A Day in Box Elder County

It was the last Monday before school, so we took ourselves to the top of Utah and went to Golden Spike State Park. It was a LOOOng drive, but we arrived at 4 p.m. just in time for the steam engines' demonstrations. These are exact replicas of the 119 Union Pacific and Jupiter Central Pacific engines that met on May 10, 1869.

Here is the location of the tie where the two gold, one silver and one iron spikes were hammered in to join the east-west connection. Travel time from Iowa to California changed in one day from: 6 months, with likely death of at least one member of your party; to seven to 10 days.

Talmage has been obsessed recently with morse code and he asked the ranger if he had one he could use. The Ranger brought one out and Talmage had fun tapping out S.O.S.

Then we got to drive along the old track bed that was carved out by Chinese laborers. It's since been retired, as a causeway was built across the Great Salt Lake only a few years after the original connection was formed, saving 70 hours of travel time.

This was the Chinaman Arch. Now known as the Chinese Arch. PC in the form of less descriptive, if you ask me. I've never seen a Limestone arch before! But from what we learned at Timpanogos Cave it was easy to see how it was formed as there were rivulets of water running down the underside of the arch.

 

The overlook was very foreboding. Clint said if this was the view the saints had when Brigham Young said, "This is the place," they might have turned around and walked back to Nauvoo! Look at those salt beds and the dry, dry earth.

Then we went to ATK (formerly Thiokol) Rocket Museum

It's not every day you get to play inside a section of a booster rocket that launched the space shuttle.

They kept this up for a half an hour.

Then for the inspiration part of our family night, we went to the Brigham City cemetery and visited Lorenzo Snow's grave and those of his eight or so wives and many children. It was interesting and we realized we need to learn more about President Snow.