Church History sites

Toni and I went on a little site seeing tour ourselves while Larry and Kal went golfing. 

We drove out to Ephraim Hanks place. The porch roof is slanted to get the full sun for drying fruits and vegetables. I am thankful for my food dehydrator that doesn't take days and days to dry the food.

One of the sitting rooms of his house.

The St. George tabernacle. I love circular staircases.

An old old chapel still in use today.

The Saints that first settled St. George were faithful and obedient. Their was only sweltering desert when they moved there. At first they felt it was only temporary but Brigham Young had them build the tabernacle so they could see how permanent of a place St. George was going to be. In fact he even himself a summer home in St. George.

It's a nice place to visit but it's too hot there in the summer to live for me.

4th of July fireworks and the St. George temple

When we got back from Zion National Park we headed out to the fireworks. It was an awesome show!

We drove up to the top of a hill and we were able to see both sets of fireworks that St. George was lighting off. One of the cars that was parked behind us had patriotic music playing as the fireworks were blasting away. It was really cool.

It was neat to see the St. George temple off to the right as we watched.

After the fireworks show we drove around until we found the temple. We were getting up and going first thing in the morning and we didn't want to get lost.

We were fed spiritually as we enjoyed a session at the beautiful St. George temple. This is the temple that Larry and his siblings was sealed to their mom and dad after they joined the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.

Going the St. George temple was on Toni's bucket list. I'm glad she was able to go.

A picture I took of the temple.

After getting fed spiritually we were fed physically and it was such a yummy breakfast!

I definitely want to go back for the temple, nature, activities and the food.

Beautiful Zion National Park

The 4th of July was spent looking a hiking at some of God's creations. Zion National Park. We had never been there and the only thing I knew was that their was a lot of red rock cliffs. Our first evening at the condo we had a coupon for a free movie and Larry picked out a movie where a adventurous young man was exploring caves and such. He went down into a canyon and was hiking in something called "the narrows". The narrows are like paths in cliffs. You're hiking into long trail like caves. This young man was hiking by himself and a big rock fell onto his arm and trapped him. He was in there for days and finally he cut off his arm so he wouldn't die and to get out of the cave. So needless to say I wasn't keen on hiking into any narrows but I did go into one, it was a wide one.
See... Lots of red rock cliffs.

  

On the road to Zion their is an amusing site. A shoe tree.

We hiked along some short trails here and there through the park. Red cliffs, red dirt.

Linda and Larry.

Our good friends Toni and Kal came along with us. It was fun to have them along.

While we were exploring on the trails we saw some interesting creatures.

A snake.

A bird trying to get free handouts.

Lizards slinked along the trail.

Crows. Crows remind me of Indian stories I've read. On how they are spirits of Indians who have passed on. In this desert place it seemed fitting.

The deer or in this case buck liked to hang out close to people. Doing his part of trimming the trees.

I bet we saw 100 squirrels. They were ALL over the place. They were not afraid of people. The park had warning up all over the place warning us not to feed the squirrels and a picture of what I hand may end up looking like if we fed them. Not a pretty site.

Weeping rock.

I love being able to be active. Just saying...

Our last hike of the day was into the narrows which weren't very narrow. And no rain or flash flooding was forecast so we headed in.

The rock walls were beautiful.

So here we go...

The rocks in the water were beautiful. The water was so clear.

Is that a rock or a steak?

Larry is such a carnivore. I would say it was on the tough side. Teeth breaking tough.

Larry and Kal went farther in the narrow but Toni and I stayed out because we had the camera among other things that couldn't get wet.

We would like to go to Zion National Park again and take some longer trails. It was a fun thing to do on our nations birthday.