Ryan and Debi Cragun’s Blog

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.

(Note: I forgot to mention the science outing on Day 3 when I originally posted it.  You may want to go back and read about our ant war experiment.)

We felt well rested after a nice night of sleep in our tent.  We started the day with a slightly longer hike, climbing all the way to the top of the plateau, well, I did.  It was a bit treacherous just below the summit, so I left Debi there and climbed to the top.  It was perfectly flat and covered with brush.

My Dad came prepared to build just about anything, but one thing he had in mind was a zip line for the kids.  Lake Powell has plenty of cliffs and he thought he could figure out a way to anchor a rope over a stretch of water so the kids could zip into it.  Most of the adults spent about 3 hours working on the zip line.  Turns out, this is a pretty bad idea unless you have a steel cable and a winch.  We stretched the rope over the stretch of water and down to a little island, but had to try to tighten the rope by hand.  My Dad was holding the anchor in place while I cranked on the rope and Debi helped.  I was standing close to the edge of the island, cranking as hard as I could when… the knot I tied gave way and the rope came loose.  I was pulling hard enough to launch me a good five feet into the water.  Debi was right there, watching the whole thing.  She now says that’s her favorite part of the trip: the look on my face as I plunged into the water.  I was fine, of course.  I just surfaced with a doubly-bruised ego - for falling and for my knot coming undone.  As we tried to re-run the rope, it got caught in my brother Danny’s prop twice.  We did pull it taught a second time and actually tried it, but there wasn’t enough tension to even hold a small child.  Three hours, an unexpected plunge into the lake, and two screwed up props later, we scrapped the idea.

If you’re reading this travelogue closely, you’ll remember that one of Debi’s truths from the previous night was that she had never been fishing.  My Dad and brother, along with a couple of nieces and nephews, had worked out a pretty good recipe for the fish off the back of the boat.  There recipe was good enough that you could basically put a baited hook in the water and the fish would fight to bite it.  They weren’t keeping anything, but the nieces and nephews got a kick out of it.  Debi walked back there while they were playing around with them and they gave her the rod.  Two minutes later and she’d caught two fish.  Here she is with the second one:

My brother, Mark, and his wife, Hillari, came early in the morning with my niece, Karlie, and a friend of hers, Missy.  Apparently the year before Mark took the grandkids on a hike and they all liked it.  So, he set up a hike for this year and took pretty much everyone again.  He sent us up the hill to a groovy crater-like formation he found.  We stopped and shot some pictures there (I didn’t, but I’m going to try to get some from my siblings).  We then split up, sending the younger kids down the rock to the boat and the older grandkids and my siblings down a narrow, narrow canyon.  In true Mark fashion, the canyon he sent us down was virtually impossible to climb back up and it ended at about a 20 foot cliff.  The only option: jump.  As an avid hiker, Mark sent me down the canyon first to make sure it was safe.  Safe, mostly.  Easy, definitely not.  But everyone did it and no one got hurt.  We did have to send a lot of stuff over the cliff in backpacks using a rope (we all had shoes, shirts, cameras, etc.), but it worked out in the end.  Here’s the canyon:

I’m getting ready to jump.  Yeah, that guy at the base is me, in my sexy whiteness!  The water is just below the bottom of the picture.  It’s probably a 15 to 20 foot cliff, maybe a little less.  Here are a couple of pics Debi shot (she went down with the kids to make sure they got down safe; she actually really likes jumping off things like this).  This is my sister, Tammy, doing the nose hold jump:

Here’s one of Tammy’s kids, Corbin.  This was just a really good shot by Debi:

I’m floating in the water at the base in case there is a problem.  This next one is my brother Mark, the crazy one who planned the hike:

Here’s a shot of everyone who climbed down the canyon and jumped:

I’m laying in the water.  Behind me from left to right is: Tre (a nephew), then Danny (brother), Tammy (sister), Colleen (sister-in-law, Danny’s wife), Mark (brother), Kristen (sister-in-law), Carson (nephew), Hillari (sister-in-law; Mark’s wife), McKenzie (niece), Corbin (nephew), Karlie (niece), and Missy (Karlie’s friend).  Unfortunately you can’t see Jake (nephew); I’m pretty sure he’s behind Tre.  Don, my brother-in-law (Tammy’s husband), also jumped.  I’m not sure where he is in this picture.

From here we swam to a little beach that Mark dubbed “Cragun” island because someone named “Cragun” had carved his name in the cliff above the island (how Mark found all of this in the 5 hours he was here is beyond me):

We got one last photo of almost everyone on the island:

Debi and I cooked dinner for everyone.  I made peanut pad thai and a broccoli and tofu in peanut sauce.  It was also farely well-received, though some of the kids didn’t dig it.  After dinner we had a talent show, which is a Lake Powell tradition.  It was entertaining.  It was also a calm night, meaning we got a good night of sleep in the tent.

We spent the weekend in Jacksonville, FL visiting with a colleague.  On the way there on Friday we stopped by Mt. Dora, Florida, a cute little hamlet north of Orlando.  It was recommended in a little travel book our neighbor gave us.  It does have a small, resort town feel with lots of cute shops and a nice lake.  We ate lunch at 5th Avenue Cafe, which was good, then stopped by the lake to snap a few shots.  The first one is of Debi by the lake.  The next one is Ryan by the famous lighthouse on the lake.

It’s a cute place and supposedly great for the sunsets over the lake.  Maybe we’ll stop by again some time.

We went to dinner that night at the Jacksonville Landing.  According to my colleague, the Landing is the city of Jacksonville’s attempt to bring people downtown.  However, because it is frequented by minorities along with whites, it has a hard time drawing wealth white suburbanites in.  Racism is alive and well in the US.  There was certainly a mixture of races and ethnicities when we went.  We had dinner at Vito’s Italian Cafe.  It was good, but not remarkable.

On Saturday we drove down the coast to St. Augustine.  We drove through Ponte Verda, which is filled with enormous homes (stratification is alive and well today too).  We also stopped in Guana River State Park to check out the pristine vegetation and beach.  It is really beautiful.  Here’s Debi by the beach at a lookout.

We then spent the afternoon cruising around St. Augustine.  St. Augustine is the nation’s oldest city.  It has a bunch of side streets filled with shops and restaurants.  It is also the home to Flagler University, which is housed in a very cool old hotel.  There are also a bunch of cool art galleries, some of which had artwork that was really cool.  It’s a bit touristy, but definitely a place worth visiting, especially if you like window shopping and pretending like you have enough money to buy original artwork.

Here’s a picture of Flagler University:

On our way back to Tampa we drove through Palatka, the home town of one of the other professors at the University of Tampa.  He talks about it all the time, describing it as a bit backwater-ish (okay, the way he describes it I thought it was going to be a rednecks only zone).  It wasn’t nearly as backwater-ish as I thought it was going to be, but it certainly has its moments.  We ate lunch at Angel’s Diner, which claims to be the oldest diner in the US.  It’s definitely unique.  The diner looks to be in an old, converted rail car.  It’s a bit “greasy” inside, but the wait staff were friendly enough and helped us pick out some nifty local food.  Debi got a grilled cheese sandwich and onion rings.  I went with an actual burger just to get the authentic experience.  Strangely, it tasted just like the burgers I used to eat in Morgan, UT.  The food was a bit greasy and probably took a few years off our lives, but it was tolerable.  Here we are at the diner:

And here’s Debi outside:

It was a good start to our travels in Palatka.  We drove through town and past our friend’s house where he grew up.  It really isn’t that bad of a place, but I couldn’t believe my eyes at one point.  We were driving around town when I spotted what looked like an overgrown junkyard.  It was pretty overrun and I thought it was strange to have such an eyesore in the middle of a relatively nice town.  Then we got closer and I realized it was a cemetery.  The light areas in the photo are tombstones.

We happened to be chatting with our friend as we drove past and we asked him about it.  Turns out, and this blew my mind, it’s the black cemetery.  Just a few blocks away is a nice, normal cemetery that is well kept.  Turns out that is the white cemetery.  A reflection of racial stratification?!?

Our friend suggested we swing by Ravine Gardens State Park while there.  It’s a very cool park surrounding a cool ravine that has been left wild in some areas and is formally gardened in others.  It’s very beautiful and was a cool place to visit.

Unfortunately we didn’t have enough time to hike around, but if we find ourselves back there we definitely will take the time to do so.  There are a lot of hiking paths that would be fun to explore.

Overall, it was a fun trip.  We got to see a lot of Florida, but there’s still a lot more to see.

As I noted last week, my Uncle, Stan Winston, passed away.  I had the opportunity to go to the funeral along with most of my siblings and in-laws.

On the way out to the funeral I read a book about Stan Winston Studio called The Winston Effect.  The book was published in 2006 and Stan sent all of the kids in my family a copy with a personal note in it.  I skimmed through the book back then, but thought it a fitting time to read it in depth.  It does a great job highlighting the many, many contributions Stan Winston Studio made to the fields of makeup, digital effects, puppetry, animatronics, and prosthetics.  It also gives some of Stan’s personal history, which I was not completely familiar with.  I’m really glad I read it as it helped me recognize some of the people at the funeral who worked with Stan for years and contributed to the studio’s success.

The Associated Press wrote up a nice summary of the funeral, which you can find here.  Rather than repeat what they wrote or highlight all of the famous people who were there, I just want to touch on one point that really touched me.  Many of those who spoke pointed out that despite his money and fame, Stan’s greatest treasure and most valued “possession” was his family.  He talked about them to all of his professional colleagues and spent a great deal of time with them.  This reinforced in my mind the human condition: We spend a great deal of time on pretenses - who is more popular, who has more money, etc.  In the end, none of those things matter: we are all vulnerable animals.

But, and this is the part that moved me the most, we have the remarkable opportunity to share our lives with other vulnerable animals and experience something truly remarkable: deep, powerful connections with the people around us.  While probably an artifact of our biological evolution, the power of those relationships is hard to deny.

My cousin, Matt, described Stan’s last day at the funeral.  While it might seem voyeuristic, he explained that describing it perfectly illustrated and celebrated Stan’s life.  I won’t go into all the details except to say that, at one point, Stan was in a hospitable bed with an oxygen mask on.  He was barely able to breath, but as he looked as his wife, my Aunt Karen, Matt described Stan as “radiating love.”  That’s powerful!

While in no way can Stan’s passing be described as a good thing, I have to admit that, from Matt’s description, his family made the most of a really difficult situation.  It sounded, to me, like Stan’s final moments were how every person should exit this world: He was surrounded by family and friends who wanted only to express their love for him.  Matt also noted what he described as a miracle: As Stan was passing, The Beatles’ song “Golden Slumbers” was playing in the background (Stan was a huge fan of The Beatles).  If you know the song, you know that it is about the most perfect song to have playing at a time like that.  A miracle, maybe not.  But the perfect accompaniment for the loss of a loved one, absolutely!

We were in LA for several days and did a few other things while there (went to a restaurant that we first went to during our honeymoon, toured the USS Midway in San Diego, played cards with my family, visited Debi’s brother, sister-in-law, and nephew, and walked along the pier at Huntington Beach).  Our last night there we stopped by 6522 Hollywood Blvd to see Stan’s Star.  We forgot our camera and our phone batteries were dead, so we couldn’t take a picture, but I wanted to see it before I left LA as I don’t know when I’ll be back there.  It was a nice culmination of a trip dedicated to the memory of my Uncle Stan.

All in all, it was a great trip to celebrate the life of a great person.  Debi described it as the best funeral she’s ever been to.  I couldn’t agree more.  Even in passing away, Stan created powerful memories…