Grandma Sonja's Stuff: Sunny Days in St. George, UT.

Grandma Sonja's Stuff: Sunny Days in St. George, UT.: This past weekend was the Baseball Turkey Trot and we had reserved our hotel at St. George and I had taken the time off work.  But the Turke...

Sunny Days in St. George, UT.

This past weekend was the Baseball Turkey Trot and we had reserved our hotel at St. George and I had taken the time off work.  But the Turkey Trot didn't turn out for Tyson's former team and he is now playing high school baseball.  So rather than waste a good vacation and reservation I wanted to go anyway and convinced Spence that we should go and we did!

We drove down and the sky was blue, not a cloud in the sky and nice and warm, but certainly not hot as when we go in the summer months.

We first checked into the hotel and headed to the St. George temple.  Neither of us has ever been to a session, only to the "outside" and the visitor's center.  So it was time to go inside and that was what we did.  It was really nice to be in the first temple that was built in Utah.

This beautiful temple can be see easily from I-15 and is such a bright white that it is just amazing to see.

After we were done, we went and changed and drove to the site of the Mountain Meadows Massacre, a terrible time in history that was a horrible event.

We found the site and here are some pictures.  There is a hill called Dan Sill Hill where there is a monument with the names of all those that died on that day.

It was getting late in the day and it was windy.  Can you tell I was getting cold???

The next day we went to Jacob Hamblin's home and here are some pictures of that.  We learned alot about Utah history on this trip.  Even Spencer learned some new things.

 This is the main entryway as you come in.

 This is the actual saddle Jacob Hamblin used.  It was quite uncomfortable the missionary explained to us.

 One of the main purposes that the Mormons colonized the St. George area was to plant cotton to make clothing.  Here is some cotton above.  The cold weather in the past days made it change colors.

 Here is the back entrance.  The house was built against a small hill and so you leave from what was the upstairs in the front to the main floor in the back.  Kind of interesting.  Jacob Hamblin's wives designed the house on their own as he was away most of the time.  He was a friend to the Indians and helped with the relationships between the Mormons and the Indians.

 Cool wagon, but I wouldn't want to take a trip in that for too long.  Because it took quite a while to get here from Salt Lake in this thing.

From this highway behind the sign, we left to go to a place on my St. George bucket list.  Spencer didn't really want to go.  I kind of REALLY REALLY REALLY wanted to go.  It was to the petroglyphs of the Anasazi Indians that lived here and all around about the time of Christ.  2000+ years ago!  Can you believe it?  So that's why I have wanted to see it everytime I went down here.  And finally I did!

It was a total of 4 miles and we walked 2 uphill and 2 downhill.  It was quite a lot of walking.  Took a little while but we made it!

Here are the pictures.

 Starting up the mountain

 It was a somewhat rugged trail but we were real pioneers!

 Be careful where you step!

 Up the mountain we went!

Getting up there!

 The writings were on the faces of the rocks and etched in and scraping off the top layer of the rocks.

 These were big boulders at the top of the mountain.

 Isn't it cool?

 I guess there were a lot of goats and stuff like that.

 Yes, I made it, believe it or not.

 Not too far from the glyphs, was an excavation site that BYU had done and found remnants of a settlement here, pottery, and things like that.

 At the top, looking deep into the valley.  We were really high up there.  It's kind of hard to really tell from the pictures.  But it was quite a drop!

King of the hill!  So we conquered it, marked another item off my bucket list.

That was a fun day.  They we went Christmas shopping.  

The rest of the trip tomorrow!