The Final Trip to Finals

This weekend was our typical marching band St. George weekend. As always, Matthew traveled with the band while Kevin, Malia and I made our way southward separately. The Red Rocks state finals were held on Friday night so that was our activity for the evening. The marching band has not done super well this season, for reasons that Matthew will gladly rant about, so he wasn’t overly optimistic about their chances of doing well in the state finals. As expected, they did not walk away with any awards. The Bands of America competition was yesterday and although they didn’t win any awards there either, Matthew felt like it was a good performance, and a good way to end the season.

As for our non-band related activities, Kevin, Malia and I visited a dinosaur tracks museum yesterday morning. About twenty years ago, a local businessman was doing some work on a property he owned and uncovered a layer of fossilized dinosaur footprints. He was smart enough and conscientious enough to know that his discovery had value to the scientific community, so he worked with a variety of different organizations that helped gather enough funds to build a museum over the site. It is still actively being excavated, which is cool, and it was far more interesting than it may sound. Due to the many different footprints, tail marks, and even butt prints left by dinosaurs, they have been able to learn quite a bit about dinosaur behavior. I found it fascinating!

We also stopped by the Red Cliffs Temple. We didn’t have time to go in, but we took some time to wander the grounds and take some pictures. It was a pleasant way to while away an hour before hitting the road.

This was our last marching band related trip to St. George. In some ways, it is kind of sad that we are done with that part of our lives. It has been nice to get away for a few days and we have discovered and seen some fun things trying to fill the time between marching band events. But maybe that just means that we will explore some new places in future. Because these short getaways have been fun.

A Quick Trip to the Desert

The state marching band finals were this past weekend, so once again, Kevin, Malia and I made the trek to St. George to support Matthew. The finals didn’t coincide with fall break like they did last year, and we didn’t want Malia to miss more school than she needs to (And she really, really doesn’t want to miss more school than she needs to. Now that she had gotten her middle school “sea legs,” she is back to loving school.), so we did just a quick overnight trip. We left on Friday morning so we could arrive with enough time for an early dinner and the opportunity to get a decent seat in the stadium. We watched the competition in the evening and then headed to the hotel for the night. 

Yesterday morning, we traveled just outside of town to visit Silver Reef, a local ghost town that was once the location of one of only two silver mines found in sandstone in the world. Once the silver rush was over, the town completely died and even most of the buildings were dismantled and moved to other locations due to the scarcity of timber in the area. But some local citizens have put a lot of time and money into restoring and preserving what’s there and it was a pretty neat stop. As with many old west style communities, there were some colorful stories about fights, murders, and general disturbances of the peace. 

There were also tarantulas. And I mean that literally. I’ve never seen a tarantula in the wild before, and to be honest, I was equal parts fascinated and icked out. (If you need some background on my spider issues, check out last month’s post on this exact subject.) Malia thought it was completely disgusting, but neither her disgust nor my crawling skin prevented us from staring at the thing for a good long while. It’s that whole need to know where it is mentality. It was actually a pretty small one, but still. Tarantula. Big old hairy spider. It was a fairly cool morning, and it was just sunning itself on the sidewalk, but as it started to wander away and fell off the edge of the sidewalk, both Malia and I jumped. High. Yes, I know I’m admitting I’m a scaredy cat, but again, big hairy spider! Malia is our wildlife photographer though, so she took a picture of the spider anyway. And she took pictures of the lizards that we saw running all over the place. Those didn’t give us the heebie jeebies though, so she spent more time photographing them!

After lunch we headed back to the stadium to watch Matthew’s band perform in the Bands of America Competition, after which we headed home. We caught a spectacular sunset on the way and with our fairly late-night arrival back home, we were grateful for late church for once.

Matthew had a great weekend as well. He has made some really good friends in the band and the highlight of his band travel was the fun they had. They took third place in their division in the state finals, had some crazy rubber duck gags going all weekend, and generally enjoyed their trip.

We've got one more year of high school marching band for Matthew. I suspect next fall will see us in St. George one more time.

Toothless Goes on Spring Break

Tiny Toothless has been on the go again and as Nathan is his traveling buddy, Nathan has been traveling as well. This week is spring break for USU and Nathan, who has jumped back into college life with not quite as much abandon due to his continuing headache but just as much enthusiasm, took the opportunity to spend a few days in St. George with some friends. It has been a long, cold winter in Logan, with lots of snow, and they were all ready for some warmer weather. They rented a house, went hiking, visited the children’s museum and basically had a grand old time. The headache only really hit Nathan after their hike, but other than that he managed things well and had a good time. I think one of the highlights of the trip for Nathan was their visit to the St. George Tabernacle because they let him play the organ! He is looooooving his organ lessons and having the opportunity to play some of these old pipe organs is a completely different experience from playing the electric organs in the practice rooms. He tells me that just like pianos, every organ is a bit different.

Daniel has also been on the road this week. He had the opportunity to go to Las Vegas with the pep band which was providing support for the Utah State men’s basketball team. Vegas is most definitely not Daniel’s favorite place in the world, but he made the best of it and went to the temple. Talk about some stark differences. He gratefully left the strip and stepped onto holy ground. Just goes to show that no matter where you are, there are sacred spaces to be found. 

A Weekend Away

This weekend Kevin, Malia and I were in St. George. The state high school marching band finals were this weekend and we drove down to watch the competition and to act as Matthew’s food related emergency backup plan. This is the first time he has done any kind of an overnight trip without us. When he was twelve, he had planned to go on the yearly summer scout camp out, but as the dates got closer and closer, he got more and more uneasy, and he and Kevin decided together that going was not the right thing. The year after that was when Covid hit, and all such activities were cancelled for so long that he really hasn’t had many opportunities. But band is important to him, very important, so making this trip work was a necessity for him. In fact, he felt like this three-night jaunt would be a trial run for their longer and further away full band tour in the spring.

We have been talking and planning for months and while Matthew had a food plan and wanted very much to handle everything on his own, he did ask if we could be his emergency back-up just in case something went sideways. Well, nothing went wrong. He did great and had great support from the band teacher and the boosters. In fact, he felt so confident after several successfully managed days that the rest of us came home yesterday instead of staying until this morning like the band did.

While Matthew was busy living it up with his band cronies, Kev, Malia and I were having a mini vacation. We did attend the competition on Friday night though. The finals are held in St. George each year so that the weather is more temperate, but there has been an unusual cold snap and it was cold, so very cold outside. I think Malia and I were nearly frozen to the bleachers by the time the performance was over. At least we were smart enough to bring our coats and Kev brought the stadium blankets that he uses when BYU football games are played in inclement weather, so we were reasonably well prepared for the frigid temperatures.

The three of us spent the morning on Friday visiting some church historical sites in the St. George area. We visited the St. George temple and spent some time with the missionaries serving in the visitor’s center and got a peek at the current state of the temple renovations. We also took a tour of the St. George Tabernacle. I’m always terribly impressed with the quality of the pioneer workmanship that went into creating these amazing buildings, and this tabernacle was no exception. It was absolutely beautiful, and we heard some pretty neat stories about the history of St. George and the tabernacle itself. 

We visited Brigham Young’s winter home as well and learned a bit more about this particular prophet. I think my favorite story was about the building of the St. George Temple. Brigham Young knew the temple should be topped by a dome. The original plans had a steeple, but since the tabernacle had a spire, he wanted the temple to be different and knew a dome was just the thing. Plans were adjusted and there was a dome built. But when Brigham Young saw it, he declared that it was too short. The dome needed to be taller, and he wanted them to fix it. Not long after that, Brigham Young passed away, so those working on the temple just left the short dome in place. But to their chagrin, within a year of Brigham Young’s death, lightning struck the temple and the dome was destroyed by the resulting fire. The rest of the temple was unaffected. At that point, the decision was made to make the dome tower taller, just as Brigham had told them it needed to be.

Yesterday morning we went on a hunt for some petroglyphs. I found a site that was not far away, just over the border into Arizona, so we decided to head out and see the sites. We followed the directions we found on the internet, and it only took us a few minutes to realize that the website had neglected to provide the information that you really needed a truck or 4-wheel drive off roading vehicle to get to the site. We quickly decided to abort that mission and set to work finding some petroglyphs elsewhere. We ended up driving to a giant rock covered in petroglyphs that was located in the middle of the neighborhood. Obviously, the rock was there long before the houses, but the developers had designed the neighborhood around the existing rock and made the area into a small park. The fully paved roads in a calm, residential area were a much better match for our vehicle! And we still got to see some cool petroglyphs. 

After the petroglyphs, we took a tour of the Jacob Hamblin home, another church historic site, but it was underwhelming after our time in the tabernacle and Brigham Young’s home the previous day. Many of the stories told were the same and our interest was waning at that point. We did see a roadrunner while we were in the parking lot though. None of us had ever seen a roadrunner in person, so that was neat!

As I said earlier, Matthew felt comfortable enough in his ability to feed himself safely that after conferring with him, we decided to head home mid-day yesterday rather than stay until this morning. We arrived home last night, slept in our own beds, and awaited Matthew’s return. He got home midday today and despite the disappointment over the judging, he had a great time. He feels like he can handle the upcoming tour and that with some advanced planning and continued support from the band director and the parent chaperones, he can make it work. I think he can too. It ended up being a very successful weekend. Not only did we all have fun, but Matthew has gained some real confidence in this ability to feed himself safely on a school sponsored trip.