Our Adventures in Trekking

The first hard hard thing about Trek was having to put together pioneer clothing for Jon and I to wear. We managed a good balance of bought and sewn items, I think. I made Jon's vest, altered a couple of thrifted shirts, and sewed myself a bonnet and apron. We purchased a pair of linen pants for Jon, got him a clearance hat, and bought my skirt and one of my shirts. While in a lot of ways they really wanted our pioneer experience to be as close to authentic as possible, they also asked that we wear good hiking shoes and apply plenty of sunscreen. And sunglasses. That kind of thing.

The next hard part of trek was meeting up with everyone at 5:30AM. We then proceeded to wait until everyone showed up, then we got together with our wards, and we had a big devotional. We didn't actually leave for our trek site until just after 7AM. Oh the time I could have spent sleeping! Ah well. . .

Here we are ready to ship off.

The boys all fit in one car, and Sandy took half of our girls while Jon and I got the rest. We then left "Liverpool, London" for our "ship voyage" to the east, where we'd get our handcarts. In all actuality, we got in our cars and drove a couple of hours to the Kaibab Plateau.

Sandy couldn't get over us in our pioneer garb and the following was her idea: 

Jon was the lone man in this photo.

When our bishop saw this photo, he asked if we were all getting ready to head out to Wal-mart. (My local friends will appreciate that.)

When we got there, we had to get one shot of all of our ward's youth before we all got split up into families for the next two and a  half days. 

We've arrived!

And then each of us ma and pa couples were given the children that would be our family for the trek. We ended up with six kids, while everyone else had eight or nine. We had two that didn't make it last second that were on our list. Apparently our family assignments were something that the people in charge had prayed over extensively. The family we had was the one we were meant to have, so they left our number smaller than everyone else's.

Check out the handcarts all lined up. These things carried all of our possessions for the length of our trek.

Here we are lined up and waiting to take off. Well, you can only see me clearly, because Jon cut out most people's faces in this shot, but you get the idea.

Kourtnee and Mackenzie are in the top right of the frame.

Jon and I went from being newly weds to being the parents of two girls and four boys that day. It was quite the ride, and more than we planned on in a lot of ways, but it was a good experience. Our kids were: Parker, Sam, Zak, Tristen, Mackenzie, and Kourtnee. Besides having our six children we were also given a baby. Well, a baby doll-- symbolic of the babies born on or carried across the plains. We had to watch over the physical welfare of the baby, and not allow her to ride on or touch the cart.

This was Tristen's way of following those rules--

Baby Phoebe wrapped onto his arm.

Something else about Trek was that we all got to walk for another person. We were each given a pioneer name to walk in memory of-- and if we had a personal name, we could add that to the list. So I walked for Mary Haydock as well as my grandma Janina Miecznikowska Rospierska. She was a pioneer in a lot of ways-- she left behind her family and the life she knew in the country to start a new life for herself in the city, where she met and married my grandpa and eventually had a daughter who would grow up and move to America (my mom!). It was neat to walk for an actual pioneer and to have their story given to us, but it still felt more real for me thinking of my grandma as I trekked.

Me wearing my name tag. Mackenzie is in the purple.

The first day was the longest length and time wise. We got up so very early and then had to wait first to get to our trek site, then to get our families, then to get our handcarts and our gear. . . and then we had to pull our handcart eight miles. We started off on a dirt road but eventually we had to take a detour down a steep hill on account of Indians or something. We got each of the handcarts down one by one, each family helping another until all of the handcarts and families were accounted for.

See Jon helping, and me trying to while hitching up my skirts?

At the bottom of that hill we had to pull our carts through thick trees and tall grass. It was my favorite part because it seemed the most authentic to me. Those poor pioneers didn't have roads cut for them. The other reason I loved that section was because the grass dampened the sound of the handcart wheels. When traveling on the dirt roads across rocks and gravel those handcarts got loud. Which meant I had to talk loud, and I'm not a loud-talker, so that was hard for me.

A little while after the hill we came across a small "settlement" where we were given a loaf of bread, some peanut butter and honey to make sandwiches, and apples for everyone in our family. I'd just sat down and started working on making lunch when all of a sudden a mob appeared. Like the Mormon pioneers, we were run out of town. Tristen had just finished putting together his honey sandwich and was putting it to his lips when a mobster snatched it right out of his hands. It was funny only because we still had enough bread to make more sandwiches. We were tired and so very hungry by then. Besides the food we'd brought to snack on in the car, we hadn't eaten since 5:30AM and it was after 2PM by then. And sandwiches and apples were all we were given. Oh, that and a quart of cream in a mason jar that we had to shake for the next few hours so that we'd have butter for dinner.

Post-mob quick break/babysitting.

About a mile from where we were supposed to camp the first night, we had a couple of leaders say that they found a short cut and they decided we should take it. So we walked half a mile only to discover that the supposed short cut didn't actually lead to camp. They had made a mistake. Only it was on purpose, because they had a lesson prepared to share with us about Levi Savage and how he had wanted to winter in one place, but his leaders wanted to continue to journey across the plains, so he made the decision to go with his group, no matter the consequences. The lesson was something about how sometimes men can lead us astray, even when they have the best of intentions, but if we follow Heavenly Father we'll never be lead down a wrong path. And so from there we had to go back the half mile that we'd traveled incorrectly to then walk another mile to our camp.

Brother Traveller was the guy who had been in charge of organizing the Ma's and Pa's for months before trek and he said that he'd tried to talk them out of actually taking us down the wrong rode. He thought that just hearing the story would have been enough. I have to say that at the end of a day of hiking, I have to agree with Brother Traveller's assessment. A few girls had breakdowns when they heard that they'd have further to go than they were expecting. Not any of the girls in our family, though.

Brother Traveller felt so bad for us that he helped us pull our cart for a while near the end of the day:

He was super excited to pull the cart.

That night we pulled into camp and had to quickly set up our camping area and then grab dinner, family by family. We were given beef stew in sourdough bread bowls. I usually love bread bowls, but this was really sour sourdough and the beef in the stew was super chewy. I ate it all anyway. I just pretended to be a pioneer and was grateful to get more than gruel. What's more, we had pound cake smothered in strawberries for dessert. It made up for a chewy sour dinner. Mostly. 

We had another devotional and then we got to go to bed. We had a small tent we put up for the sole purpose of changing in, and we all quickly got into our jammies and brushed our teeth. My face wipes were really popular with all of our kids. Then we said a family prayer and all snuggled down into our sleeping bags under the stars. I put in my earplugs and was drifting off to sleep when I could feel Jon giggling next to me. I took an ear plug out and asked him what was going on. 

Jon: You didn't hear that?
Me: No, what?
Jon: That bugling? 

Me: What?
Jon: Someone was playing a bugle, you didn't hear that?

Me: No. Was it funny?

Jon: Well, no, but then someone yelled out, "That's not a very pioneer thing to do!" 

But finally everyone had their sillies work out of their systems and we got to sleep. I woke up a few times in the middle of the night, once with my head freezing, and once when I was sure someone was standing over me with a flashlight. Even when I was totally awake and I turned my head to better see, I could have sworn that's what it was. Turns out the moon was just really bright. And in the morning? We all woke up dew-covered and cold. It was hard to motivate ourselves to leave the relative comfort of our sleeping bags, but managed to get back into pioneer garb and then it was time to face another pioneer day. 

Part two of Trek  2011 to come next. 

Girl's Camp 2011, part 2

Continuing from my last post, there were a lot of fun activities besides embarrassing the newbies. On our first full day there, I got to run around with some of the girls as they went from station to station. They painted prayer rocks, we all got to learn how to properly tie a full Windsor and a single Windsor tie (now all the girls have a preference and can tell the young men in their lives which tie to tie for church), and the girls also did a fun service project of tying quilts.

Some girls got it right away.

Some people struggled before attaining victory. 

We also set aside some time for spiritual activities. One of my favorites was when small groups were led to a hillside and told to find a peaceful place to stop and write their testimonies. Everyone was given a piece of paper and a pen and got to listen to quiet music if they chose to stay close or if they wandered a little ways off, they could just take in the sound of the breeze through the trees as they wrote. There were no rules as to what you could write, you just wrote whatever you were inspired to record--your testimony as it stood right then. It was a really cool experience watching the Young Women considering what to write.

One of the adventures that lasted the whole time of Girl's Camp was trying to find our Stake's rock. Every year someone hides a special rock that has been decorated ("bling-a-fied" according to the Stake leaders) somewhere within the camp boundaries, and this year it was the Priesthood that hid it. The Girl's Camp stake leaders were the ones that decorated it, and every day we'd get new clues as to where it was hidden. The girls looked everywhere. Every day you'd see tons of girls scouring the hillsides, looking under logs, peaking into crevices. One day Emilee, Shauna, and I all went trekking through the woods and up some hills. I got halfway up a really steep embankment (in my galoshes!) and realized that I'd rather keep going up than try to get down. This won me the honor of being called a mountain goat by Shauna then and again a week later when she shared that story with our ward over the stand. But alas, we didn't find the rock that day, or any of our days there. One of our YW Micah got really bugged when she thought she saw the rock (it was shiny and looked to be silver) and she half ran, half fell down a hill to get to it before anyone else did, only to find that it was a mylar balloon. Sad day. The search for the rock also led to camp pranks. Our dear YW decided to paint a fake rock, and hid it near one of the other camp sites. Their thinking was that if another ward found that rock that they would keep it to themselves, thinking they'd found the true rock, and they would quit looking. And once one rock was made up and set out, why not eight more, to hopefully keep all of the competition back at their camps and not looking? Well, it kind of worked. We watched as one ward found one of the fake rocks and started dancing around, then stop, scooped it up, and ran off with it hidden in someone's jacket. That evening when we were getting ready to hear our devotional, that ward was called up to show what they had found. They excitedly carried it down to center stage where the Stake Leaders said, "You have found a rock! But it is not THE rock. Keep looking." And they were given a consolation prize of a box of cookies.

More silliness:

Please click on this to get a good look at the faces these girls are pulling.

What is most amazing about this photo is that the girl at the top of the pyramid (Andi) had climbed up there on a broken arm. Did I mention that we slept in pods? In bunkhouses that were glorified rail-car containers?
Well, this is what the girls' side looked like:

If you'll notice-- the roof was smashed in from the snowfall that winter and there were roll bars only on the top bunks, not the second level. Apparently our bunks were the only ones that bad off. And little Andi went rolling off her bed in her sleep, all bundled up in her sleeping bag. She fell down right on her arm. It was a good thing her mom was our camp director. She was able to be with her and hold her and help console her. Only we didn't find out for sure that her arm was broken until three days after camp. Yep. She was such a trooper that her mom thought it was just a sprain, but she was wrong. Andi wasn't our only nurse's station visitor, though-- another girl went home with a stomach virus. And another girl had to go lay down because of altitude sickness, and a few others had to get stuff for their sunburns. Never a dull moment at camp.

Last, but not least of the silliness-- a spinner game of jellybeans. You could land on white and get coconut or baby wipes. Or you could land on green and get pear or boogers. There were also options of getting marshmallow or rotten egg, etc, etc. A bunch of the girls were playing it and wanted me to try a few beans, so I did, but they were all the tasty ones. The rule was, however, that you had to eat whatever kind you got.

I wasn't interested in partaking of toothpaste or moldy cheese flavored jellybeans because I could guess at what those would be like, but I told the girls that I might be persuaded to try the centipede flavored one. I mean, who knows what a centipede tastes like, right? The other option for that was strawberry jam. I ate five strawberry jam flavored jellybeans in a row, so then Emily grabbed one, and as you might have guessed, on her first try she got a centipede flavored jellybean. Oh, the faces she made as she tried to choke it down.

Emily then decided that it was to be my fate to have to go through what she did. So she handed me red speckled jellybean after red speckled jellybean, picking out only the ones that could have been centipede. I ate sixteen delicious strawberry jam jellybeans. And it looked like there were no more red speckled jellybeans. Emily was ticked. But she found two more. The first, strawberry jam. But I finally got my taste of centipede and man alive was it disgusting. It tasted like the smell of fungus, dirt, dampness, and rotting leaves. It was horrendous. And I hear that there are pictures of me eating it.

But since I can't get my hands on those photos, I'll share a photo of Paige eating some other disgusting flavor:

Later, we just started snacking on the jellybeans when hanging out in a group as a sort of jellybean Russian roulette. Yep, we're weird like that.

Girl's Camp 2011, part 1

As promised, good and happy things. Namely, my adventures at Girl's Camp. Most of you know this already, but this was my very first ever experience at Girl's Camp. I joined the LDS faith at seventeen and missed going as a last year Laurel. (Laurel meaning a young woman who is seventeen or eighteen.) Having been called as a Young Women adviser and now the First Counselor in our ward's YW presidency, I had the responsibility and opportunity of attending Girl's Camp this year. Being totally honest, I was a little nervous about it. I had no idea what I was getting myself into or what to expect. I was worried that it was going to be like some of my early experiences with the YW organization, namely that there would be cattiness, gossiping, and cliques. However, our ward is not like that. Our Young Women all care for one another and they do their best to include everyone. I should have known better, but I was surprised by how amazing our Young Women really are-- they are an example to me.

Because people want to see pictures more than read a bunch about how all of us were touched and how every one of the leaders cried at one point or another (in a good way), I'll include a lot of fun photos.

I got together at the Vanderheyden home at 6:30AM. We had all the girls together and organized into cars and were on the road by about 7:30AM. We were at camp and unloading things by 8:30AM. After a night of not sleeping all that well, that was a really early start for me. The Stake's theme was about seeking after Eternal Treasures, so each ward got to represent certain traits and qualities through a gemstone. We were the Sunstones/Hot rocks. And Sandy (the YW president) had the sneaky idea of incorporating an underlying theme that all of the girls could get behind: The movie Tangled. And you know (if you've seen the movie) that it is a cute story, and they have this thing with purple banners with a huge yellow sun. . . so yea, we took that up as our symbol and used the movie in other ways, too.

Decorating banners.

Emilee placed a lot of yellow vinyl hearts on the purple bunting.

First day, so we haven't gotten a chance to get grimy or too sweaty yet. 

Our treats that we handed out to all the other wards.
Notice the banners in the background....

We also came prepared with rain boots and boy were we ever grateful to have them. Six weeks before we got there, the mountain was covered in over ten feet of snow. Feet, people. Even a couple of weeks before we were to arrive, there was at least a foot of snow everywhere. But our camp director had prayed and prayed and felt strongly that some people needed the experience on the mountain. Last year weather forced them to have move Girl's Camp to Pinto, UT. If you don't know where that is, I don't blame you. It is outside of Enterprise, if that helps. Anyway-- it is flat there and windy and apparently that is not what we needed this year. So after many prayers, it was decided that we would go up to the mountain, and after many more prayers, the snow melted in time. And with all that snow melt came the mud. But like I said, we were ready for it. While others had to delicately choose where to put their feet down, we could easily tromp down the trails without a care.

And, just because it was Girl's Camp, we also got to coordinate in other ways, like wearing matching purple hoodies with giant yellow suns on the back, putting sunflower clips in our hair, necklaces with suns as our name plates, yellow bandannas, and cute yellow and purple nails: 

By the end of our first day, all of the first years had their chance to get embarrassed in front of a crowd. This included the first year leaders. It is that song where you make more and more silly gestures while singing "eh too ti tah" over and over again and at the end you are flapping your arms like a chicken with your knees bent in and your tongue sticking out. It is really attractive, let me tell you. And of course, I have a picture. 

Silly goofy ridiculous fun. 

More to come soon. Like maybe tomorrow. 

Red Cliffs Desert Preserve

Jon and I have known about this wonderful place not too far from home--set aside as the Red Cliffs Desert Preserve-- for quite some time now. But neither of us had gone hiking there until just recently. One day a few weeks ago I decided to walk around there on my own, and took a few photos. That was enough to convince Jon to hike around there with me a few days later.

So we walked around with our little Luna, and she did amazingly well. She loves taking walks and hikes with us, and considering her diminutive size, we're always impressed that she never tires on these little adventures. We once hiked her four miles and she was still a bundle of energy when we got home. On this day we hiked for longer than we were expecting, so we ended up squirting water into our hands to let Luna drink. We're going to have to invest in one of those collapsible dog bowls. I'm thinking one like THIS. Do any of you have experience with these things?

 

 I'm really grateful that Jon and I live in such a beautiful place. It is so unlike where either of us grew up, but we both love it out here.

 

So, this post is a few weeks behind... but I'm working on catching up!

Water Canyon

Deep in Polygamist country, there is a lovely canyon called, you guessed it, Water Canyon. Have I mentioned before that I get uncomfortable when in one of the polygamist towns? I mean, it isn't just that I absolutely don't believe in their lifestyle or their less than favorable behaviors, but I actually, truly, .just don't like being in their cities. As in, I wouldn't stop in Colorado City or Hilldale on my own, ever, for any reason. Many of the homes are left unfinished or their exteriors are plywood. Then there are the ridiculously high fences and the feeling that secrets are hiding behind every one of them. But for whatever reason, I have ended up there a handful of times with Jon--mostly to hike around Water Canyon or to check out nearby petroglyph walls--but one time we actually stopped by their dairy and bought a big hunk of cheese and some fresh milk (which I admit was tasty). I'll also say here that when the polygamists come into town to buy stuff from Wal-mart or Costco I don't really feel that weird around the actual people then. It doesn't make sense, but there you have it.

Anyway, Jon got me to go with him to Water Canyon, again while Tim and Genevieve were in town. We all hiked up and then Jon and Tim did the canyoneering for all of us while Genevieve and I hiked back. That's not normally an option on our canyoneering adventures because its either a one-way hike through or if you are going through the canyon, you are fully committed to that and distance yourself from the hiking trails. But the way Water Canyon runs parallel to the trail for the most part, if you choose to canyoneer down through it, there are a few different spots where you can climb out of the canyon with ease, jump back on the trail, skip a rappel or two, and then keep going. That's what our group was planning on doing.

And I was all fine and good with that until we got there and I realized that our boys would be leaving us. Alone. On polygamist land.

As always, click on the the images to see them bigger: 

The big waterfall that I didn't have to rappel through.

Did I mention that this was snow melt water that they were hiking through? It was really, really cold. The guys were wearing wetsuits and were still shivering up a storm. I am so glad that Genevieve and I took our sideline vantage point. We were cold enough when we stood in the shade with the wind blowing through the canyon (and we were dry).

 Jon on rope, Tim watching. 

 Tim's turn. 

While we were standing there shivering and waiting, this odd couple that we'd passed at least five times before starts coming down the trail (we're still not sure how they passed us...) and they start asking us about our boys, why we aren't canyoneering with them, why they are wearing wet suits, etc. I felt like they were expecting us to turn into canyon tour guides and explain to them how the canyon formed and all of the forms of recreation that could be had there. And oh, yea, the guy was standing thisclose to me while I was really close to a cliff edge and he was leaning around me to get pictures of Tim and Jon. Weird, I tell you. 

Another shot of the waterfall and part of the slot canyon that they had to get through. 

The tight squeeze through the slot.

At this point we lost sight of the boys, so Genevieve and I started to hike on to find another spot where we could see them. We stopped for a minute to drink some water when we heard shuffling feet and huffing behind us. We turned around quickly to find that Jon and Tim had scampered up to pass another group. So we all hiked on together to their next rappel:   

 The second waterfall that they chose to do.

 Genevieve waiting on Tim.

The awkward couple found us again at this point. The guy once again cornered on a ledge and started taking pictures while standing right next to me. They also asked us if the trail went up about five times in the five minutes they hung around, and my response was always, "Yes." It didn't occur to me until the last time they asked me that perhaps they were trying figure out directions to get back to their car, which was most definitely down trail. By then they were already heading back up the hill, so I didn't bother yelling to clarify what they wanted. 

Jon going down the last waterfall

 Scenery

 Water in Water Canyon

Forty minutes after the last time that I told the awkward couple to keep going uphill, we spotted them coming down the trail after us, right as we had gotten to our car. They looked bewildered and tired, so I'm guessing that they had been trying to get back to their car when they were questioning me last. Oops. 

Genevieve and I quickly jumped into our vehicle to avoid any further conversation with them. After the guys were all changed out of their wetsuits and back in the car, they shared their stories of the awkward couple-- how they stood too close and asked lame questions like, "Is this the way the trail goes?" Jon told me not to feel bad if I mislead them by telling them to keep going up by saying, "If they can't tell which way they're supposed to go, they shouldn't even be out on a trail like this." And this trail was pretty obvious. It doesn't go up and down a lot-- its pretty much either you go up canyon or down canyon.

And, oh yes-- this was the other thing we saw in the parking area:

A completely unnecessary parking job.
And no, that's not a Suburu. It is a Mercury Tracer. 

The polygamists are sitting on some pretty land, I'll give them that. 

In the end, while Genevieve and I saw a few different polygamists while we were on our own, the creepiest people in the canyon weren't of the polygamist persuasion. Who would have guessed?

Fun times.