A season of good-byes

This morning we learned that my Aunt Donna died yesterday. She was the last living child of my father's parents, and thus an era ends, and that generation of our family is now gone. Donna was my dad's youngest sister and was one of my favorite aunts. And she was, as Claudia put it, the keeper of the family stories. She will be missed.

And then this evening all our own family—all 32 of us—were together for a formal family picture. We gathered at our house afterward for pizza and ice cream and cookies and snow cones (Caleb bought his own snow cone machine with his birthday money and was making snow cones for any who wanted them).

It may be the last time we will all be together at one time in one place for a very long time. Chris, Camilla, and Sam leave early tomorrow morning for Washington state. They stayed their final night in Utah at Chris's parents' house, since Chris's mom and dad are driving up to Everett with them. So it was pretty tearful when they left our house. They will be back down in mid-August for Chris's sister's wedding, but by then Paul, Eliza, and Peter will have moved to Atlanta.

I told Camilla, as she was parting, I didn't look at it like I was losing a daughter but gaining an excuse for a road trip.

More on the journey of discovery

I survived yesterday's cardiac electrophysiology study at Salt Lake Regional Medical Center. Apparently there was not enough evidence to require a pacemaker be installed, but I did have an under-the-skin heart monitor installed that's good for two or three years or until some other intervention requires. I guess I will beep now when I go through airport security screenings.

The incision on my upper left chest, just a little below the collarbone, where they inserted the heart monitor, is very tender today.

The continuing journey

I am still working with my primary care doctor and the cardiologists to try to determine what, if anything, is going on with my heart these days. We are pretty certain I have one. It is an ongoing journey of discovery.

Yesterday morning I went to LDS Hospital and had an ultrasound on the carotid arteries in my neck. I will not know the result of the carotid artery study until probably sometime next week, although I did ask the technician who did it what it looked like. He said he was not a doctor and could not really tell me, but he did show me the images and pointed out where it appears there is some plaque built up along the artery walls, more so in the artery on the left side than the right.

Next Wednesday, June 4, I am scheduled to have a cardiac electrophysiological study (ESP) done at Salt Lake Regional Medical Center. That is something similar to the angiogram I had nearly two months ago, but rather than checking out the plumbing of my heart they will be checking on the electrical functions. The procedure is similar in that in both types they go to the heart through an insertion in the groin area. I will be in the hospital much of Wednesday and, if they end up putting in a pacemaker or defribillator or long-term under-the-skin monitor, I will stay overnight. That is the likely scenario.

Someone from the billing office there called me a couple days ago and wanted me to pay upfront my 10 percent of the cost of the ESP procedure. My portion? $1,378. I commented that $13,780 seemed awfully expensive, and she replied that if I go ahead and have the pacemaker put in, which is a likely outcome of the procedure, that will cost another $150,000-something. Wow! And I had been flabergasted that the angiogram I had done at the new Intermountain Medical Center on April 3 had cost more than $5,000 just for the hospital's portion, not counting what the doctor charged.

Another piece of evidence

Typically state songs attach themselves to actual states. Hence, we share one more piece of evidence that there really is a North Dakota.

Anna can attest to the truth of the third line in the third stanza (which we've highlighted in blue): "Sweet the winds above thee blowing." The wind was pretty much blowing the entire time we were in the state, including while she was running the marathon.

North Dakota Hymn
Written by James W. Foley
Composed by Dr. C. S. Putnam

North Dakota, North Dakota,
With thy prairies wide and free,
All thy sons and daughters love thee,
Fairest state from sea to sea;
North Dakota, North Dakota,
Here we pledge ourselves to thee.

Here thy loyal children singing,
Songs of happiness and praise,
Far and long the echoes ringing,
Through the vastness of thy ways;
North Dakota, North Dakota,
We will serve thee all our days.

Onward, onward, onward going,
Light of courage in thine eyes,
Sweet the winds above thee blowing,
Green thy fields and fair thy skies;
North Dakota, North Dakota,
Brave the soul that in thee lies.

God of freedom, all victorious,
Give us Souls serene and strong,
Strength to make the future glorious,
Keep the echo of our song;
North Dakota, North Dakota,
In our hearts forever long.

In search of North Dakota (day 7)

Tuesday, May 20, 2008
Wyoming, Montana, Idaho, Utah

The Cody Cowboy Village offered only a continental breakfast (compared to the full breakfast offered at the Country Inn & Suites places we had stayed in all the other nights). We ate and packed, filled the car with gas (Pete's Volkswagen Jetta wagon takes diesel), and continued west on what was now combined U.S. routes 14, 16, and 20.

A little ways up the canyon, perhaps eight or ten miles, we went through a long tunnel and stopped at Buffalo Bill Dam and visitor center. The dam was built from 1905 to 1910 on the Shoshone River and at the time of its completion was at 350 feet the highest dam in the world. It was originally called the Shoshone Dam, but was renamed the Buffalo Bill Dam by President Harry S. Truman in the late 1940s.

A while later we had to stop and wait for three buffalo to amble across the road in front of us. We soon entered the east entrance into Yellowstone National Park. The road had just opened a couple weeks earlier, and there was still snow on both sides right up to the edge of the road. In the higher elevations it was higher than our car. This was the first time any of us had been in the eastern portion of the park, and I thought it was a much more dramatic entrance than coming in from the west. After descending from an 8,000-something-foot pass, we had a spectacular view of Yellowstone Lake, which was still mostly covered with ice. Anna read that it is the largest mountain lake in the United States or North America or some such thing.

We continued through the park until we came to Old Faithful. The only animals we saw were herds of buffalo. At Old Faithful we watched the geyser erupt and then fixed noodles for our lunch. There we saw some very large black birds that may have been crows but were really huge.

We left the Old Faithful area about 2:30, continued up to Madison Junction, following alongside the Firehole River, and out the west entrance of the park, following the Madison River. We left Wyoming and entered Montana again before leaving the park. We continued through West Yellowstone on U.S. 20 and soon entered Idaho. We passed through Ashton, St. Anthony, Rexburg, and Rigby to Idaho Falls. As we drove by Rexburg, we saw the new temple that was just dedicated earlier this year.

We rejoined I-15 at Idaho Falls, having come full circle since the beginning of our trip. We were going to stop and see Peter's sister Marta, who had just moved to Idaho Falls on Saturday, but she didn't return their call until we were on the freeway south of Idaho Falls. I called Rachael and told her we would stop in for supper in about an hour and a half to two hours. It took us closer to the hour and a half to reach Malad. Rachael kindly fed us breakfast for supper: pancakes, scrambled eggs, sausage, bacon, that sort of stuff. We helped her with the meal and with the baby. Robert came home from work, hurriedly ate, and went off to a school board meeting concerning his becoming a basketball coach.

After about a two-hour visit, and even toying with the idea of spending the night, we decided to press on home. Just as we were crossing the border from Idaho into Utah, I called Claudia to tell her where we were. She was very excited, since she was expecting us back tomorrow evening.

We arrived in Bountiful about nine o'clock. Peter and Anna dropped me off. They still had to drive home to Salt Lake City. Peter, who had driven the entire 2,700-mile trip, looked very tired.

My calculations, based on Google Maps, is that we drove more than 2,656 miles: the first day 609 miles from Salt Lake City to Billings, the second day 610 miles from Billings to Fargo, the fifth day 577 miles from Fargo to Rapid City, the sixth day 407 miles from Rapid City to Cody, and the seventh day 453 miles from Cody through Yellowstone to home.

Only twice during the entire seven-day trip did we actually eat out, both times in Fargo: the Friday night before the marathon, and Saturday afternoon after the marathon. All the other times we were having breakfast in our motels and fixing our own lunches, dinners, and snacks from food Peter and Anna had brought, and our final supper at Rachael's house in Malad.

Peter and Anna are great traveling companions. In my estimation, as road trips go, it had been a great trip.

In search of North Dakota (day 6)

Monday, May 19, 2008
South Dakota, Wyoming

We began the day with our standard morning routine (eat in the motel, get ready for the day, pack the car, and hit the road). Packing the car always takes a bit of effort—after everything else is in its proper place, Peter then has to add the bicycle rack on the back of the car and secure his bicycle so it doesn't decide to come loose during our travels at high speeds on the highway.

We left Rapid City and drove up into the Black Hills to Mount Rushmore National Monument and spent a couple hours there. We took a scenic loop down toward Custer (it was all scenic, actually) and refueled the car and ate our lunch at a park there. Originally we had planned to go through Jewel Cave, but Anna was still stiff from her marathon and the hiking we did at Mount Rushmore pretty much did her in.

All this area was familiar to me and brought back a flood of pleasant memories from the summer of 2004 when Michael and Shauna and their then four kids, Talmage and Ben, and Claudia and I spent a week here in the Black Hills seeing all these sites and driving through all these various mountains. Ben, who was three years old at the time, referred to the place as Mount Mushmore, but he could proudly recite the names of the four presidents whose images were carved into the mountainside: Washington, Jefferson, Roosevelt, and Lincoln. That trip had been then-six-year-old Caleb's idea and plan, and we thought he did a good job.

This was Pete and Anna's first visit to Mount Rushmore and the Black Hills.

After fixing our lunch in the park in Custer, we headed west on U.S. 16 into Wyoming and continued through Newcastle until we joined I-90 at Moorcroft. We traveled west on the freeway for nearly a hundred miles. At Buffalo we left the freeway and took U.S. 16 again up and over the Bighorn Mountains toward Worlund, which is in the Bighorn Basin. We went over a summit that was 9,666 feet high. A very scenic drive.

We arrived in Cody, at the western edge of the Bighorn Basin, around 7:30 and stayed at the western end of town at the Cody Cowboy Village, where each unit was a separate cabin. Pete again fixed our supper on his JetBoil, and we ate. The weather had been pleasant, though somewhat windy, but turned cooler after the sun went down. We went and sat for a while in the 35-person hot tub, which felt nice, although I just sat on the edge and put my feet in. Since it was all outside, I didn't care to freeze my entire body after getting out of the warm water and walking back in the night cold to our cabin.

In search of North Dakota (day 5)

Sunday, May 18, 2008
North Dakota, South Dakota

We slept in, ate the motel's breakfast, got ready for the day, packed the car, and at a little before ten (our standard departure time) we pulled onto I-29 and headed south down the east side of North Dakota. We stopped at a rest stop half way down South Dakota and fixed lunch. When I-29 intersected with I-90 just before Sioux Falls, we turned west and headed off into the sunset (except that it was still the middle of the afternoon, but it would be sunset by the time we traveled all the way across the state to Rapid City).

As we traveled along I-90 we passed a statue of the World's Largest Steer's Head (they seem to be big on things like that here in the Dakotas), the home of Laura Ingalls Wilder (who wrote the Little House on the Prairie books), the Corn Palace in Mitchell, and a statue of what we presumed to be the World's Largest Prairie Dog. Much of the way we listened to the recording of Nicholas Evans's book The Divide.

Midway across South Dakota we stopped at an impressive rest stop that was a Lewis and Clark interpretive museum and that had a scenic overlook of the Missouri River at the spot where two centuries ago the Corps of Discovery encamped on the west bank of the Missouri both going to (in 1804) and returning from (1806) their legendary trip to the Pacific.

Father west we exited the freeway at the east entrance to Badlands National Park and took the scenic loop through the park. Very impressive. Besides the incredible layered rock formations, we saw multitudes of prairie dogs and a couple of antelope feeding.

We rejoined the freeway at Wall and continued west. Though enticed by signs advertising it all the way across the state (and even some as we headed south on I-29 before getting on I-90), we did not stop at the famous Wall Drug.

Just before reaching Rapid City at sunset (we were now back in the Mountain time zone, and it was about 8:30), a dark thunderstorm with violent winds rocked our car and put some raindrops on our windshield). We stayed at our third Country Inn and Suites, were we fixed a late supper in our room.

In search of North Dakota (day 4)

Saturday, May 17, 2008
North Dakota

Race day. We were up early, ate a quick breakfast, and like pretty much everyone else in town, it seemed, we were off to the Fargodome, where the marathon was to begin. Traffic was slow, but we arrived and parked a half hour before race time.

The race began at eight o'clock. It was the first marathon I've been to that began with the singing of "O Canada" and "The Star-Spangled Banner" and the saying of a prayer. Anna was among the thousands of runners in the race, Peter on his bicycle, and I on the spectator shuttle bus. It was a gorgeous day. There was no or little wind at first, but it picked up midway through the race.

The shuttle bus was not at all what it was cracked up to be. There were no signs as to where it was supposed to stop, so I asked where to find it and was told it would stop on the west side of the Fargodome. No one else was there, and after waiting for a period of time, I circled back around the Fargodome and was told the bus stopped on the south side. Even though it was scheduled to come every fifteen minutes, I waited with a handful of other people for nearly forty-five minutes before it actually showed up. By then I calculated that Anna would already have passed mile seven, the first of two stops the shuttle was scheduled to make, so I and several others stayed on and went to the second stop at mile twenty-one. The bus driver did not seem to know for sure where he was supposed to be going and let us off many blocks from where the runners would pass by.

About four of us—a lady from central Illinois, a lady from somewhere in Minnesota, a young black kid, and I—had really bonded by now, as we made our way to the race site, leaving us feeling like we should exchange Christmas cards or something. Our spectator site was in a beautiful spot—a golf course on one side, the Red River on the other. Anna finally ran by, I displayed one of my signs, and actually ran beside her for a dozen yards or so.

I then walked back to where the shuttle bus had said it would return. The friendly black kid said he'd been waiting there for forty-five minutes and nothing had come. I concluded that if I wanted to see Anna cross the finish line, I'd better walk back the nearly two miles to the Fargodome. I did, and she finished shortly thereafter.

Most of the race course was in Fargo, but a portion of it was in Moorehead, so Anna actually ran in both North Dakota and Minnesota.

Anna's time was four hours and sixteen minutes, not as fast as she had wanted, so she could qualify for Boston, but respectable nonetheless. Her ankle, which had been causing her such grief the past couple months, did not bother her at all. She was 168th out of 504 women in the marathon, 666th out of all 1,440 people who finished, and second out of four people here from Utah. Peter thought we should have carpooled or something.

This was Anna's eighth marathon. She has now run in five states: Alaska, California, Utah, Idaho, and now North Dakota.

In search of North Dakota (day 3)

Friday, May 16, 2008
North Dakota, Minnesota

North Dakota, we learned from our atlas, is the forty-eighth most populous state in the country. Only Vermont and Wyoming have fewer people. Fargo is North Dakota's biggest city.

Today was a quiet, non-travel day. After sleeping in and then eating a late breakfast at the motel, Peter had to take part in a conference call for his work. After he did that, we then packed a light lunch of fruit and peanut-butter-and-jam sandwiches and headed out to explore the city. We decided we liked Fargo.

As a part of our drive, we crossed the Red River of the North, the border between North Dakota and Minnesota, and visited a part of Fargo's sister city, Moorehead, Minnesota. We came back across a different bridge and parked along Broadway in downtown Fargo and walked through downtown until we came to a large park near the river. We ate our lunch at a picnic table shaded by large trees. The day was warm and windy.

While Peter walked back to get the car, Anna and I walked across a low foot bridge that spanned the Red River. It was only a foot or two above the surface of the water. Midway across the bridge, standing somewhere between North Dakota on the west bank and Minnesota on the east, we called home to Utah to talk to Mom. We walked on down the Minnesota side to a little waterfall and then returned to our picnic table to await Peter's return.

The Red River, contrary to what I had supposed, flows north into Canada and empties eventually into Lake Winnipeg.

We drove next to the Fargodome, where Anna picked up her race packet for tomorrow morning's marathon and I bought a five-dollar ticket to ride the spectator shuttle bus. Peter will be on his bicycle. We scoped out the last few miles of the marathon route and returned to the motel and took naps. And I read the entire May 19 issue of U.S. News & World Report. I typically take two or even three days to read an issue.

It was very windy by this evening as we went out to dinner at an Italian restaurant, Grazies, so Anna could bulk up on carbohydrates. Our waitress, a student at North Dakota State University, will be helping with the marathon tomorrow and said she'd see Anna at mile twenty-five. We have found people here in North Dakota to be particularly friendly.

We returned to the motel, and Anna and I played a game of Bananagrams, a Scrabble-like tile game. Anna won.

Late in the evening, beginning here at 9:50 Central daylight time, the Jazz and the Lakers played game six of their playoff in Salt Lake City. I watched the miserable first quarter or so, then turned off the TV in my room and went to sleep. Peter and Anna saw it through to the end. I did not learn until the next morning that game six became the last game. The Jazz lost on their home court and thus ended their season.

In search of North Dakota (day 2)

Thursday, May 15, 2008
Montana, North Dakota

Today was to be the big day, the day of discovery, to settle once and for all whether there really is a place such as North Dakota or whether—like the Loch Ness monster, the land of Oz, or the Bermuda Triangle—it is a thing of fantasy, of make believe, of wishful thinking.

After a good night's sleep, and sleeping in a little, Anna and I used the treadmills in the motel's exercise room. Peter went to the pool. We ate from the motel's full hot breakfast selections, packed our things, loaded the car, and were on the road again by about a quarter to ten.

East of Billings, as we now traveled along I-94, we started listening to a CD of interesting half-hour episodes of This American Life, an NPR radio show. While listening, as we traveled along through eastern Montana, Peter driving, Anna in the front passenger seat, I right behind her, I started feeling very nauseous, then broke out into a cold sweat, got very dizzy, and felt exceedingly sick. Here we were out in the middle of nowhere, and I was feeling awful. I did not know if it were some reaction to the two Imodium pills I had taken just as we were leaving Billings or if it were car sickness (which I have never before suffered) or whatever illness has been plaguing me the past couple days. Whatever the reason, I was very, very sick. So I slouched down into my seat and tried sleeping it off. I do not know how long I slept, but after some miles I felt a little better, and we stopped at a rest area somewhere before Glendive to take a bathroom break and to eat our lunch. I reverted to my safer diet of banana, applesauce, and water.

For at least the last hundred miles yesterday on I-90 before we reached Billings, and again today on I-94 until we crossed the river a final time at Glendive, the freeway paralleled the course of the Yellowstone River as it coursed its way east and north toward its confluence with the Missouri River in northeastern Montana. We crossed it a number of times, so sometimes it was to our left, at other times off to the right of us.

For a number of years members of our family have doubted the existence of North Dakota. As we came to the border between Montana and North Dakota, we pulled off to the side of the road to take pictures of the Welcome to North Dakota sign to serve as evidence to the skeptics back home that there really is such a place. Unless, of course, it is all a part of a vast hoax (similar to that depicted in the Truman Show), but if it is it's on a rather grand scale because we spent a good part of the day driving across some 350 miles of it.

The first exit in North Dakota was to a town called Beach, seemingly an odd name for a spot in the center of the continent so removed from any beaches. We stopped there to refuel the car.

Later in the afternoon, as we continued across the state on I-94, we saw a humongous statue of a cow on a hilltop near New Salem, learning later from a brochure at a rest stop that it was Salem Sue, the World's Largest Holstein Cow. We are not making this up.

We also passed Theodore Roosevelt National Park in the Badlands of western North Dakota and in the middle of the state crossed the Missouri River just before driving through the state capital at Bismarck. Somewhere in the eastern half of the state we saw a huge statue of a buffalo, rivaling our friendly holstein further west, although we cannot verify if it is the World's Largest Buffalo.

Across the last part of Montana and continuing across most of North Dakota we were listening on CD to an audio book entitled Divide.

We reached Fargo this evening around eight o'clock Central daylight time, having crossed from the Mountain to Central time zone somewhere in western North Dakota (although sooner than the map in our atlas showed we would). We found the Country Inn & Suites and checked into the two-room suite that will be our home for the next three nights. We fixed black beans, Spanish rice, and tamales for our supper in our motel room and watched an episode of Lost and the ten o'clock news.

With North Dakota today, I have now been in forty-five of the fifty states. With the prospect of going into Minnesota tomorrow, which is just across the river from Fargo, that will make forty-six. Not counting my imminent visit to Minnesota, I have not yet been in Alaska, Hawaii, Maine, or Wisconsin.

In search of North Dakota (day 1)

Wednesday, May 14, 2008
Utah, Idaho, Montana

Our road trip began this morning at ten minutes to ten when we pulled onto northbound I-15 at Bountiful. We had planned to leave at eight, but Pete and Anna called from Salt Lake to say they were running at least an hour behind. After they picked me up, and said our goodbyes, we had to stop at Dick's Market to buy some Imodium. I had had a nasty case of diarrhea during the night, and continuing that on a long car ride was not a happy prospect.

Peter drove the entire day. An hour and a half into the trip, we stopped in Malad to visit Rachael and the girls for a few moments and take a potty break. Robert, the small town doctor, was actually home from work because he too was having diarrhea out both ends. Doctors are not supposed to get sick.

We headed back to the freeway, driving on the road north of Malad that has the boot fence, and continued north on I-15 through the Marsh Valley (where we turn off every summer to go to Lava Hot Springs), past Pocatello, Blackfoot, Idaho Falls, into a part of Idaho I am not at all familiar with. I'd been this way only once before, years ago, when as a college student after my mission a group of us drove all the way up to Lethbridge, Alberta, over a long weekend. Oh, the crazy things college kids do.

We stopped in Spencer, Idaho, a tiny little down that bills itself as the Opal Capital of the World, to use the restrooms in the shabby little store and eat our lunch in the car. A brisk, cold wind was blowing from the north or northwest. My diarrhea had not recurred on the trip, but to play it safe I was limiting myself to applesauce, bananas, and water.

We crossed into Montana and continued north on I-15 until it intersected with I-90 just west of Butte. What we saw of western Montana, north along I-15 from the 6,800-plus-foot-high Monida Pass at the Montana-Idaho border to near Butte, and then east along I-90 from Butte to Billings, was a very scenic drive.

It was overcast much of the day and actually rained off and on. Forty-some miles west of Billings, our destination for the day, we saw a double rainbow and took that as a good omen for our trip.

We reached Billings about seven-thirty this evening and checked into our room at the Country Inn & Suites. After unloading the car, we fixed supper in our room, some kind of pasta. I was finally ready to eat real food and had the salad I passed on in Spencer when Pete and Anna ate theirs. I also had a little of the pasta.

Then we watched game 5 of the Jazz-Lakers playoff series being played in Los Angeles. The Lakers won, something like 111 to 106, so the series is now three to two as it shifts back to Salt Lake City on Friday night.

I called Mom on my cell just after we entered Montana this afternoon. And again this evening from our motel room in Billings, but she did not answer, so I left a simple voice message.

Trip to Nauvoo

One of our favorite places to visit is Nauvoo, Illinois, an incredible place of beauty and history and spiritual refreshment. The city served as headquarters of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints for a brief period in the early 1840s and over the past half century has been restored to allow modern visitors to imagine and experience and feel what it must have been like to be there when Joseph and Emma and thousands of others of our spiritual forebears walked its well-planned streets. Today a magnificent temple of the Lord overlooks the city and the wide sweep of the Mississippi River as it bends around the city, reminiscent of the first temple started by the Prophet Joseph and finished under the direction of Brother Brigham, his prophetic successor.

Through the years members of our family have made various pilgrimages to Nauvoo and Carthage and the kindred historical sites scatted across northern and western Missouri and the pioneer trail that headed westward across Iowa, Nebraska, and Wyoming to the Great Basin in the Rocky Mountains that today is Utah. The best way to experience these sites is a road trip, and what follows is my account of our most recent road trip, taken a year ago now, adapted from the account originally published in the May 21, 2007, issue of the Family Journal. For some of the travelers in our party, those who had recently married into our family, it was a first time to experience this trip.

On Friday evening, May 4, we left on our grand adventure to the Midwest. Talmage, Louise, Paul, Eliza, and Peter traveled in our minivan. Chris, Camilla, Sam, Claudia, and I traveled in a rented minivan. The rental was Robert’s Mother’s Day gift to Claudia. Camilla had graduated that morning from the University of Utah with a bachelor’s degree in teaching French. More than 7,000 graduates received de­grees. President Thomas S. Monson, an alumnus of the University, was given an honorary doctor’s degree and was the commencement speaker.

It was raining as we left Bountiful, and rained or snowed off and on all the way to Rawlins, Wyoming, where we spent the night in two adjoin­ing rooms in the Trave­Lodge.

There was snow all over the ground when we woke up Saturday morning, but the roads were clear. We continued east on I-80 through the rest of Wyoming and into Nebraska. In the mountains between Laramie and Cheyenne, we drove through a blizzard, and that was pretty scary.

Somewhere near the Wyoming–Nebraska border, we suddenly came upon a stretch of highway where hail had covered the road for a mile or so, and we saw all kinds of cars off the road, a couple upside down. And that was pretty scary too.

At Kimball, Nebraska, we stopped for lunch at a Runza drive-in, which are dotted across Nebraska and the fringes of neighboring states, famous for their Runza burgers. We kept en­countering thunder­storms off and on all across Nebraska with threats of tornado warn­ings nearby. Just before we reached Lincoln the rains dumped down so hard that our windshield wipers on their fastest speed weren’t enough to allow us to see the road. The freeway traffic slowed to about 30 miles per hour.

At Lincoln we exited I–80 and took Nebraska highway 2 heading southeast toward Nebraska City, where we crossed the Missouri River for the first time into Iowa. After a few miles, we entered Mis­souri, where we stopped for supper at a Subway in Rock Port. We arrived in Kansas City about 9:30 or 10:00, where we stayed with Jim and Arlette Fedor. Jim used to live in our ward in Bountiful and now works in Kansas City as a graphics artist or designer or some such thing for Hallmark. Arlette works for the U.S. Postal Service as a mail carrier.

The GPS unit Cade had loaned us, which Mom nicknamed Helen, was very helpful in getting us to unknown destinations, although a few times it tried to lead us astray.

We attended church with the Fedors Sunday morning. It was the first time we had ever heard announced in a sacrament meeting what to do if tornado sirens went off during church. We were supposed to gather in the north hallway. We thought that was going to be one crowded hall­way with a whole ward huddled in it.

In the late afternoon we visited the visitors’ center at the temple site in Independence. The heavy rains continued. Then we drove to Liberty and visited the visitors’ center at the Liberty Jail. That is always a moving experience and increases our appreciation for what the Prophet Joseph Smith had to suffer there.

We had a delightful stay at the Fedors and greatly appreciated their hospitality.

On Monday morning we returned to Independence to visit the Community of Christ temple. The building is interesting, but it surely has a different spirit than our Church sites. We then headed north to Far West and visited the temple site there. We tried to continue north on the same road, but a few miles north Shoal Creek had overflowed its banks and completely covered the road as a result of the rains all weekend. So we had to backtrack south and further east to travel on to Adam-ondi-Ahman.

At Adam-ondi-Ahman we encoun­tered a turtle that tried to terrorize Eliza.

Adam-ondi-Ahman is a beautiful, peaceful place. After visiting the sites where scenes from the beginning of the earth occurred and other events from the ending of the earth will yet occur, we drove to James­port, where we ate at an Amish restaurant that was quite good. We bought two pies, an apple and a gooseberry to eat when we were in Nauvoo. (It was the first time any of us had ever had gooseberry, and we decided we didn’t like it all that much.)

After we crossed over the Mississippi River into Illinois, we drove the fourteen miles up the scenic river road to Nauvoo as the sun was setting off to the west. The Nauvoo Illinois Temple was very impres­sive as we drove into town. We had a room in the Nauvoo Inn and Suites that accommodated all ten of us. That evening we watched the first game of the Utah Jazz and Golden State Warriors on the TV in our motel room. The Jazz won.

On Tuesday morning we began our visit to Nauvoo with a horse-drawn wagon tour of the historic sites. That gave us a good overview of what to see. (This was the first time that Louise, Chris, or Paul had ever been to Nauvoo or to any of the other Church history sites we were see­ing on the trip.)

The sites we saw on Tuesday included the garden with the women’s statues, the Scovill Bakery, the Family Living Center, the Cultural Hall, the blacksmith shop, and the brick-making place. In the evening all of us (except Chris, Camilla, and Sam) went to see “Rendezvous in Nauvoo,” put on in the Cultural Hall by the missionary couples in Nauvoo. After the show, we walked down the Trail of Hope as the sun was setting over the Mississippi. Back in our motel we watched the movie Second-Hand Lion that Talmage and Louise had brought on a DVD.

Wednesday morning Mom and I went through a session in the Nauvoo Temple. David Wright, who used to work with me at Church headquarters, is the recorder of the temple, and he took us up into the bell tower after the session. Mom only went half way up. I went all the way up, where I could see a gorgeous, panoramic view in all directions, including west across the Mississippi into Iowa, and east across the prairie fields of western Illinois. At noon Talmage, Louise, Chris, Camilla, Paul, Eliza, and I did a session, and Mom stayed in the motel with Sam and Peter. We did not see David this time, and the others did not get the tour of the rest of the temple. Afterward we got lunch at Zions Mercan­tile.

That afternoon we visited the Brown­ing home and gun shop, the post office, John Taylor’s home and print shop, and the drug store. We ate dinner at the Thyme and Seasons restaurant in our motel. We took pictures of the temple and watched game 2 of the Jazz–Warriors series. The Jazz won again.

Thursday morning we checked out of our room and visited the Smith family cemetery, the Prophet Joseph’s Red Brick Store, the Seventies Hall, the school, took a carriage ride to Inspiration Point, and ended up at the Land and Records Office, where Paul found information about ancestors who had lived in Nauvoo.

Thursday afternoon we drove to Carthage and visited the jail there where the Prophet Joseph and his brother Hyrum were martyred. We ate a late lunch at the nearby Dairy Queen and then drove across the state of Iowa to Council Bluffs, where we stayed in a Quality Inn and Suites. What took the pioneers months to cross Iowa in the late winter and early spring of 1846, after they were forced to leave Nauvoo, took us only hours by car.

Friday morning Talmage, Louise, Chris, Camilla, Paul, and Eliza went through a session in the Winter Quarters Nebraska Temple. Mom and I tended Sam and Peter and arrived at the temple about the time they finished their session. We went through the Winter Quarters Visitors’ Center and then crossed the Missouri River back over to the Iowa side to visit the Kanes­ville Tabernacle in Council Bluffs, where Brigham Young was first sustained as President of the Church.

We ate at another Runza and then spent the next six or seven hours driving across Nebraska to Scottsbluff. We stayed in a Comfort Inn and got a late supper from a Sonic drive-in, one of the few places we could find still open. About twenty miles before arriving in Scottsbluff, we saw Chimney Rock, an important landmark along the pioneer trail. It was lit up with floodlights so we could see it in the dark.

Saturday morning we visited Scott’s Bluff National Monument. The Oregon Trail, the California Trail, the Mormon Trail, and the Pony Express all passed through this area. We then drove to Casper, Wyoming, where we stopped for lunch at a JB’s restaurant. We drove another hour and came to Independence Rock, another important landmark along the pioneer trail. Everyone (except Mom and Sam) climbed to the top. We then went a few miles further and stopped at the Mormon Handcart Visitors’ Center, where we saw Devil’s Gate and Martin’s Cove. Everyone (except Mom and Sam) took handcarts and went up to the cove. A rattlesnake terrorized Eliza.

Saturday night we arrived again at Rawlins (where we had stayed the first night of the trip) and stayed in a dump of a motel, an old, dirty, bug-infested Econo­Lodge in the wrong part of town. Actual­ly, we decided everywhere in Rawlins was the wrong part of town. We ordered in pizza from the local Pizza Hut for a late supper.

We arose early Sunday morning (which was Mother’s Day) and got out of town as quickly as we could (even before the motel opened its free breakfast). Four hours later we arrived in Bountiful.

This little account outlines basically what we did and saw. It does not capture the feelings we had or the associ­ations we enjoyed or the things we learned. Perhaps some of the travelers’ blogs will add that dimension. From my perspective, it was one of the nicest vacations we’ve ever taken.

The trip was over, but the memories will linger for a long, long time.

Trip to Hurricane

Early Saturday morning, but not as early as we had originally planned, Claudia and I pulled out of our driveway and headed south on I-15 for four hours. That took us all the way to southern Utah, where we took the Hurricane exit and headed a few miles east to Kay and Karen's new house in a new subdivision of Hurricane. It had been a pleasant drive. I like early morning drives when it is still dark and you get to see the eastern sky come alive with light and the car is quiet and Claudia is asleep in the passenger seat. Actually, the car wasn't quiet the first couple of hours because I was listening to a radio talk show that finally faded into static somewhere in the middle of Utah. Then it was quiet.

We reached Kay and Karen's house at 10 o'clock. Kay on his cell phone guided us on our cell phone to where he was standing in his driveway as we turned onto his street. Karen was not home. She was off watching a grandson participate in a skate boarding competition. She returned shortly, and they gave us a tour of their new home. They had moved just the previous Saturday. And, though they were mostly in, the garage was still full of boxes and they could not remember where they had put some things.

They have a lovely home with spectacular views out their large back windows.

Before Karen arrived, I helped Kay pull out his new computer desk in his new office to plug all the different parts together and to their power source. We got everything working except he couldn't get his printer to actually print.

For lunch we drove to Springdale, which is at the entrance into Zion National Park, and ate in a restaurant called Wildcat Willie's (which used to be called Bumbleberries the last time they had been there and was famous for its bumbleberry pie). We enjoyed the generous portions of good food and the gracious hospitality. And they still sell the bumbleberry pie, so we bought a whole pie to eat later. We then wandered through some of the little shops along the main street that runs through Springdale. And a little petting zoo where we saw reindeer and buffalo and such animals.

We drove back to Hurricane and stopped at the movie theater to see the recently released movie Emma Smith: My Story. I had bought lunch for the four of us. Kay bought the movie tickets. The story is Emma's version of the key events of the Restoration as seen through her eyes as the wife and confidant of the Prophet Joseph. We thoroughly enjoyed the movie and highly recommend it to any of you readers out there.

We spent the evening visiting, watching a PBS special on elephants and Lawrence Welk and a baseball game, eating a delicious stew that Karen had made, and our bumbleberry pie. We were pretty beat. Not only had we gotten up at 5:00 in the morning, but we went to bed late the night before because Dale and LeAnn were down from Nampa for the weekend and spent Friday night at our house, and as is our custom we were up late visiting.

This morning we slept in, enjoyed a leisure morning visiting, and went to their new ward for fast and testimony meeting. They live in a very large, growing ward, and it was very crowded. The ward will probably be divided by late summer or early fall, but Kay and Karen by then will be on their mission in Peru.

After the sacrament meeting, we bid them farewell and headed north for home. We arrived in Bountiful a little after 4:30. It had been a profitable trip. We had a delightful visit with Kay and Karen before they take off for two years and got to be the first house guests in their new home.

A letter from Sister Johnson

One of the great adventures of my life was the mission I served for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Brazil beginning 40 years ago this coming September. My life has been deeply blessed in so many ways by that defining experience. Among the treasures of that experience has been a lifelong association with my mission president and his wife, Hal and Virginia Johnson. They were and are great examples of faithful devotion to the Savior and Christlike service to God's children.

President Johnson passed away a few years ago, but we have continued to enjoy our ongoing association with Sister Johnson. A few weeks ago I wrote a letter to Sister Johnson, who continues to live in Idaho Falls, explaining why we were unable to attend our annual mission reunion the Friday before the April general conference and giving her an update on our family. Friday's mail brought a nice letter, dated April 23, from Sister Johnson in response to my letter. She wrote:

Dear Dean & Claudia,

I just had to answer your sweet letter. Yes, Cecilia [Fischer] did tell me why you weren't at the reunion, whch I think is amazing that she would remember, with everything else she had to think about!

I'm so glad you are feeling well again. Now the challenge is, to stay that way, isn't it.

You mentioned the Woodmansees [the grandparents of Jolene Sayer's new husband, Jeff Head]. It truly is a small world! We have known them for many years. I'm glad you had the opportunity to meet them.

It is hard to believe that all your children could be married now. I still think of them as those darling little ones you used to bring for a visit when you were staying at Lava each summer.

It is inevitable that some of your children will move away—as much as you hate to see them go. That seems to be the times we live in now. They have to go where the opportunities to earn a living—or to prepare for that eventuality, are. (Did that make sense?)

We always appreciated the kind of missionary you were, Dean, and Claudia has been as dear to us as you always were. Thanks for remaining as our missionary son and daughter-in-law!

Much love,
Sister Johnson

"All Aboard"

Utah's new commuter rail system, FrontRunner, currently running from Salt Lake City north to Ogden, officially began today.


This evening Claudia and I, Rachael and her three girls, and Camilla and Sam went to ride the new FrontRunner train. UTA is offering free rides today and next Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday to welcome the public to the new commuter rail system. We went to the Woods Cross station, hoping to ride the train somewhere north of here, but we ended up taking the one headed south into Salt Lake and rode it to the end of the line and back to the Woods Cross station.

It seemed far better organized than the inaugural rides of Trax when it began operation in the Salt Lake Valley some years ago. For each train that arrived at the Woods Cross station, they would let only 50 riders on at a time. Even with that, the train cars were still very crowded, and I for example had to stand all the way into the Salt Lake station (which is located somewhere around 600 West and 400 South). I had a seat on the return ride, although Claudia Sue and Esther had a bit of a tug-of-war over who would sit in the seat next to me, oblivious to the fact that they both could have comfortably fit there.

Moving Chris and Camilla to Washington

Chris and Camilla chose Easter weekend to move most of their household belongings to Washington. Camilla had a five-day break from teaching French classes at Joel P. Jensen Middle School in West Jordan, and the weekend presented a good opportunity for the move, since they become owners of the Great Harvest bakery franchise in Everett on April 1. Camilla and Sam do not join Chris until after the school year ends in early June.

And even though they had accumulated a lot of stuff in the nearly three -and-a-half years they have been married (living first here in Bountiful, then in Farmington, then back in Bountiful, and the past couple months in our renovated basement), Chris and Camilla sold or donated to Deseret Industries a number of pieces of furniture and other items. Their resultant baggage fit, therefore, in the 17-foot U-Haul truck Chris had rented for the long weekend.

We (Chris, Camilla, Sam, and I) took two days driving through northern Utah, across southern Idaho, across eastern Oregon, and through central to western Washington to move them to Everett. We went as far as Nampa on Thursday, March 20, leaving Bountiful around 1:00 in the afternoon after Chris worked all morning at the Great Harvest here in Bountiful. We were traveling in three vehicles: Chris drove the U-Haul truck, Camilla drove their white Jimmy, and I drove their Toyota.

Thursday evening we arrived at Dale and LeAnn's house in Nampa between 6:30 and 7:00. That was late enough for us to miss the worst traffic backup from Boise to Nampa. We went to dinner at a Mexican restaurant in downtown Nampa with Lyle; Gene and his daughter Gena and her year-old baby Shawn; Dale, LeAnn, and Keisha; Jackie, Jolene, and her fiancee Jeff.

Friday morning, March 21, LeAnn kindly fixed us a hot breakfast, and then we were off early to drive the rest of the way to Washington. The freeway over the Blue Mountains in eastern Oregon was snow covered and icy in spots. That slowed us down a little. In Hermiston, just before we crossed the Columbia River from Oregon into Washington, Chris had a flat tire on the U-Haul truck, and we stopped to get that fixed and ate lunch at a nearby Subway sandwich shop. Then we were on our way again. We reached the Seattle area in the late afternoon and were slowed somewhat by the evening commuter traffic, but we reached their apartment complex in Everett around 6:00, about ten hours after we left Nampa.

Chris and Camilla met the apartment manager and signed various papers. The lady that lives across the hall from them is from France, so the manager called her, and she came down and visited with them in French. Chris and Camilla both spoke French on their missions.

The man who has owned the Great Harvest bakery Chris and Camilla are buying brought us dinner from the bakery. (He didn't know I was with them, so he came back a little later with a fourth sandwich, drink, chips, and cookie for me.)

We also went to a couple of stores that evening to buy some initial stuff for the apartment, such as a shower curtain, soap, some bath towels, etc. We also dropped by the bakery, which is only a block or so from the apartment where they will live.

We spent Friday evening and most of Saturday morning unpacking the U-Haul and hauling stuff up to their third floor apartment. Chris called two professional movers to come Saturday morning, March 22, to help move the bigger stuff. The worst piece was a very tall bookcase that had to be taken up flour flights of stairs (because it would not fit in the elevator) and required some partial dismantling at that. The movers were still working on that when Chris and I returned the truck to the U-Haul dealer in Everett.

Between 12:30 and 1:00 Chris and Camilla went with the man they are buying the bakery from to a bank to sign papers and then to lunch. I stayed at the apartment with little Sam. After they returned we spent much of the afternoon unpacking and assembling furniture. Chris and Camilla also went by the bakery later in the afternoon to meet a couple of the employees who were there at the time. The interior of the bakery is shown in the photograph above.

Saturday evening we went out to eat at a nearby Olive Garden restaurant.

And then Sunday morning, Easter Sunday, during a steady rain, we drove the Jimmy south to the SeaTac airport and parked it for when Chris returns to Washington this coming Friday night. And then, all four of us in the Toyota, started the twelve-hour drive toward home. On the return trip I drove all of the way across Washington and into Oregon, Camilla drove in part of Oregon and Idaho, Chris in part of Idaho, and I the rest of the way home to Utah. The rain turned to snow as we were crossing through the Cascade Mountains, but the roads were just wet, not at all bad. It pretty much quit raining as we got east of the mountains. We stopped just off the freeway near Eden, Idaho, to buy Blimpie sandwiches for a late lunch, having snacked on crackers and other such munchies during the rest of the day-long trip.

Rachael and her three girls were here visiting over the weekend. They were staying in Layton at Michael and Shaua's house but were still here from having eaten Easter dinner when we arrived back at our house in Bountiful about 8:30 Sunday evening. Michael and Shauna's family were just getting ready to leave. Rebecca and Mimi; Talmage and Louise; and Paul, Eliza, and Peter were also here, and we were able to visit with them and eat dessert (angel food cake topped with strawberries and whipped cream).

Picture of new First Presidency

A picture of the new First Presidency has been released showing Presidents Thomas S. Monson (seated), Henry B. Eyring (standing left), and Dieter F. Uchtdorf (standing right).

First road trip

Below is an account of a family trip fifty years ago to northern California to visit Lyle and Barbara in Sacramento. It is the first road trip I remember taking. We left late Thursday, December 26, 1957, and returned home late Thursday, January 2, 1958. Although I distinctly remember the trip, I am indebted to my mother’s diary for some of the specific details.

I have always loved to travel. Especially if it involves a road trip. Few things are more thrilling than the prospect of the open road stretching out there before me.

My earliest memory of a vacation, other than visits to relatives somewhere in northern Utah or eastern Idaho, was a car trip to California during the holidays when I was eight years old. I guess this was technically a trip to visit relatives because we drove to Sacramento to visit my oldest brother Lyle, who was in the Air Force, and his wife Barbara and their two sons. Stanley was three years old. And Terry was about twenty months old. I did not remember that Barbara was so very pregnant, but a little more than three weeks after our visit she gave birth to their third son, David.

But the trip counts in my book as a bona fide vacation because it was to a part of the country we had never been to before.

We left in the middle of the night the day after Christmas. My parents and the five youngest children (thirteen-year-old Gene, twelve-year-old Ray, eight-year-old me, five-year-old Dale, and fourteen-month-old Jackie) made the trip. Jerry and Kay stayed home to tend the farm, milk the cows, and who knows what else.

We drove though the night down through eastern Oregon into Nevada. Ray, Dale, Jackie, and I were bedded down in the back seat. Mom wrote in her diary that she drove from Lovelock to Reno and noted that the roads were good all the way except a few icy spots at McDermitt, a tiny little town on the Nevada–Oregon border.

In Reno, where we probably did breakfast, I remember a sign arching across the street proclaim­ing Reno as “The Biggest Little City in the World.” We continued from there up and through the Sierra Nevada Mountains, over Donner Pass, and down the other side toward Sacramento. There was a lot of snow, a lot more than I was ever used to seeing.

As we approached Sacramento we were on a freeway, the first time I had ever actually seen one, and I thought it was pretty awesome. I found the freeway exits a novel bit of ingenuity and can even remember to this day, fifty years later, that we took the Watt Avenue exit off the freeway to find Lyle and Barbara’s place somewhere near McClellan Air Force Base.

We arrived at Lyle and Barbara’s place midmorning on Friday, December 27, and pretty much just chilled out for the rest of that day. Lyle was out on a flight when we arrived and came home a few hours later. If my memory serves correctly, it seems it was always grey while we were there, either grey and foggy or grey and overcast, but a lot of grey.

Over the next few days we visited various sites around the Sacramento area. One day we went to the zoo and saw all kinds of animals and birds. I probably had never been to a zoo before. Another day we visited the state capitol. Another day we went out into the surrounding countryside and saw orange, lemon, and grapefruit trees just loaded with fruit. And I think we actually saw the sun that day. We went to a dam and saw a prison and stopped by the air force base and watched jets take off. These were all marvels to an eight-year-old boy.

On the last day of 1957 we drove to San Francisco. My mom’s diary account detailed the events of the day (with her spellings and punctuation a bit standardized):

“We headed for San Francisco on highway 40 through Vallejo, San Pablo, El Cerrito, Albany, Berkley, and down by Alameda and the outskirts of Oakland then back across the Bay Bridge (toll for 25¢), 8 miles long, to San Francisco, and drove up Nob Hill and went to the naval maritime museum then parked on the bay and saw some big ships come in and leave and saw Alcatraz, then we drove along the docks and Fisherman’s Wharf, through Chinatown, past the Keizer Stadi­um, saw the mint, rode through residential area and business district, then we to Golden Gate Park and went through the Steinhart Aquari­um, then we went down and parked on the Ocean and watched the tide and the kids got some seashells and put their hand in the Ocean, then about dark we went across the Golden Gate Bridge, 25¢ toll, and went up high­way 101 to San Rafael and had a ham­burger and milkshake and fries and do­nuts at a drive inn, then we got lost and went to San Anselmo and Fair­fax then came back to San Rafael and down around San Quentin and across the new Richmond Bridge (75¢ toll) and back up highway 40 home.” That one long sentence was indicative of what the long, busy day was like.

That New Year’s Eve was my first sight of the Pacific Ocean. I had never seen an ocean before, and I remember playing along the cold, damp, grey beach, and sticking my hand into the cold water and chasing the waves and looking for sand dollars and seashells. It was a glorious outing.

We ushered in 1958 by spending New Year’s Day resting up from the previous day’s adventures and watching the Rose Parade and bowl games and eating and visiting and playing games.


The next morning we piled back into our car, our 1957 red and white Dodge, and headed for home. Mom mentioned in her diary that we stopped and bought a bag of oranges and 12 pounds of bananas for just a dollar. We left Lyle and Barbara’s place just a little before 10:00 in the morning (Pacific time zone) and got back to our house in eastern Oregon about 10:30 that night (Mountain time zone).

There was a lot more snow going home. As we started up toward Donner Pass, we had to stop to put chains on the car, although in the end we didn’t really need them. As my predominant memory of Sacramento and San Francisco was grey, my memory of the ride home was white from all the snow on the ground and in the air.

It had been a fun, vision-expanding trip for an eight-year-old farm boy. I had seen and experienced all kinds of things previously beyond what I knew about my limited corner of the world. And it undoubtedly fueled my later desires to explore the big broad world out there at the end of some road.

Another new blog?

OK, so I really have five blogs going now:

1. Interstate 50 (http://i50.blogspot.com/) — More of the same, except perhaps a little more often

2. Dorothy's Diary 1958 (http://dorothy-1958.blogspot.com/) — As of today, I have posted all 31 daily entries from my mother's 1958 diary for January; more to be coming until I get caught up to date

3. The Dawning of a Brighter Day (http://dawning-brighter-day.blogspot.com/) — A collection of spiritual thoughts, etc.

4. Roots and Branches (http://rootbranch.blogspot.com/) — Nothing posted here yet, but it is intended to become a collection of family histories

5. Dean's 2008 journal — My private journal for this year

Is this insane? Or what?

The dawning of a brighter day

I started a new blog today, entitled "The Dawning of a Brighter Day." It contains experiences and personal reflections on life, faith, the latter-day restoration of the gospel of Jesus Christ, and my membership in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

The Hostlers Model Railroad Festival

Claudia and I had a memorable outing this afternoon with Talmage, Louise, and Ben. We had driven to Layton to visit them and for Ben's birthday (which was on February 10) take him to Wal-Mart to let him pick out his birthday present. On our way to Layton we heard an ad on the radio about a model railroad festival being held at Ogden's Union Station and as a part of the festival an opportunity to see one of the new Frontrunner train cars. So we decided to go to Ogden.

Claudia took Ben shopping at Wal-Mart while I went to nearby Sam's Club to get a few items. During the time we were in the stores a cold front moved through the area, and we were surprised at how much colder it was when we came out than when we went in. We went back and picked up Talmage and Louise, and went to Wendy's in Clearfield for lunch. It started raining while we were eating. We debated whether to still go to the train show, but decided to go for it.

It rained on us all the way to Ogden. While we were in Union Station enjoying the various model railroad displays, including an impressive one made of Legos, the rain turned to snow. We decided to walk the couple blocks through the snow to where we could get in the new Frontrunner car. Impressive. It is supposed to start operating in late April.

We then rode on a little shuttle train back to Union Station and then walked through the snow to where our car was parked and drove through heavy snow (although not yet sticking to the road) back to Layton, dropped Talmage, Louise, and Ben off at their house, and drove home to Bountiful.

Originally this afternoon was going to be the February-March family birthday party, celebrating Claudia's, Anna's, and Ben's February birthdays and Robert's March birthday. The party was going to have been at Michael and Shauna's house, but earlier in the week Shauna had called to say Meghan was really sick and had a persistent high fever from the flu-like virus going around. So Becca offered her house. Robert and Rachael were planning to be down from Malad for the weekend, but Rachael called Friday morning to say Claudia Sue was similarly sick. And then just this morning Becca called to say that Hyrum and perhaps even herself were similarly sick, so we decided to cancel the party for now.

States I have visited

create your own personalized map of the USA

I have visited all but 6 states: Alaska, Hawaii, Maine, Minnesota, North Dakota (if it really exists), and Wisconsin. In mid-May I anticipate visiting two of those states (North Dakota and neighboring Minnesota) when Anna runs a marathon in Fargo. Perhaps I will do a 5K walk if they have one as a part of the marathon experience.

The wintry day descending to its close

Another year dwindles to its closing hours. From my perspective, it has been a good one, and the Lord has smiled with favor upon us as individuals and as a family. I express my love and gratitude to Him, the Giver and Sustainer of all that is good, and to each of you, members of my family, who are among the delights of my life.

As the year descends to its close, I am reminded of a nostalgic poem written by Orson F. Whitney, which was later set to music and placed in our hymnal, about the settling of the Mountain West by the Mormon pioneers. I first remember this hymn from the years when I was a teenager in Idaho.

The wintry day, descending to its close,
Invites all wearied nature to repose,
And shades of night are falling dense and fast,
Like sable curtains falling o'er the past.
Pale through the gloom the newly fallen snow
Wraps in a shroud the silent earth below
As though 'twere mercy's hand had spread the pall,
A symbol of forgiveness unto all.

I cannot go to rest but linger still
In meditation at my window sill,
While, like the twinkling stars in heaven's dome,
Come one by one sweet memories of home.
And wouldst thou ask me where my fancy roves
To reproduce the happy scenes it loves,
Where hope and memory together dwell
And paint the pictured beauties that I tell?

Away beyond the prairies of the West,
Where exiled Saints in solitude were blest,
Where industry the seal of wealth has set
Amid the peaceful vales of Deseret,
Unheeding still the fiercest blasts that blow,
With tops encrusted by eternal snow,
The towering peaks that shield the tender sod
Stand, types of freedom reared by nature's God.

The wilderness, that naught before would yield,
Is now become a fertile, fruitful field.
Where roamed at will the fearless Indian band,
The templed cities of the Saints now stand.
And sweet religion in its purity
Invites all men to its security.
There is my home, the spot I love so well,
Whose worth and beauty pen nor tongue can tell.

Orson F. Whitney was born in Salt Lake City, Utah Territory, on July 1, 1855, just eight years after Brigham Young led the first band of pioneers into the valley. He was a grandson of Newel K. Whitney and Heber C. Kimball. Orson was a businessman, journalist, historian, professor, politician, and poet. He was called as an Apostle and sustained on April 9, 1906, the same day as David O. McKay, and served in the Quorum of the Twelve until he died at age 75 on May 16, 1931, some three and a half years before my parents were married.

When he was 21 years old, young Orson was called to serve a mission in Pennsylvania. During that mission, he had a remarkable dream that would surely contribute many years later to his calling as a special witness of the Savior:

"I thought I was in the garden of Gethsemane, a witness of the Savior's agony. I seemed to be standing behind a tree in the foreground of the picture, from which point I could see without being seen. The Savior, with the Apostles Peter, James and John, entered the garden through a little wicket gate at my right, where he stationed them in a group, telling them to pray. He then passed over to my left, but still in front of me, where he knelt and prayed also. His face, which was towards me, streamed with tears, as he besought the Father to let the cup pass, and added, 'not my will but thine be done.' Having finished his prayer, he arose and crossed to where the Apostles were kneeling fast asleep. He shook them gently, they awoke and he reproved them for their apathy. Again he bade them pray, and again crossed to his place and prayed, returning as before to find them sleeping. This happened three times, until I was perfectly familiar with his face, form and movements. He was much taller than ordinary men, and though meek, far more dignified than any being I had ever beheld; and he wore a look of ineffable tenderness and compassion, even while reproving His disciples. My heart went out to him as never before to anybody or to anything; I loved him with all my soul. I wept at seeing him weep, and felt for him the deepest sympathy.

"Then of a sudden the circumstances changed, though the scene remained the same. Instead of before the crucifixion, it was after. The Savior and the three Apostles, whom he had beckoned to him, now stood in a group at the left, and were about to take their departure, ascending into heaven. I could endure it no longer, but rushed out from behind the tree, fell at his feet, clasped him around the knees and begged him to take me also. With a look of infinite tenderness, as of a father or an elder brother, he stooped, lifted me up and embraced me, saying as he did so in the kindest and gentlest manner possible, while slowly shaking his head and sweetly smiling, 'No, my son, these can go with me; for they have finished their work; but you must stay and finish yours!' Still I clung to him, and the contact was so real that I felt the warmth of his bosom as I rested upon it. Gazing up into his face, I once more besought him, 'Well, promise me that I will come to you at the last.' Again he smiled sweetly, and there was a look as if he would have gladly granted my request had it been wise to do so. He then said, 'That will depend entirely upon yourself.'

"I awoke with a sob, and it was morning. This dream made a wonderful impression upon me, paving the way to my thorough conversion, which soon followed. Among the things it taught me was not to sleep at my post, and to regard first the duties of my mission, and not allow anything to interfere with them" (adapted from entry on Orson F. Whitney in LDS Biographical Encyclopedia; see also "Through Memories' Halls," 1930, 82; quoted in Bryant Hinckley, The Faith of Our Pioneer Fathers, 211-13).

Not yet, at least

In my last posting, referring to the yucky cold I've had for a week now, I concluded with the observation that it will end sometime soon. Not yet, at least. On Christmas Eve, after we returned from a lovely evening, with most of our family at Michael and Shauna's house, I noticed that my left eye was infected. So, on Christmas morning we went to Instacare, and the doctor there was surprised that after a full week I was still as sick as I was and had a fever, so she prescribed an antiobiotic, a decongestant, and some eye drops, and told me to stay home and take it easy for at least another couple days or until I started feeling up to it.

Claudia and I celebrated our 35th wedding anniversary in November of this year. And yesterday, as it turns out, was the first time in the 36 Christmases we've shared that it was just the two of us alone on Christmas morning. (Paul and Eliza, who live with us now, had slept overnight at Paul's dad's house.) And, so we decided to spend it at Instacare and the only pharmacy we knew of that was open on Christmas morning and at Albertson's, which was probably the only grocery store open in town.

Our first Christmas, just a month after we were married, was spent in California with Claudia's parents. All subsequent Christmases had one or more or all of our eight children living with us. Last year's Christmas, coming just weeks after Talmage and Louise were married, thus officially making us empty nesters, would have been our first alone together, except we camped out at Michael and Shauna's house while Michael and Shauna spent much of the night from Christmas Eve into Christmas morning at the delivery room trying to have the twins that did not actually come for another two and a half weeks.

It was a pleasant enough day if you ignore that I felt miserable and still couldn't talk much. It had snowed a lot the night before, and the sun came out, and it was a gorgeous, though cold, white Christmas.

The family gathered in the late afternoon for more eating, and final gifts, and playing games, and visiting. Representations were made of how each couple or family used what they received of the Grandpa Lange Christmas money. (We had everyone here except Rachael and Robert in Malad; he was on call for the holiday, and actually had to deliver a baby early Christmas morning; and Rebecca and Cade, who were returning home from St. George.)

I survived yesterday

Yesterday morning two of my sons-in-law, Chris and Paul, gave me a health blessing, and that blessing coupled with a lot of faith and answered prayers made it possible for me to teach the adults of our ward a special lesson on the Prophet Joseph Smith. There were several families who had visitors in town (for example, we had Rachael and her girls visiting for the weekend and Mary visited our ward to see some of her old friends who were visiting their families), so the room was packed. With the help of a microphone, I was able to make myself heard, and the Spirit was there, which is always energizing, so the experience was a good one.

After church, we had all our family (including Grandpa Lange but not Cade, Becca, and their family, who were in St. George) together for our annual Joseph Smith birthday party. We ate our traditional menu of stew (lovingly prepared by Grandma Claudia), cornbread (lovingly prepared by Louise), apple crisp (lovingly prepared by Pete), apple pie (lovingly prepared by Shauna), apple juice (prepared by the apple trees and whoever put the apples in the bottles in the form of juice), and apricot nectar (lovingly prepared by Grandma Claudia). We ate, visited, watched the video The Restoration, and otherwise had a good, noisy time.

Robert called from Malad and had Rachael turn on the speaker phone, and he shared some tender thoughts and feelings he had had today about the Prophet Joseph (he could have taught my lesson this afternoon had he been here).

In the morning, before our church, we had driven out to Murray to attend sacrament meeting in Vince and Mary's ward. They sang in the choir and also did a beautiful job singing a duet.

After all that, I felt wiped out by the end of the day. Pretty yucky. Someday this too shall pass. 

I'm back, but will the voice be?

Surprise to one and all. I am actually blogging again after a nearly nine-month hiatus.

Chalk it up, if you will, to my being sick with a very nasty cold and being tired of just resting all the time so that I am in some sort of condition to teach Sunday School tomorrow morning (more of that starting in the next paragraph). Or, alternatively, chalk it up to the new MacBook Pro computer that we just got this week as Mom's and my Christmas gift to each other. It's fun still to play around with the new computer.

Mom was called and sustained a month ago to serve as one of four Gospel Doctrine teachers in our ward. Two teachers alternate lessons in the west Relief Society room, and two teachers alternate in the east Relief Society room. We are assigned to the west crowd.

Since the final lesson in the published manual was taught last Sunday, that left the final two weeks of the year with no scheduled lessons. Mom's teaching partner was going to be out of town the final two weeks of the year, so she had the brilliant idea of asking me to teach a special lesson on the Prophet Joseph Smith tomorrow since Sunday, December 23, is the 202nd anniversary of his birth. I happily agreed, but in the meantime got this nasty cold and had laryngitis on Thursday and Friday. Today I have some voice back, and by tomorrow we are hoping to have a lot of voice back. We do believe in miracles, after all.

100 things about me

So now it's my turn

1. I was born in Ontario, Oregon
2. I lived in a farmhouse that had no indoor plumbing; we had to use an outhouse
3. I have lived in three states: Oregon, Idaho, and Utah
4. Our farmhouse was right on the border of Oregon and Idaho (supposedly most of the house was in Oregon but the front porch in Idaho)
5. Our dog in Oregon was named Red; he disappeared when we moved from Oregon to Idaho when I was nine years old
6. I nearly drowned the summer I turned six, but my brother, thinking he was grabbing at a fish, caught me by the foot and pulled me out of the river we were swimming in
7. I was the seventh son of my parents
8. I have seven brothers and one sister
9. My very earliest distinct memory is of a Sunday afternoon boating trip on Jennys Lake in Grand Teton National Park that scared me stiff because of all the water in the lake, spraying from the engine of the motorboat, falling as rain and hail from the sky [my mom’s diary places it on Sunday, July 1, 1951, eighteen days before my second birthday]
10. I was in the fourth, fifth, and sixth grades in the same room with the same teacher in a three-room country schoolhouse
11. I was a Boy Scout
12. I only reached the Life rank in Scouting
13. I was only two merit badges short of getting my Eagle: swimming and life saving
14. That was a result of my near drowning (see numbers 6 and 9 above)
15. I attended a national Scout jamboree in Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, the summer I turned fifteen
16. I visited the Sacred Grove for the first time when I was fourteen, the same age Joseph was when he went there
17. I was the editor of my junior high newspaper when I was in the ninth grade and of my high school newspaper when I was a senior
18. When I was young I imagined it would be great to be the editor of a small-town weekly newspaper when I grew up
19. I have always enjoyed writing
20. We have lived in the Bountiful 20th Ward for nearly thirty years
21. For five and a half years I served as bishop of the 20th Ward
22. I met my wife on a blind date
23. I was twenty-three years old when I got married to the most fabulous person in the world
24. I studied German for three years in high school and one year in college
25. I learned Portuguese on my mission to Brazil
26. I graduated from BYU with a major in English and a minor in Portuguese
27. I went to law school after earning my bachelor’s degree but quickly concluded the adversarial nature of the legal profession and my gentle nature did not go particularly well together
28. I have baptized people in both the Atlantic and Pacific oceans
29. I am fascinated by maps and love to look at them
30. Especially road maps
31. I love to read, particularly things relating to history
32. I read on average about twelve to fourteen books a year, a little more than one book a month
33. I have published three books
34. This fall I will have been publishing a family newsletter for thirty-four years
35. This November we will celebrate our thirty-fifth wedding anniversary
36. My favorite times of year are April and October conference
37. I also like summertime
38. And spring and fall
39. And Christmastime
40. This summer is my fortieth high school reunion
41. I am not planning on going to it
42. I love to travel, especially if it’s a road trip
43. I have been in ten foreign countries: Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Ecuador, England, Mexico, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, and Portugal
44. I have been in 44 of the 50 states
45. Only six more to go: Alaska, Hawaii, Maine, Minnesota, Wisconsin, and North Dakota
46. If there even is a North Dakota
47. I love ice cream, especially burnt almond fudge
48. I also like popcorn
49. And cookies, especially if they have things like raisins, nuts, or coconut in them
50. This number represents one-fourth of my current weight, which is a more than it ought to be
51. That’s because of things like numbers 47, 48, and 49 above
52. When I was growing up, I would request porcupine babies [meatballs stuffed in green peppers] for my birthday dinner every year
53. Except that I did not like green peppers when I was growing up; I just ate the meatballs
54. Now I like green peppers, either raw or cooked
55. I would never eat shrimp or avocados when I was growing up, but now I like both
56. My wife is a good cook and makes all kinds of things I like to eat
57. Right now I am 57 years old
58. In July I will be 58 years old
59. You can see how desperate we are getting here
60. I’m currently into four television shows that I watch with any sort of regularity: Monk, Psych, Numbers, and Medium
61. I have lots of favorite hymns
62. I could use the rest of the numbers available listing some of them
63. But there’s one I definitely want sung at my funeral: “Oh, What Songs of the Heart” by Joseph L. Townsend
64. I can vividly remember the day when President John F. Kennedy was shot
65. The same day, but hardly noticed at the time, C.S. Lewis also died in England
66. C.S. Lewis is one of my favorite authors
67. Our first car was a white 1967 Volkswagen
68. We named it Marshmallow
69. When I was a very little boy (say, in about first grade or younger), I thought it would be cool to be a beaver
70. My best friend is my wife
71. Other best friends are my eight children and their spouses
72. Our family started in 1972 when I married my best friend
73. We were married in the Provo Utah Temple
74. I was endowed in the Salt Lake Temple
75. I have been in the actual presence of the last seven Presidents of the Church: David O. McKay, Joseph Fielding Smith, Harold B. Lee, Spencer W. Kimball, Ezra Taft Benson, Howard W. Hunter, and Gordon B. Hinckley
76. I was alive when George Albert Smith was still the President of the Church
77. When I was in high school, my brother and I visited President Joseph Fielding Smith and Sister Jessie Evans Smith in their Eagle Gate apart­ment
78. I was interviewed a couple of times by Gordon B. Hinckley when I was a missionary
79. My wife and I had dinner one time with President Spencer W. Kimball and Sister Camilla Eyring Kimball; we sat at the same table as the Prophet and his wife
80. According to my best count, I have been in 25 temples (Atlanta, Boise, Idaho Falls, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Lubbock, Nauvoo, Oakland, Reno, St. Louis, San Diego, Sao Paulo, Washington D.C., Winter Quarters, and the 11 currently open temples in Utah)
81. I have seen at least four additional temples from the outside but have not been inside them (Cardston, Denver, Mesa, and Portland)
82. I have also been in the Kirtland Temple
83. And at the temple sites in Independence and Far West in Missouri
84. Another of my favorite authors is David McCullough
85. I have read four of his books: 1776, John Adams, Truman, and Path across the Seas: The Making of the Panama Canal
86. I have toured Harry S Truman’s house in Independence, Missouri (it is now a national historic site)
87. I first read The Lord of the Rings when I was a freshman in college
88. It had a great impact on me
89. I cried when the story ended
90. And I have reread the three-volume work twice since then
91. But the book that has by far had greater impact on my life than any other is the Book of Mormon
92. I first read it all the way through when I was twelve years old
93. My mission lasted twenty-seven months, three months in the Language Training Mission in Provo and twenty-four months in Brazil
94. I returned to Brazil for the first time twenty-four years after I came home from my mission
95. I have visited two of the great waterfalls in the world: Niagara on the border of the United States and Canada, and Iguaçu on the border of Brazil and Argentina
96. Iguaçu is far more impressive
97. I have a weird autoimmune disorder (scleroderma) that most people have never heard of and that took years and years to actually diagnose
98. I have caught a piranha while fishing in the Amazon River
99. I remember seeing the Northern Lights as a kid growing up in Idaho but only once as an adult: one October evening a few years ago while we were driving across Wyoming to go visit our daughter in Kansas City
100. My favorite person in all the world is my wife
101. And I love the Savior

Books I have been reading

So, it's been nearly a year since I posted a blog on this site.

I last wrote (in March 2006) about a great biography I had read on the life of Harry Truman. Since then I have also read the following books:

• 1421: The Year China Discovered America (by Gavin Menzies)
• Qualities That Count: Heber J. Grant as Businessman, Missionary, and Apostle (Ronald W. Walker)
• The Da Vinci Code (Dan Brown)
• His Excellency: George Washington (Joseph J. Ellis)
• Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln (Doris Kearns Goodwin)
• Wedding of the Waters: The Erie Canal and the Making of a Great Nation (Peter L. Bernestein)
• Book of Mormon
• Presidential Doodles (David Greenberg)
• Pearl of Great Price
• Journals of Lewis & Clark (ed. John Bakeless)
• The Form of the Book: Essays on the Morality of Good Design (Jan Tschichold)

I am currently reading Benjamin Franklin: An American Life by Walter Isaacson.

Truman

So last night I finished reading Truman, a 992-page book by David McCullough about the 33rd President of the United States, Harry S. Truman. For someone who loves history, as I do, it was a completely satisfying experience. I recommend the book without reservation.

It is amazing how little some things seem to change in the world. I could draw a lot of parallels with the political climate in our country today.

For most of the nearly eight years he served as President, Truman was greatly disliked by many people, at times (if one can believe public opinion polls) by most people, yet he doggedly pursued a steady course forward based on what he thought was the right thing to do. He was a man of uncommon integrity and had some pretty tough choices to make as the United States ended World War II and embarked on its post-war leadership of the free world. He defined in large measure how our country would participate in the Cold War over the next four decades.

His committing the nation to a war in Korea was particularly unpopular at the time, but in hindsight undoubtedly contained the spread of communism in that part of the world and kept us out of a third world war.

A fascinating thing about history is that at the time it is being made the participants do not know how things are going to turn out in the end. What can appear so obvious to us, from our armchairs on Monday morning, was not at all obvious at the time. Sort of like the outcome of a hotly contested basketball game. It ain't over until it's over.

Ward conference

So far this winter has been very well behaved: lots of snow in the mountains, some rain here in the valleys, reasonable temperatures, that sort of thing. Until today, at least. A major winter storm has moved into Utah, and it's actually dumping snow all over the place, on our sidewalks, the driveway, the roads, nasty places like that.

I attended ward conference in the Bountiful Fourth Ward this afternoon. I was there in my role as high councilor. Very inspirational meetings. During the first hour President Kenneth Olson led a tender discussion in a combined session of all the adults on caring for one another.

During the second hour was regular Sunday School classes, so I came home and shoveled sidewalks and driveway. (I had, by the way, already attended Sunday School in our ward this morning.)

I then returned during the third hour for their sacrament meeting. Bishop Tom Foy gave a marvelous talk on faith in the Lord, using his mother-in-law (Virginia Regis) as an example of faith on her CES mission to Tonga, starting when she was assigned to teach at the Liahona High School and had to figure out how to call roll when the Tongan names consisted of about 55 vowels each. He also told about a little boy who expected and received a miracle with his pet horny toad. President Cory Hanks, in his first ward conference address since becoming our stake president last September, spoke a little about faith, recounting his finding a prized watch when he was about six or seven years old after extended prayers that he might find it. He also talked about going to the temple and promised the Fourth Warders that everything in their lives would go better if they attended the temple more often.

At the start of the meeting the counselor in the bishopric who was conducting the meeting announced that a granddaughter of the Wall family who had just married in December was killed in a car accident on their way to Arizona for an open house. Her new husband is in the hospital in critical condition, unaware yet that his bride had died. Very sad.

Well, it's time to go shovel some more snow.

A new year

Happy New Year to one and all!

2005 has gone the way of all those other years I can remember from, say, about 1955 or 56, when I was six or seven. We talked to the grandson who lives with us (he's still four) about how tomorrow was a whole new year, and I think he had absolutely no idea what we were talking about.

Many years ago, as we were putting our numerous little children to bed on a New Year's Eve, we said to tender-hearted little Camilla, "Good-night, we'll see you next year," and she burst into tears, not realizing it was just until the next morning. And now she and her husband are expecting a new little one of their own. The cyle of life rolls on.

Sometime around 10:00 last night, our oldest granddaughter (who is nine) called to report that she and her family had just finished reading the Book of Mormon, as our prophet, President Gordon B. Hinckley, had asked us to do before the end of the year. That's cutting it close, but hey it was before the end of the year.

I was pondering last night, in the waning minutes of the old year, that on the previous New Year's Eve my brother Kay and his family had no idea it would be the last one they'd ever spend with their wife/mother/grandmother. She was diagnosed with stomach cancer in March and died in October.

That is a part of the genius of this mortal schooling the Lord has prepared for us: We never know when our turn is over. We never know when the final test is coming. We have to keep up on our homework. None of this last-minute cramming. Rather, there must be an ongoing vigilence, an attention to duty and relationships, a readiness for whenever the call comes to return home. We cannot procrastinate the day of our repentance.

Here is not our real home; we are simply away at boarding school. Yet sometimes we act as though we get to stay here pretty much indefinitely. Our attention and affections are on the things, the associations, the stuff of this world--and undoubtedly some of that may be appropriate as long as we keep it in proper perspective, remembering that our first loyalty has to be to the things of eternity, building relationships that can last into the next world, doing the things that our Heavenly Father wants us to be doing, things like exercising faith, repenting of our sins, entering into and keeping sacred covenants, strengthening our families, enduring to the end--in short, staying safely on the path, living the gospel, doing our homework, learning the lessons we were sent here to learn.

And keeping in touch with our heavenly home. We do that through prayer. (I had to throw that in because prayer was the topic of my first high council talk of the new year. I spoke earlier today in the 15th Ward sacrament meeting. It's always a great experience to meet with the wonderful Saints in that ward. I have many friends there.)