While the Payson temple was in recess, Wendy and I went on a 9 day temple trip. We actually counted the Vernal temple that we attended on April 18th as the first temple on our journey, but went earlier because it was closed at the same time as Payson. On the morning of Friday, May 5th, we left Spanish Fork on I-70 and drove to Denver, arriving in the early evening at our hotel in the city of Highland Ranch, which is near the city of Centennial where the Denver temple is located, on the south perimeter of the Denver metro area.
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| We saw lots of snowy mountains like this as we came through the tall peaks west of Denver |
On Saturday morning we attended the Denver temple, then drove about an hour to the center part of Denver, to visit with Wendy's son John. We took a hotel in the Stapleton area of Denver for three nights. On Sunday morning we attended the City Park Ward on Grant Street, near downtown Denver. The ward occupied the top four floors of a five-story building and had no grass or landscaping. We left our car in a next door parking terrace which also contained the church entrance. On the inside it looked like one of our churches, except we had to take stairs or elevator to the classrooms. The membership seemed more diverse that we are used to, but it had the same spirit. It was testimony meeting Sunday. In High Priests, the leader spent the whole time, teaching and pleading for more faithful and responsible visiting by the home teachers. We spent time with John in the afternoon and evening and took a long walk with him in the nearby City Park near the Denver Zoo. We circled a lake and saw lots of water birds.
Ono Monday we went to another park which was on a little knoll that gave us a distant view of the high 14er Rockies that are beyond the immediate foothills west of the city. In the evening, we had tickets for a Rockies-Cubs baseball game at Coors Stadium. The day started out sunny, but got cloudy in the afternoon and about 3 o'clock a tremendous hail storm started that lasted two hours. Where we were at John's apartment the hailstones were the size of marbles and blasted down leaves from trees. By the end of the two hour storm the hail was a couple of inches deep. In other parts of the city, it was said that the hail stones were as big as golf balls and broke car windows. We went to the Stadium in the evening--John got us a Lyft ride--but there was such a traffic jam that we walked the last mile in a light rain. When we got to the Stadium, the grounds crew was still trying to get the field in shape. The start was postponed but the game not cancelled. We didn't go to our assigned seats but found places to sit and watch higher up in the stands under a roof. The grounds keepers had a snowplow on a small tractor and were trying to plow the hailstones off the field. The infield was covered with a tarp, which the crew turned upside down onto the right field grass to clear the hail and water; then they put it back in place over the infield. When they walked on the grass you could see the water splash. Eventually, the announcement came that the game was postponed until the next day at noon, so we left.
We adjusted our travel plan to go to the game at Tuesday noon. When we got there the sun was shining and the field appeared dry. We paid $30 for a parking spot about 4 blocks from the Stadium. (It seems crazy to me to build a big beautiful baseball field that holds 40,000 people in a downtown area where there is almost no parking, or public transportation.) There were scads of Cubs fans there wearing their white and blue pinstripe baseball jerseys with names of favorite Cub players in their backs, many from earlier years--Bryant, Sandberg, Dawson, Sosa, Grace. For this make-up day game, the stands were probably 25% full. We had real good seats, in the lower area not too far above first base. One of the fun things for me was when the players first came out on the field to stretch and do warm ups. Charlie Blackmon, the Rockies center fielder, spent a considerable amount of time doing his stretches right in front of us. He got into some amazing contortions. One I recall was that he lay on his back twisting his lags to one side while his shoulders and head went the other way. The game didn't go well for the Cubs--the Rockies won 10-4 and were clearly superior this day. They bombed the Cub's best pitcher. Wendy's dream had come true to see her favorites, the Cubs. However, she also cheered for the Rockies players when they did something good. She said she liked the Rockies second best. (Could we learn something from this when the Utes and Cougars play each other?)
After the game, we made our escape quickly from Denver, and made the one-hour drive to Ft. Collins, to the new temple there and met some old friends of Wendy's, who she had known from her Salt Lake ward, Gordon and Anita E. We attended an evening endowment session with them, went out for a late dinner, and then stayed at their home that night. There was pleasant conversation and we learned a lot about Ft Collins and the new temple.
On Wednesday morning, May 10th, we headed for Star Valley, Wyoming. The weather continued overcast and threatening (it was Monsoon season) but cleared as we continued west across Wyoming on I-80, and then north from Little America on US 30 and 89 to Afton, WY. The last part of the drive was lovely, through green valleys with high snowy peaks on either side and little streams overflowing their banks. We found the new Star Valley temple right on the hillside above the highway as we entered the town of Afton. This town felt to me like it was very LDS and yet sort of touristy Wyoming. We started to do an endowment session in the evening, but Wendy was not feeling well so went back to our hotel (a nice, brand-new Fairfield Inn by Marriott) and then did our session there on Thursday morning, May 11th.
After the Start Valley temple, we headed north on a two hour drive toward Rexburg and saw more unfamiliar roads. First, we came to a junction where the Snake River comes out of a canyon. I remember that my Taylorsville older boys did a canoeing and rafting high adventure there one summer. We then came to a reservoir on the Snake called Palisades, that seemed huge, like the size of Deer Creek, but was mostly empty. We asked someone when we got to Rexburg why it was so empty and he said it will be full before the runoff ends. Past the reservoir we drove an hour or so through Idaho farm back country, then arrived in Rexburg and did an endowment in that temple in the afternoon. After that we explored the view of the temple from the ridge to the east and also looked for the view of the Grand Teton that was supposed to exist. We found it, a tiny blue spike above another ridge. Then we headed for Idaho Falls to our motel which had a view across the river to that temple. There was a grassy area with a walking path with lots of not very wild geese.
On Friday morning, May 12th we had breakfast at Smitty's, restaurant that Wendy's family has traditionally eaten at on their way back and forth to vacationing in rental cabins on the Madison River near Yellowstone. We also try to go to Smitty's for breakfast if we are in the area because they have the best (maybe the only) gluten-free pancakes, that Wendy loves. We then made contact with Matthew's family who were in a neighboring motel to ours and went with them to the Idaho Falls temple open house at 11 am. We enjoyed seeing the refreshed murals and furnishings. After the tour, we said our "Good-byes" and left for Logan. As we finish our drive from I-15 at Tremonton/Garland to Cache Valley, we again saw lots of flooded ground in the middle of that valley from the Logan River (or was that water a permanent part of a reservoir?). We found our motel on Main Street about 3 pm, quickly checked in and then went up the Logan temple and attended a session there. When we got out we had a craving for Mexican food. Thankfully, Greg C had shared the Yelp app with Wendy and we quickly found a highly recommended restaurant called
El Toro Viejo on north Main Street. When we were escorted to our table, we were surprised to be eating with 15 feet of my nephew Scott E and and his wife Karen and their kids, and had a nice visit in addition to some good food.
On Saturday morning, May 13th, drove to my sister Dorothy's, and took her with us to do a session in the Ogden temple. Then we stopped for a visit at Alison's on our way home and arrived back home in Spanish Fork about 6:30 pm.
Counting our pre-trip visit to Vernal, we had visited eight temples and done 14 family name endowments, plus toured the renewed temple in Idaho Falls. We also had several great contacts with friends and family. Not counting our pre-trip to Vernal, we had traveled an estimated 1472 miles.
