Salt Lake City to Durango, CO

HEY DOGGIES, I'M HOME!!!!!

Roger here....  The dogs were happy to see me when I returned to Salt Lake City after a two-week junket to Indianapolis.  I was literally mauled when I sat down on the couch.   I was glad to see them, too.  I was also glad to see Dianne :-).  We were both (Dianne and me) eager to leave Salt Lake City for a number of reasons, but we had already paid for two more nights at the campground.  So, Dianne paid one last visit to the Family History Library.

And, we took the dogs for a couple of visits to a huge municipal dog park located just a few miles away.  Lots of room to run and lots of dogs to play with.  (To my former English teachers... I am well aware that I started the last sentence with a conjunction and ended it with a preposition :-).

As I mentioned above, we were very ready to hit the road.  Salt Lake City is not the worst place we have been, but it is far from our favorite.  The Family History Center and the dog park were the highlights.  On the negative side:  quite a bit of air pollution, trash on the streets, odor from a nearby refinery, more than the normal amount of homeless people, not many nearby groceries or restaurants, and quite honestly, the people were less friendly than we expected.  We were a little disappointed because we expected it to be pristine (it is near the Temple), clean and welcoming.  This was our experience.  I am sure that others have had better experiences.  

Time to move on...   The two-day drive to Durango was filled with a variety of scenic views.  

We returned to the Spanish Trails RV Park in Moab, UT for our overnight stay.  We were just there a year ago and felt comfortable returning to a good place.  The picture above was taken from our campsite ---not a bad view.  

One of the advantages of revisiting a place, if only for one night, is to relive a nice experience. Instead of eating in the motor home, we opted to pay a return visit to the Moab Brewery.  Good food, good beer.

The first leg of the trip from Moab to Durango skirted the eastern edge of Canyonlands National Park.  The scenery in southern Utah, even from the highways, is difficult to top.  Check out the arch that we passed along the road on highway 191.

The vistas continued to hold our attention as we neared the Colorado border.  The light traffic made the road construction a non-issue.

We arrived at our campground, Alpen Rose RV Park, in time to see the Durango - Silverton train pass by.  (Our next post will cover our trip on this train.)

A glass of wine before dinner with this view from our lawn chairs.... Life is good.

We spent the next day (actually today) in Durango.  We have visited many amazing towns in our travels.  This is one of them.

Our first stop (unintended) was at the Jean-Pierre Bakery.  The aroma of baked goodies pulled us in.  We intended to buy a couple pastries and leave, but decided to sit down and enjoy the ambience.

I had a ham and cheese croissant.  Dianne had a raspberry pastry.  We both had a cup of really good coffee.

Dianne could not resist taking pictures of the delicious-looking concoctions.  Better for our diets to look at them rather than eat them.

We left with a loaf of sourdough bread.  Ya gotta eat bread, right?  Yum.

We spent a couple of hours wandering along the shop fronts and making a few needed purchases.  I am always intrigued by classic architecture, and Durango has plenty.

This is the historic Strater Hotel which houses the Diamond Belle Saloon --- once a famous brothel.  We observed from a distance :-).  (Dianne here:  Louis L'Amour sometimes checked into room 222 of the Strater Hotel to write his western novels.  He claimed the honky-tonk music from the bar below helped set the mood for his writing.)

A couple of other interesting structures can be seen below.

This cool town also had some interesting sculptures.  We both loved the cowboy and his dog.

Tomorrow morning we will head to the train station next to the horse statues to take a ride on the Durango-to- Silverton steam train.  It will be an all-day adventure that we hope will be the highlight of our visit to this beautiful place.

The pet picture of the day is of Bandido at the dog park at Salt Lake City.  

Wait, Bandido does not have a big black spot on his back!  Meet Rosie, Bandido's twin.  Too bad they are both neutered, we could start a new breed.

We've Gone Our Separate Ways...

Beautiful Temple Square, Salt Lake City

Now that I've got your attention, we have gone our separate ways, but only for two weeks.   Roger has gone to Indiana for a little work.  Don't feel too badly for him, though; not only does he get to stay with our friends Jay and Nancy in their beautiful home, but his social calendar has been booked solid.

One highlight of his Indiana visit was to attend the Hamilton Southeastern Middle School staff reunion.  These folks were like family to Roger back when he served as their principal.  I know the laughs they had in the 1980s and 1990s, so I'm sure there were a lot of laughs at the reunion!  It tells you what a special group they are that they would plan this get-together, now that most of them have moved on to other schools or retired.

 The very next day Roger was able to attend his 45th class reunion in Pendleton, Indiana.  I've talked to him daily, and every day he's been meeting friends and former colleagues for either lunch or dinner.  This weekend he is going to Jay and Nancy's lake cottage with them for more fun, and better yet, his brother and sister-in-law are driving down there to be with them.  Roger will fly back here to Salt Lake City on Wednesday, and I think he'll need a rest!

We parked the motor home here in Salt Lake City for a reason.  Since December 1st, I've been working on family trees on Ancestry.com for both Roger and I.  The Family History Library here in Salt Lake City, run by the LDS church, is THE place to go for family research.  I wish I could tell you I've seen a lot of the local sites here, but other than a delightful visit with a girlfriend from high school in Park City, I've spent every day at the library.  (In fact, that visit was on a Sunday, when the library was closed).   Roger can tell you that when I get involved in a project, I kind of get immersed in it, if you know what I mean.

 I did take a walk around Temple Square this morning before hitting the book stacks, and here are a few pictures of the beautiful gardens and buildings:

There is a LDS church in Fishers, Indiana where we lived while our daughters went through school, and some of Robyn's mormon girlfriends did travel to the Temple here for their weddings.  One day when I walked through the square there were at least three brides and wedding parties having their pictures taken near the beautiful gardens.  None today, though, when I had my camera.

Temple Square is a beautiful oasis in the middle of the city.   Just off the west side of Temple Square sits the Church History Museum...

And next door to that is my home-away-from-home, the Family History Library...

Between the two buildings is a small plaza, at the rear of which stands a pioneer log cabin:

Hmmm...15 x 20 feet; that's not much bigger than our little coach house in Texas.  Here's a peek inside:

After my quick walking tour, I went back to the books on the third floor of the library.  

You would think two weeks would be more than enough time to do research.  I have so many things that I want to look up here that I've been playing "beat the clock" every day!  I only have three days left and I'll just barely get through my to-do list.

Here's my plan of attack:

While doing research the past eight months, I tore up an old atlas and as I was making my tree on Ancestry.com, I also wrote family names in the counties in the states where they lived, color-coding the outline by family group (Roger's, mine,  mother's and father's branches of each).

 Those counties outlined in several colors were the ones I focused on this week, meaning they had lots of different family groups from there.  Today was "Look up Massachusetts" day for me.  I started with Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket, just because I was interested in the ancestors from there (sea captains).

 Since I had already written the surnames on the map, it was easy for me to look them up on my family tree the night before and make lists of their full names and dates (next to counties and towns). 

I could check the indexes in books from those counties to see if my ancestors were in the books.  Oh, and did I mention this place is huge?

This is just one of dozens of rows of books from every county in every state in the United States (and that's just the U.S.; international collections are on other floors).  Census, births, deaths, marriages, history, etc. etc.   I was more interested in the local history of each county.  It makes the names on a chart a lot more meaningful after you've read a bit about their day-to-day lives.

Time and again, what was once just a nondescript random name on my family tree turned into a fascinating character after just a little research.

Once I found a reference to an ancestor in a book, I marked it gently with a paper clip (paper tabs would have been better), then I made copies for later reference.  

Notice the card?  The copy machines here use cards to pay for the copies.  At 5 cents for each  copy, it's a steal.  I bought that $20 card the first day and today I used up the last copies on it and bought another card for $5.  They sell them in vending machines in all denominations:

There are also dozens of computer terminals for on-line research.  I didn't use those; I figure I can do that from home.  I wanted to focus on things that I wouldn't be able to find on line.

When I come across an item that is on microfilm, I spend time on the second floor at the microfilm machines.

I especially enjoyed looking up Quaker meeting minutes that included people from my grandmother's family in Parke County, Indiana in the 1800s, and reading about them in the flowery script of the time. 

 The overriding theme of my family tree seems to be "The Puritans vs. the Quakers."  I am proud to be descended from Mary Dyer, who was hung on Boston Common in 1660 for espousing her Quaker beliefs, even after the Puritans in Massachusetts told her to go home to her husband in Rhode Island and stay there.  This week I discovered that in addition to Mary Dyer (who I already knew about), I also have several other Quaker "rebel rousers" in my tree (father's side).  I also discovered several Puritans in my tree (mother's side) who were harassing the Quakers in Massachusetts.  

We've discovered that most of my ancestors landed in New England, whereas most of Roger's ancestors landed in Virginia.  He even has ancestors who landed in Jamestown Colony, although not in the first group, of which all but 60 of 500 died.  His ancestors landed there shortly thereafter, though.  (Note to our friends Bill and Nancy:  The name "Mills" keeps cropping up in Roger's tree from the Carolinas -- wonder if you're related?)  Anyway, enough family stuff.  I realize nobody is interested in our family tree except possibly our cousins.

The pet picture of the day shows Bandido and Charlie taking a late afternoon rest.  I think Bandido is daydreaming about the Oregon beaches; he sure doesn't like Salt Lake City!!  More likely, he's probably wondering when his dad will come home.

Yakima Valley, Washington --- Wine Country

Roger here....   This post is from the Yakima Valley of Washington, which is known for the cultivation of great fruit and the production of very good wine.  As you can see from the opening photo, we have left the cool, green parts of the Pacific Northwest and have arrived in the much drier, warmer, and less green climate on the east side of the mountains.

Just a little explanation before talking about this area --- Some of you who know us well have probably figured out that we have been pretty far behind with our postings.  Visits with friends and family have necessitated writing the posts some time after the events actually occurred.  By the time you read this post and the previous post (Mt. Rainier),  I will be in Indiana doing some consulting work with my former employer while Dianne has some quiet time with the dogs in Salt Lake City.  There won't be much to post about during the next two weeks, but we should finally be closer to real time.

After a relatively short drive from the Mt. Rainier area, we arrived at the Wine Country RV Park in Prosser, WA around noon.  We checked in.  Turned on the air conditioning. Gave the dogs treats, and drove a couple miles to the Hogue Cellars.  We wanted to stop there because of a great Sangiovese wine from that winery that our friends John and Audrey shared with us last winter in Texas.  We were disappointed to learn that it is no longer produced.  We did taste some of the wines from that location, but only bought a bottle of merlot reserve and a bottle of tasty rose.  

It was still early in the day, so we dropped by the nearby Desert Wind tasting room.  Guess what!  They had Sangiovese (a little hard to find) --- Dianne's favorite.  It was good.  It was extremely reasonably priced.  We ended up buying nine bottles of Sangiovese and three bottles of a red blend that I liked.  I guess that made up for the money we did not spend at Hogue :-)

One of the activities that we enjoy in the tasting rooms is looking at all the wine-related paraphernalia and usually buying something we enjoy, but don't necessarily need.  The Desert Wind shop caught Dianne's fancy.  She bought some wine glass covers to keep the gnats out of the wine when sitting under our pergola in Texas, as well as some of those humorous wine napkins for our Texas happy hours.

The next morning we drove to a local fruit market where we bought cantaloupe, peaches and strawberries.  That afternoon we visiting three tasting rooms that were walking distance from our RV park, but we did not walk.  (It was in the mid-nineties).  We did not walk.  Our first stop was the Willow Crest tasting room, where we bought two bottles of Almond Roka Creme.  We will be pouring this over ice cream and in coffee (on special occasions).  Soooo good.  We also bought a dark blue wine glass made from a wine bottle to replace one that we broke last winter.

Next door was the most imaginative tasting room.  The Airfield winery was built to look like an airport hangar.  We only bought one bottle of Riesling there; however, I bought a baseball cap and Dianne picked out a t-shirt.  We like the wine here, but we really liked the logos on their stuff.

Our last stop was the Apex tasting room (only a block away).  We both really liked the wines here.  Again, like most wines from this region, they were very reasonably priced.  We bought a case --- half Syrah, half Cab.  We cannot buy any more wine or the motor home will be too heavy to make it over the next mountain range.

Since leaving Texas in April, we have visited four wine areas:  Temecula, CA;  Napa, CA; the Willamette Valley of Oregon; and the Yakima Valley of Washington.  My least favorite (for wine) was Temecula.  It was also pricey to taste and to buy, for no particular reason.  The town of Temecula is really nice, though.  Napa was fun and beautiful, but it was difficult to get to because of the traffic and kind of a hassle.  The wine was great there, but extremely expensive.  Also, they don't bother too much with gift shop items -- guess they don't feel the need to.  The Willamette Valley was the most beautiful, but we don't especially care for Pinots, which is the specialty of the place.  The Yakima Valley was far less pretentious than the other places, but for us, the wines were more of what we like.  It was also far, far less expensive; therefore, far more tempting to purchase.  We may well have wine shipped from here to Texas, if our growing supplies ever run low.

The places we visited in the Yakima Valley were nice, very appealing;  however, they did not have the elaborate landscaping of Napa or Oregon.  That is what we thought until we saw this place.  Oh, nevermind, it is a plant nursery.

After leaving Prosser, WA three days of driving (3-4 hours per day), with one-night stops in Baker City, Oregon and Hagerman, Idaho, brought us to Salt Lake City where I am writing this post.  (Well, as you know, I am actually in Indiana as you are reading this, but I wrote it in Salt Lake City).

The pet picture of the day shows Tequila keeping an eye on the open road.  It kind of reminds me of the Batman silhouette.  

This is my view as we travel the highways in the motor home -- the back of Tequila's head as she sits comfortably on my lap!  -- D.