Southern Utah with Debi’s parents.  We stopped at La Fiesta Mexican Restaurant and Cantina for lunch, drove around Cedar City for a bit, then stopped at the ticket office to pick up our tickets for the matinee performance of Cyrano de Bergerac.  We had a little time after we picked up our tickets, so we stopped by the Anderson Shakespearean Theatre for an orientation on the play.  The Anderson Shakespearean Theatre is an amazing recreation of a 17th Century Shakespearean theatre.  After the orientation we walked around for a few minutes then headed in for the play.  The play was entertaining, though it wasn’t superb.  The lead actor who played Cyrano de Bergerac was very good, but the actor who played Christian wasn’t particularly good and the actor who played Roxane was okay, but was oddly proportioned and not particularly memorable.  As plays go, it was both humorous and emotionally touching, but could have been better.

After the play we drove west about 45 miles to Mountain Meadows, the site of the Mountain Meadows Massacre.  We got a little nervous as we were trying to find it as there is no actual address to the monuments.  This website says that the Mountain Meadows monuments are about 5 miles south of Enterprise on Highway 18.  It’s actually about 9 miles south of Enterprise.  The monuments are marked with signs and are on the West side of the road.  Here’s a Google Maps map of the area.  If you’re not familiar with the Mountain Meadows Massacre, basically it was a horrific attack on an innocent wagon train by Mormons in which over 120 men, women, and children were slaughtered without provocation.  Visiting the area is sobering.  Having read so much about it over the years, it was good to finally put images with the stories.

Here’s a shot of the upper monument.  This lists those who died and provides views of the area where the massacre takes place:

Here I am next to the upper monument:

This next photo is of the lower monument.  The lower monument marks the spot where the Fancher Party originally camped and then circled up when the massacre began.  So, that is the location of the beginning of the attack. You can imagine Mormons and a few Native Americans hiding in the hills around the wagons shooting at them for several days.

This next photo is of the area where the final part of the massacre took place.  After laying siege to the wagon train for several days, the Mormons then deceived them by saying they would save them from the Native Americans (who had long since left), but insisted the wagon train give up their guns.  They then marched them up the valley about half a mile then turned on them and killed them, unarmed.  Here’s where that took place:

This last photo is a closer shot of the lower monument:

From Mountain Meadows we drove down Highway 18 to St. George.  For dinner we stopped at Panda Garden.

This was our last day at Lake Powell.  Traditionally we get up and basically just pack up and leave.  Not having learned from the previous day, I decided to go skiing again.  This time it was Mark, Kristen, Corbin, Jake, and Carson.  Mark and Kristen skiied first, then I went.  I got up fine, but my arms were burning and I was really too weak to be skiing.  I lost control at one point but muscled through it.  In the process, I screwed something up in my back.  I’m hoping it’s just a pulled muscle and not something more permanent like a herniated disc, but, as I write this nearly a week later, my back is still killing me.  I can barely pick anything up.  Poor me - I hurt myself skiing.

Anyway, I gave my camera to Jake, who snapped this shot:

He didn’t get any of me skiing, but I did get one of him skiing:

He’s 14 and slalom skiing.  Pretty groovy.  We also got Carson up on two skis and Carter, who I think is 5, rode the kneeboard.

We were a little late getting back, but then went right to work pulling up the anchors and ropes and getting eveything on to the boat.  I then took a crew of nieces and nephews on one of the ski boats to let them ski while the houseboat headed up the channel to gas up, unload, and get everything ready.  We finally wrapped everything up around 1 or 1:30 and got on the road home.  We made it back to Salt Lake around 6:30.

Lake Powell is always fun, even though you never really feel quite clean as showering generally consists of lathering up your hair and jumping into the water.  It was also far more tiring this year.  I felt like I could use a week just to recover from the vacation (not to mention my back is still screwed up).  The day after we got back, Debi developed a rash that we think is from swimming in contaminated water at Lake Powell - a risk you always run.  The rash is almost gone, now, but it was kind of disturbing when it first developed.  Overall, a lot of fun.

We basically took Sunday off.  I built my mother-in-law a new computer (which was sorely needed) and caught up on the news.  We then headed up to Morgan to help my dad and sister with computer issues.  Then came back to Taylorsville to get ready for our next trip.