Our Summer Trip to Utah - Cousin Time

In July we took our annual trip to Utah to see the family. This time we had a very special occasion for our trip – our niece, Tess, was getting married! The wedding was a couple of weeks after we arrived so we had some time to get over our jet leg and get ready for the festivities. The wedding was lovely, and our kids had so much fun at the reception afterwards being waiters and dancing their hearts out with their cousins.

Speaking of the cousins, we spent a fun week with the Mayos, and had fun times visiting with the Holts and the Willardsons. The day before the wedding we had a dinner with both sides of the family in Ephraim. Ephraim is where Spencer mostly grew up and had some of his best childhood memories, so we wanted to show the kids some of the sites, and also the old cemetery where their great-great-great-great-grandfather, Christian Willardson and his wives are buried. 

At the old cemetery in Ephraim. It was so hot

We also went to the co-op building and the Old Mill that Christian built and that now was housing a small museum. 

Oma with some of her grand-kids by the Old Mill building.

The Old Mill building was nicely restored. On the first floor they had a small museum, and on the second floor they had some space for different functions. 

Some of our crew's fun-meter is reaching its highest reading!

Inside of the old co-op building they had a craft store and the kids loved looking at different items there.

Then we went to the Pioneer Park and found the tree under which Indian Chief Walkara made a piece treaty with the pioneers that ended the Indian War.

The tree!

Spencer is probably explaining something about the history to the kids here.

An old pioneer cabin at the park

Beer wagon? I don't know.

While Mican and Roger went to Lake Tahoe, we had their kids minus Ian who just recently started a job and thus had to stay home in Las Vegas. One of the days we decided to take a trip to a mining town (now more of a ghost town) of Eureka to visit Museum of Mining. The town was very small and we barely saw any people there but the museum was quite nice and full of treasures.

While driving to Eureka we saw some desert landscape that I learned to love and appreciate over the 6 years of living in Utah.

An old Mine between Santaquin and Genola.

A fun clock in Eureka

Trying to figure out where is the museum. 

On our way to the museum we saw this fun old train car.

And explored it inside and out.

We also found an old Porter Rockwell's cabin that they brought here from somewhere else where it's been vandalized and restored it to its original shape.

Found it! 

Inside there was an interesting collection of all of the minerals that are found around the place.

And then they had some very neat things like a collection of clothes people wore at the time this town was prospering...

Printing press from the town's paper.

Afterwards we decided to eat at a little place named after famous Porter Rockwell who had a cabin not so far away from town. I tried buffalo burger for the first time and have to say that I didn't take much liking to it. Kids liked trying some new things there, though. The most interesting part of eating there was reading old newspapers some of which were over a hundred years old that were placed under a glass on our table.

To be continued...