Memorial Day Weekend

Memorial Day weekend found us in St. George with Nate's family. It was a good trip with lots of time to hang out and do fun things with them. We visited the carousel, the park and the splash pad, and Grandma and Grandpa were kind enough to let Nate and I sneak out several times for little dates like running and the bookstore. I didn't get many pictures of the day to day fun, but here are a few from some outings we went on. It was a great trip.

I told Nate while we were planning the trip that I really wanted to go up Pine Valley Mountain and see some woods. He made it happen and on Sunday we headed up with the fam. It was beautiful.

And here's Leah during the weekend. She gave me her first smile while we were there!

Chillin' with Aunt Lindsey and Uncle Micah.

On Memorial Day proper, we went and visited a ghost town called Shunesburg right by Zion. It's privately owned and the owners are very picky about who they let in and when. Visitors are only allowed for about five hours out of the year on Memorial Day. And only if they are related to someone buried in the cemetery there. Nate did some creative internet research and found that he's actually something like a fifth cousin five times removed to someone buried there. So he held his breath and sweated as he talked to the lady in charge over the phone, and he managed to get us in.

There a few reasons we went.

1. Nate presented a paper at the Mormon History Association last year that had Shunesburg as a focus, including specifically the Millett family in Zion Canyon.

2. It was our only chance to see the mouth of Parunuweap Canyon, which we hiked in last year. The mouth is closed to the public because of indian ruins.

3. John Wesley Powell and other awesome people in the book Nate is working on visited it.

4. They said we couldn't go, so we wanted to really really bad. (Personally, this was my main reason for going.)

It was a beautiful place. There was a very old house and lots of ruins of other buildings, along with a small cemetery. And lots of nice old ladies telling me not to let the baby get sunburned.

We passed ostriches on the way back. Kind of fun.

On the way back to St. George we stopped in a little town called Virgin to feed and change little Leah. I must say the little trading post/tourist trap we ended up at was a cultural experience.

Yes. That is the back end of a deer.

There was a petting zoo. You could buy carrots to feed to the animals. The kids loved it.

A deer in the petting zoo.

Yeah.