No dawdling, and drink your water
I tried to blog last night from somewhere in the desert. The sky was clear enough for good reception, but apparently satellites don’t go over that part of Wyoming. The Milky Way does. This far from civilization, it was a chalk stripe against the sky.
A cop in Rawlins told us to get out of town. He even gave us directions. Turn right down the alley, left at the stoplight, left again at the Kum & Go convenience store, and follow the highway north.
I got pulled over for going the wrong way on a one-way street. It didn’t improve the cop’s mood that we looked like reverse Mormon fundamentalists: two husbands and one wife. Jessica was wearing a long skirt, apron, a bonnet, and Asics Trail Runners. Rick and I were straight off the set of “Hee Haw.”
I told the cop we were on our way to an LDS trek. Apparently Rawlins sees a lot of confused trekkers because I watched his hand move from his gun to his Taser. He agreed to give us enough time for breakfast (Penny’s Diner. Try the hashbrowns).
We hooked up with the Sandy Canyon View Stake at Martin’s Cove, located 60 miles and several dimensions in time north of Rawlins. A couple hundred kids and their adult minders piled off four busses. Mormon pioneer costumes ranged in historical accuracy from “Little House on the Prairie” to cowboy in The Village People.
The staff at Martin’s Cove herded us into a large meeting hall with a veiled threat: the longer we dawdled, the hotter the day was going to get. And it promised to be a scorcher out on the trail.
Time couldn’t have been that important because the announcement was followed by an hour’s worth of testifying and idiot-proofing. We wouldn’t be able to feel the spirit of the Lord in this special place if we were dead from snake bite, dehydration, sunstroke, or handcart crash.
We were told to stay on the trail, drink our weight in water every hour, and to flee hysterically from anything that rattled.
Depending on age and physical condition, the hike following the sermon was anywhere from 6 to 900 miles long. We stopped several times for testimonies about the horrible conditions faced by the 1856 Martin and Willies handcart companies.
A word about the kids: They’re a good bunch, but they’re still kids. And there’s nothing wrong with kids that trying to reason with them won’t make worse. On the bright side, there’s nothing that makes kids more reasonable than complete physical exhaustion. It should be a law that every kid between the ages of 12-19 should have to hike a dozen miles a day.
The day ended with an excellent Dutch oven dinner served in the middle of a wind-swept, sun broiled flat. This part of the experience resembled less a Mormon handcart trek than it did garrison duty in Iraq.
A coyote kept me awake all night. Tomorrow we trek for real.
A cop in Rawlins told us to get out of town. He even gave us directions. Turn right down the alley, left at the stoplight, left again at the Kum & Go convenience store, and follow the highway north.
I got pulled over for going the wrong way on a one-way street. It didn’t improve the cop’s mood that we looked like reverse Mormon fundamentalists: two husbands and one wife. Jessica was wearing a long skirt, apron, a bonnet, and Asics Trail Runners. Rick and I were straight off the set of “Hee Haw.”
I told the cop we were on our way to an LDS trek. Apparently Rawlins sees a lot of confused trekkers because I watched his hand move from his gun to his Taser. He agreed to give us enough time for breakfast (Penny’s Diner. Try the hashbrowns).
We hooked up with the Sandy Canyon View Stake at Martin’s Cove, located 60 miles and several dimensions in time north of Rawlins. A couple hundred kids and their adult minders piled off four busses. Mormon pioneer costumes ranged in historical accuracy from “Little House on the Prairie” to cowboy in The Village People.
The staff at Martin’s Cove herded us into a large meeting hall with a veiled threat: the longer we dawdled, the hotter the day was going to get. And it promised to be a scorcher out on the trail.
Time couldn’t have been that important because the announcement was followed by an hour’s worth of testifying and idiot-proofing. We wouldn’t be able to feel the spirit of the Lord in this special place if we were dead from snake bite, dehydration, sunstroke, or handcart crash.
We were told to stay on the trail, drink our weight in water every hour, and to flee hysterically from anything that rattled.
Depending on age and physical condition, the hike following the sermon was anywhere from 6 to 900 miles long. We stopped several times for testimonies about the horrible conditions faced by the 1856 Martin and Willies handcart companies.
A word about the kids: They’re a good bunch, but they’re still kids. And there’s nothing wrong with kids that trying to reason with them won’t make worse. On the bright side, there’s nothing that makes kids more reasonable than complete physical exhaustion. It should be a law that every kid between the ages of 12-19 should have to hike a dozen miles a day.
The day ended with an excellent Dutch oven dinner served in the middle of a wind-swept, sun broiled flat. This part of the experience resembled less a Mormon handcart trek than it did garrison duty in Iraq.
A coyote kept me awake all night. Tomorrow we trek for real.
posted by www.sltrib.com @ 10:05 AM |
1 Comments:
hang in there kirby, you only have (how many days left?) and try not to find another wife while your out there, we like the one you have just fine!!
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