Spring Break~ Day 3

Saturday, 2Cool had to work, it is a hard stage to go through to have your child working. I hate doing family things without him.

We headed to Tremonton,and  The Pie Dump  Hubby LOVES their bismark doughnut. It is a not your typical bismark, it only has a thin layer of doughnut holding in all of the custard filling. Plus, their Sweet rolls are amazing! Oh, and their hot roll and butter, divine! We pull up to the doors, and all of us groaned.....they were closed.We pledged to go back later. Next was Marble Park.....no it isn't a park of marbles. It was created by the Marble family. Try describing this park to someone. "Uh... it is a bunch of rusty stuff all welded together to make a park." But it was fun, my kids all had a great time.

Notice how many seats are on this thing.

Just in case you were wondering that says 2000ad, Welcome.
 Red is pulling a rope that makes the horizontal tube move, and hit the other bells, and making a horrible clanging noise. So of course they had to do it over and over.
Anytime BigD can be in a swing, he will. He swings on ours in the backyard and yodels.

BigD is pulling the ropes, that are attached to the pulleys, that make the clapper move, and ring the bells. I have no idea what the spiky things are.

This is a swing thing. Great technical term huh.

They did have a good time on it though

 Next we moved on to. Thiokol Rocket garden I think if you have a kid that is way into space stuff you should go. Not thrilling, but it gave us a great place to get out and stretch our legs.

This was about the only thing that the kids could climb on. (I am not sure they were supposed too) They kept trying to see who could go furthest up the side.

Promontory Point next. This is where the east and west railroads came together. There is a small fee to go out and see the place it happened. It is literally "the place where Jesus lost his sandals."

The boys are trying to figure out how to switch the train tracks.

Running along the tracks was entertaining.

Corrine Utah, originally home to the most "Cat Houses" and Saloons in Utah. Apparently the town founder and Brigham Young butted heads on occasion. Any of you who are LDS probably can see that.
According to my dad, Brigham Young told the town founder that if he didn't clean up the town it would never prosper. It is now a class 7 Ghost town.

Oldest Presbyterian church in Utah. The date on Cutie's camera is wrong.

After Promontory we were going to go out to the Spiral Jetty, but I looked at my gas gauge and realized that there was no way we would make it out and back. Plus it was still under water. Dang it!
Peach City was a must since we missed out on the Pie Dump. 

Peach city! A great old time soda shoppe. They have the best french fries and Diet Coke!

All in all a fun day. It is funny to me how things don't always go as planned. But we were all able to just roll with it.

Spring break 2012 ~Day 2

My friend Tausha, was worried about me losing what marbles I had left, by being gone all day with my kids. Truthfully, it was way easier than getting them to do their chores at home.  The whining, the crying, the yelling......really it was the kids, not me, I swear.
Day 2~ we headed even further south to the Provo Area. The plan was to go to Bridal Veil Falls then the Springville Art Museum, then to the ghost town Thistle, then after visiting my grandma, head back home and swing by Cabelas on the way.
As with all great plans, and par for the course, things did not happen that way.
Hubby was with us, and was navigator. Since he was the navigator, he was in charge of where we went and, in what order. We started at the museum, LittleD was less than thrilled. He is a 17 year old boy, truthfully, it was to be expected.
Let me just say, if you live near Springfield, it is a great place to visit. Really neat building, great architecture, good experience. If you take you kids, there are nude statues and portraits. Nothing lewd, just art that is very typical for the period. I was surprised at one point to turn the corner into another room and find a picture of my great-great-great-great grandmother.  No, she wasn't nude. If you checked out the link, no, I don't look like her. No one in my family, that I know of does.
 After that, since we were south of Provo, we headed to Thistle. Truthfully, I was most excited about this part of the trip. Hubby plugged the coordinated into the GPS and we were on our way. As we got closer, the GPS told us to turn left, off the paved road, and go 10 miles on the dirt road. So we did.......then we went another 2 miles after the GPS told us to turn right. This is what we came to...

If you look closely you can see my 2 boys, that I sent up the hill, to see how much further the snow went.

Please realize at this point we had been driving for about 1 1/2 hours. The road was muddy, rocky and rutty (is that a word) All this time hubby had been trying to figure out where the GPS was taking us. He looked at me and said, "I think it is taking us back around to the paved road". We laughed, the kids groaned, and I did a very nice 3 point turn on the: slippery, narrow road and we headed back. It was a good thing I made a adventuring play list. At one point Ride of the Valkyries came on, we decided that was perfect adventuring music. We drove all the way back to the paved road, and turned right, not 100 feet up the road, there it was! We laughed, so pathetic.







This house is just creepy. I can't imagine what it would have been like to be there at the time.
The story of Thistle is a crazy one. It didn't become a ghost town until 1983. It was odd to think that it had become a ghost town in my lifetime. I recommend checking out the link.

Here is BigD standing by the coal chute at the school.

This is what LittleMan took pictures of. It made me sad to see that people had trashed a part of history. Maybe I feel that way because I am old.

How many Ghost towns have old power poles? I took this one for my hubby.

After that, it was so late we just headed home. But I really think my kids will remember the day we got lost.

Spring Break 2012

I really wanted to do something fun for spring break. Hawaii....I wish. Hubby and I talked about it and we were trying to decide where to go. Then 2Cool got a job. Yay 2Cool, boo, no trip. We couldn't leave him home alone, because he would have partied till the house fell down. I am not saying I don't trust him. I just know what I would have done at his age, and he is a bit like his mom. Shhhh, don't tell him I said that.
Then we found out we had to pay lots of taxes......A LOT OF TAXES! Let me say again....so much taxes. So going anywhere that cost us anything was out of the question
I decided we would just spend our days traveling an hour, or 2 away from home and see the free sights. So what did I do? Google baby!
Some of the sites I found were, Roadside America I would highly recommend it. Fun and really random things to see all over the US.
For some reason I got thinking about Ghost towns. Random huh again.....google to the rescue. I found a great site about ghost towns, the only thing is, that you will need to do further research to find these places.

I made up a schedule and Monday morning we headed out to start our adventures. We started off hiking Shoshone Trail about a mile and a half up Ogden Canyon. Yes, my children are very silly.

This is close to where we stopped for lunch.

This is as far as we hiked. They are all still smiling! It is hard to entertain teens and 10 year olds at the same time. At least it is at our house.

This stone structure was at the trail head. I was really impressed that all of my kids made it up here.

Tuesday morning we ventured forth to Salt Lake City. We started our at the Beehive House, the flowers were so beautiful on Temple Square.

 LittleMan took this one.

 We then went in search of this really random, bizarre, backyard called Gilgal Gardens. While it was a little strange, it was enjoyable.

This is the some captain guy......weird and random I tell you.

None of us really know what the hears and hands are about.



 Next on the agenda was to go hiking up Doughnut Falls, which is up Big Cottonwood canyon. We really enjoyed the drive up, and later in the year it will be beautiful!But as we got further and further up the canyon, there was more and more snow. When we got to where the trail started, there was 2 feet of snow. Dang, no hike. But we did see a vehicle being towed out of the ravine, which was the highlight of the hike. Not a great pic, but you can kind of see the car.  It was pretty mangled.

 That evening we hit a bucket of balls, redneck style.

2Cool thinks his mother is crazy, but I just wanted to make the time fun and cheap.