IN A RUT!

Serving a mission is never dull or boring, 

but now we can say that we have literally been . . .
"in a rut!"

Last week we took a little "missionary field trip" to see a few other important places that our pioneers would have passed along the Great Western Trail.

Several hours to the east of where we are serving, the Oregon/California/Mormon Trail passed through an area of very soft stone.  After years of travel over that rock, the 500,000 emigrants and their covered wagons and handcarts wore the rock down as much as 5 feet deep in places,

and those ruts are still visible today.

Sometimes the wagon and handcart wheels wore the stone down to look like just a deep road.

Elder Bushman brought his personal handcart with him on his mission 
and has taken it to every historic location he has visited.  
This was a perfect place to bring it and take a picture showing just how deep the ruts really are.

We're all smiles pulling the handcart through these ruts, 
but it would have been quite a challenge with a load in the back,
 plus they were pulling up the hill!

We took a group picture of all the winter missionaries:  

the Bushmans, the Martins, the Moenches, the Hutchinsons, the Cherries, and the Thomases.

 We're all in this rut together!

Look how deep some of those ruts are!

My feet are in a rut about 14" deep!

I couldn't resist the temptation to do a little handcart art in the dust on our back window!

We finally got "out of our rut" and headed east again to Fort Laramie,

a place of resupply for covered wagon trains as well as the handcarts companies.  

Unfortunately for the Willie and the Martin handcart companies, 

no one in Utah knew they were coming across the plains so late, 

and no supplies had been sent to Fort Laramie for them.

It was amazing to see this place in person, as it is huge!  It must have been a bustling outpost of civilization in those early days, full of soldiers and their horses, traders, stores and trading posts, as well as emigrants and their livestock just passing through.

We have told about it many times in our Visitors' Center.  

Note the rows of beds inside the barracks and the corn cob checkers game on the table.

Here we are standing on the long porch of the military barracks at Fort Laramie.

Out in the middle of the field at Fort Laramie there was an enormous tree all by itself.

We were intrigued with (and a little envious of) the futuristic "rover" that is visible between these two old restored buildings at  the fort.

After Fort Laramie we headed even further east to see Chimney Rock, an amazing rock formation, 

and one of the landmarks the pioneers encountered on the trail west.

This is a fascinating rock formation! 

It juts out high into the sky and you can see it for many miles before you get to it.  

Below on the upper left is a drawing that was made in a pioneer journal from the 1850's.  

You can see how different that looks from the current photograph in the middle.  

Lightning struck the top of Chimney Rock in the 1990's and broke off part of the tip. 

 On the right you can see how it looked in the 1930's (top) compared to a picture taken today (below.)  

A good portion of the tip is gone.

On the lower left side is the center panel of a quilt made using needle-turn applique. 

It is beautifully done! 

Visitors are no longer permitted to walk out to Chimney Rock because there are so many rattlesnakes in that area.  We saw "Beware of Rattlesnakes!" signs in numerous languages just in the area of the Visitors' Center.

Instead of walking out there, we settled for a picture pulling Elder Bushman's handcart.

The clerk in the Visitors' Center was really tickled when 12 Mormon missionaries came to visit and brought a real handcart!  He looks kind of like a pioneer himself with his long, white beard, 

and Elder Thomas lent him his hat so he could look the part even more for a picture.

Then he took multiple pictures of all of us.

This touching monument to "Wee Granny" was erected here by her ancestors in 2006.  Her name was Mary Murray Murdoch, and she was just 4' 7" tall and weighed about 90 pounds.  Her husband had died in Scotland trying to rescue a man from poisonous air in a mine shaft, but she still wanted to come to Zion and join her son John who was already there.  

At the age of 73 she joined the Martin Handcart Company and came by herself.  Near this spot her body gave out, and her last words were, "Tell John that I died with my face toward Zion."

She is just another one of countless amazing pioneer examples to each of us!

Traveling the Mormon Trail like this has added new dimension to our understanding of what all the pioneers experienced, especially our beloved Willie and Martin handcart pioneers.

January and February 2014 in Wyoming

The blue sky in this picture is misleading.  It is freezing cold, and the snow blows along the roads in sheets like this.  In places where it is really heavy it's often impossible to even see the road.  People ask how much snow we have and I really can't tell them.  We either have 1" or 4' depending on where the snow has drifted!


Last week we had another freezing cold day.
 Thank goodness there was NO wind!

After a huge snowstorm broke hundreds of branches off the trees at the Homestead last fall, we piled them up and waited for a cold and windless day to burn them all.  This was the day.   Sadly, some little rabbits had made their winter homes under the protection of the logs, and when the fire got started their homes were destroyed and they ran all over to escape the flames.

When the handcarts were brought back into the barn after our Christmas Party, 
the missionaries left a wide path all around the perimeter of the building 
so we could get our exercise by walking there in the early mornings.  

It has become a walking track for some of us.

We listen to audio books as we walk, and even though it is still cold inside the barn, 
we are protected from the wind.

Elder Hutchinson has been our technical expert over the winter.  He frequently has a phone in each ear as he talks to Global Support on one line and the Missionary Department on the other, trying to get our computers set up to work as they should.  It's a monumental challenge!!!

It's a miracle that the computer systems and their "creative" wiring work at all!

One bright, sunny day in January we all drove over to Sixth Crossing to walk up to Rocky Ridge. 

Right off the bat we got high-centered along the road to Sage Campground and had to be pulled out.  We would have walked all the way had it not been for the cold and raging wind, 

which hadn't been an issue when we started out.

We then drove around to see if we could make it into Rock Creek Hollow,

but we were blocked by massive snow drifts.

So we gave up and went into Lander to fill up with gas and have lunch.

While there we discovered a snowy handcart statue in the Amish store.

On our way back to the Homestead we visited our neighbor Polly
at Mad Dog and the Pilgrim Bookstore across the road from Sixth Crossing
and said hello to the wooly sheep who lives there.

The following week we took a little missionary field trip up to Cody, Wyoming 

to see the famous murals inside one of the chapels there. 

They tell the history of the church including the emigration to the west.
They even portrayed our area, although they incorrectly identified Devils' Gate as Split Rock.

 

The missionary couples who showed us through the building took a picture of all of us.

It was interesting to see this familiar song written to a different tune in an old hymn book.

While we were in Cody we also went to see the Buffalo Bill Center 

and were impressed with the wonderful exhibits and presentations there.  

They did a great job of telling his story and preserving artifacts from his life and times.

 We saw lots of interesting displays
 and even a "horse" for Elder Bushman and a sheep camp for Elder Moench!

We learned a lot about Buffalo Bill Cody.

There was a very creative hologram welcoming us to the museum and some beautiful artwork by Remington and others. There was even a replica of his studio showing the props and western equipment he used to create his paintings.

We almost felt like we were in the middle of a buffalo stampede . . .

It was good to have a little get-away for one day when the Whitlocks could cover the Visitors' Center,
and everyone had a wonderful time!

Elder Cherry got right back to work by removing the old linoleum floor 
in the bathroom of the Gathering Room and laying down new tile there 
with Sister Cherry, Elder Martin, Elder Bushman and Elder Thomas helping.   
They then did the same thing to the kitchen and bathroom floors of their own apartment and the Hutchinsons' apartment in the tri-plex as well as in both apartments in the duplex! 
Elder and Sister Cherry are amazing workers and know how to do everything!

One day last week we had a fun surprise on the way into Casper . . .

 . . . our favorite doctor, Dr. John Pickrell, is being featured on a billboard.  
He is a great "friend of the Cove" and truly goes the extra mile to take care of the missionaries.