Golden Spike National Historic Site

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..) ;-)

Exploring Utah

We are now residents of Utah, living near Hill Air Force Base where Dave is stationed. We are very pleased to be back out west, we truly do prefer the West to the Midwest, no offense to anyone... It's gorgeous out here with the mountains. We missed mountains!

The kids and I were tired of hanging around the house, and we were inspired by our rock-hound neighbor (who very kindly loaned us a book on rock-hounding in Utah) to go on an excursion in search of some cool rocks. It's a good excuse to go and explore. :-) So we headed two hours south to the historic towns of Eureka and Vernon and had a little adventure.

The kids at the little mining museum in Eureka, which is in the Historic Tintic Mining District.

I wonder if there is some place where we could actually tour old mines, that would be cool...

The kids were fascinated by all the old equipment.

A restored cabin, believed to have housed Porter Rockwell, the famed Eureka area marshall.

Emmett by the portrait of Porter Rockwell.

Gareth and Vera Gail testing out the cabin chair.

The gang poking around an old caboose on display.

You can kind of see from this picture that Eureka is very nearly a ghost town...half the buildings are on the verge of derelict. It was quite interesting.

And now we skip down the way to the outskirts of Vernon, where our rock-hounding book had guided us to a pit of wonderstone.

Sanctioned digging, pounding, and generally getting filthy - yes, the kids were into rock hunting!
A view of the rolling terrain beyond the rock piles.

Being out here really gives me the urge to watch some classic John Wayne Westerns...where's my cowboy hat?

We took a little break from rock gathering (there were nifty stones all over) and took a little hike.

Kings of the Rock!

And Princess of the Rock. (Not queen, no, it would have to be princess.)

Me and Vera Gail by some scrub-brush.

Emmett and Gareth discovered a cactus growing in the rocks on the hillside and were exceedingly impressed by its presence.

Meanwhile, Vera Gail was still climbing up rock mounds - she squealed and danced in victory every time she got to the top. :-)

Here are some pictures of the wonderstones we brought back home. Pretty nifty!

This isn't quite all of it, there was a bit more. The kids are eager to rinse them again tomorrow and see if they can cajole a hammer out of the tool chest to break open some of the larger pieces to see if they have striking patterns inside.

So that was our adventure! I confess it was a bit much driving in one day since we aimed to be back for dinner, and next time we'll just not bother with that and stop for more sights (like some stops on the Pony Express trail, or some more historic or ghost towns) on the way home.

Promotion!

Last Wednesday, April 27th, Dave was promoted to Captain! Though this promotion is semi-automatic, it is still exciting and noteworthy and we are very proud. :-)

He chose to have his promotion ceremony at the Air Force Museum (totally awesome choice), and here he is standing by the F-22 while one of his commanding officers gave a very nice speech about him. :-)


And Vera Gail decided that she wanted to be part of the ceremony too, so she ran up there to join Daddy.

Dave and his commanding officer turning to face each other for the administration of the oath of office; Vera Gail did an about face just a moment afterward to imitate Dave. ;-) (The audience loved it, heheh.)

Dave giving a short address following the pinning on of his new rank.

(My apologies for the less-than-stellar quality of the photos; the lighting is dim in the museum and I was not close enough for the flash to be very effective.)

Easter!

(Yeeeeessss, I realize the last post was Thanksgiving and now it's Easter...oops)

So here is the crew with their bounty from the Easter Bunny!

The glorious consumption of the chocolate bunny!

(We saved our chocolate bunnies for later)

The egg-hunt!

They sure found all those eggs fast this year! Only Vera Gail needed a little help. :-)