Today the kids and I headed up north to check out the Golden Spike National Historic Site, where the Union Pacific and Central Pacific railroad tracks were joined at Promontory, Utah on May 10th, 1869, completing the transcontinental railway. It was a neat trip, we learned a bushel of interesting things and had a good time.
The kids in front of the monument marking the historic spot.
The park has replicas of the two steam engines which met at the joining of the tracks; the Union Pacific engine, the No. 119, was the only one out today, as the Central Pacific's Jupiter was undergoing scheduled maintenance.
The gang checking out the steam engine (which is fully operational).
Emmett in front of the steam engine.
The No. 119 in operation! They really did paint them that colorfully during that period in time; it wasn't until around the turn of the 20th century and after that the engines were painted flat black.
Me and the kiddos.
We walked the 1.5 mile Big Fill Loop Trail that follows the graded paths laid by the two railroads; the Union and Central Pacific actually graded parallel lines for 250 miles, because no meeting point had yet been agreed upon and the graders were often more than a hundred miles ahead of the track layers, and the government paid per graded mile as well as for miles of track laid!
The kids on the path - you can see what was called a 'cut' behind them, where the rock was blasted away to allow a level path for track to be graded.
The kids finding shade on the wall of a cut.
Heading back on the parallel graded line - the two lines are quite close together.
I literally cannot stop the children from climbing any rock formation in our vicinity - not that I want to, they can climb rocks all day as far as I'm concerned. ;-)
And Vera Gail does her best to keep up with her brothers, and she does pretty well!
This is a naturally formed rock arch, which was named "Chinese Arch" to commemorate the stamina and sacrifice of the thousands of Chinese laborers whose work made the completion of the transcontinental railway possible.
And naturally, the children had to climb on top of the arch...
Gareth found himself a niche behind the arch.
The crazy crew beneath the arch.
And Gareth on the arch wall (no, beneath it is not good enough..give them a few more years and they'll be hanging from the undersides of such formations..) ;-)
