Golden Spike

On the way from Idaho back to Salt Lake we stopped by the Golden Spike National Historic Monuement in Northern Utah. Erika says we went here when I was a teenager. I have absolutely no recollection of the visit. So I am counting this year's visit as my first time here.

This is where the transcontinental railroads met back at the turn of the twentieth century.

The steam trains still run daily, at least back to where they keep them at night. This whole leg of the train route is now largely unused. Twenty years after building the railroads, they built a new one out across the Great Salt Lake. The original route was too steep and traffic moving through was too slow. I didn't know that; so it was fun to learn something new.

The 119 train came from the east. They started in the midwest. East of the Mississippi there was already an extensive train network. Then they just laid track across the plains.

The Jupiter train started in the west. They didn't build as many miles of track as the 119 crew because they had to cross the Sierra-Nevadas, blasting through miles and miles of rock and utilizing thousands of Chinese workers to build their side. They also had to raise the grade for their tracks in many places.

It was a really educational visit.

But this is really is the middle of nowhere!

Granny's Drive In

In Heber, there is a small drive in called Granny's. They are famous for their shakes. They are big and tasty.

So I dragged everyone on a drive through Provo Canyon to Heber for some shakes and fries. We got the last shakes of the day. Right after us, at 6 o'clock in the evening, they ran out of ice cream. Oops. Glad we got there when we did!

Hmmmm. Totally worth the (beautiful) drive.

Kennecott Copper Mine

One of my 37 Goals is to see new things. While I was in Utah I wanted to do things that I'd never done while living there. So visiting Kennecott was at the top of my list. I lived at the base of this mine for over 20 years and never got up there to see it. (I think that I tried one time, but they were closed.) In fact, most of the families that lived on my street worked at the mine or for them in some way.

When I lived in Riverton, the waste rock that was dumped over the side of the mine was mostly only in the center part of what it looks like today. The mine has taken over about 20 towns. And though I have mixed feelings about the effects of open pit mining, I must admit that I think it looks kind of beautiful. The many colors of rock and dirt look nice against the colors of the desert.

P.S. This is the view (above) from my parents' back yard. Pretty impressive.

The pit is 3/4 mile deep. It can be seen from space. The mine produces more copper than any other on earth. They also produce gold, silver, and a few other ores as waste products. Those dark specks? Those are giant dump trucks.

Luckily, our visit overlapped with Karl's visit, so he came with us. It was kind of breezey.

The kids liked looking through the binoculars.

at these giant trucks. A grown man isn't even half as tall as one of the tires on those giant machines. Each dump truck can haul 340 TONS of rock!

Next time you are in Utah, this is a pretty cool place to go. The movie they show in the visitor's center is really interesting as well. I wish they had tours in the other parts of the mining operations (the smelter and refinery parts) It looked cool on the video. I think I'd like to go again!

Cookie, Cookie, Cookie starts with C

One of the outings we went on while we were in Utah was to the Mrs. Field's cookie packaging factory. We took a tour of their facility. They actually do a lot of stuff there, most of it at Christmas time. In fact of the 10 million cookies they bake and ship each year, 8 million are baked and shipped in a 3 week period at Christmas. Plus there is all the packaging, a lot of it done by hand, gift wrapping, silk screening of tins and boxes, photo editing for cookies iced with edible ink, and stamped ribbons and then sorting for the FEDEX, UPS or USPS. Who knew they did so much?
The coolest part? The ginourmous freezer where they store cookies and cookie dough: 20,000 square feet of very, very cold warehouse space. They drive forklifts into it to shelf the cookies!
Anyway, the kids really liked it. It was much more interesting than I anticipated. And of course there are the free cookies at the end. Not bad for a half hour's worth of entertainment. Just sign up online. I'd recommend going if you are in Salt Lake and need something to do.

Mesa Verde

To end our summer vacation, I took the kids to Mesa Verde National Park near Cortez, Colorado. I have been waiting for years to do this trip. Because it involves a few cliffs and holes in the ground, I wanted to make sure I would have to worry about anyone falling over the edge. I was a little worried that the kids might not be interested in the history in this park, but they loved it all.Mesa Verde is home to some of the best preserved cliff dwelling and pueblo sites of the ancient Puebloans. They used to be called the Anasazi. However, that was a Navajo word and these people are ancestors to the Pueblo indians. So they are using ancestral peubloans for their name now.The first dwelling we visited is called the Cliff House. It is the one pictured above. You can get a fabulous view from a lookout point above. Then we hiked down with a ranger guide to tour inside. These dwellings are in the sides of cliffs. There weren't stairs or a nice trail when the people lived here. They would cut little toe and fingerholds into the rock to get in and out of the cliff. I can't imagine having a 3 year old in a place like that.

The sites were really interesting. We also toured places called Balcony House and Spruce House. At Spruce House there was a reconstructed Kiva (ceremonial space dug underground and covered with a flat wooden roof with a hole in the top for smoke to escape and as a entrance/exit). The kids loved exploring that. Some of spaces to get into and out of the dwellings were really small. I had to give the backpack to one of the kids so that I could get through the small openings.

The ladder below was 32 feet high. It was a little disconcerting to look down.

Sometimes there were steps cut into the rocks.

We got really lucky with the weather. It was beautiful. Warm days and nice cool clear nights.

Our guides were helpful and knowledgeable.

It's a good thing we had spent some time in Utah before hand. The elevation made the hikes a bit more strenuous for us sealevel dwellers.

We stayed at the Fairview Lodge in the Park. It was nice to not have to drive up and down the mountain each day during our stay.

The restaurant at the Lodge was really good too. We saw deer outside our room. We also saw wild horses and a coyote ran alongside our car on the way out of the park.

After spending the day hiking and site seeing, we rested and read until dinner.

I think this was my favorite part of our summer vacation (after Norway of course). We enjoyed hanging out together and it was a lot of fun.