MnR Ogden Mission: Joseph Smith Birthplace Memorial: OCTOBER: A Kaleidoscope of Color

WEEK FOUR (October 6-12)

The leaves are really starting to fall but the amount of color everywhere you look is still unbelievable.

It is actually easier to see some of the sights along the road as we drive now that the leaves are not so thick.


Our road (route 14) runs along the White River

I find it interesting to see how most of the homes set nestled on the hills with tons of green grass (always mowed) all around.

There seems to be a lot of LDS members on the go for conference weekend. Also, still a lot of leaf lookers. As a result, we have been busy every day, all day long. One thing about being on Eastern time, it is after we get home that most BYU football games start. On the negative side, we have to wait for conference sessions and the night meeting ended pretty late in the day. I was supposed to go to the Chapel for Priesthood Meeting but the sister missionaries in the area called Rhonda to take them to Bethel to see one of their investigators who got run-over by a bull and broke her nose and some bones in her back. They had been to the hospital 2 times earlier in the day and were out of miles. As a result, with no transportation, I stayed in the apartment and watched it on live TV for the first time. One problem with the live TV, about 20 minutes before the end of the morning sessions both Saturday and Sunday, there was some problem with interference from the sun and the TV signal which caused it to go blank for several minutes thus ruining the talk. Had to make-up those talks up on the internet.

(I still find the flowers and surroundings at the JS Monument to be especially beautiful).

Sunday we had to go in early as more tour buses came with larger numbers than the two people on Schedule can handle. We just stayed the rest of the day because our shift was 4-7 and lock-up. It was quite a bit cooler today. The leaves are starting to fall quite rapidly at this point.

By Monday, it rained off and on throughout the day, a lot cooler and quite windy--yet we still had a lot of visitors. By late afternoon, a couple of the home-evening people had called and said the weather was too bad and they weren’t coming, All of a sudden we really had some fierce wind and rain. People had seen on TV about a tornado warning so the ladies hurried and tried to call all home evening people cancelling the night. Well, some didn’t get the message and they kept stringing in and in so we ended up calling those who lived close and told them it was “on” again. Ended up with a pretty good turn out after all.

Tuesday turned out to be a much better day as far as the weather was concerned so the crowds returned as well. About the only thing not doing as well is the foliage. After the big winds last night, they really took a hit. With all the people coming out, Rhonda had several groups of people from Midway. We didn’t know them but we knew common people in town.

Wednesday was our “day off” this week as we traded with Osborne’s so they could spend time with their daughter who came to town. On our way shopping, we stopped at the Quechee Gorge. It was a neat, deep canyon with the river running through the bottom. We were planning on going to a couple more towns farther down the road but there was so much traffic that we decided instead to go to Dartmouth College. We went to the “Special Collections” library. As we went to the desk, the girl ask if she could help us then looked up and saw our missionary tags and said, "I know, the Book of Mormon." She brought out an 1830 first edition of the Book of Mormon. We were permitted to handle it, look through it and do about anything we wanted except use it to make photo copies. They didn’t want to lay it flat and cause damage to the back. It was pretty neat to get to handle it like that. The girl said it was the most highly circulated book in their library.

The campus
at Dartmouth
was very nice. The buildings all had a "New England" appearance.

The 1830 'First Edition' of the Book of Mormon is found in the "Special Collections" Library.

(Below: Special Collections Library Building)
Other pictures are some of the other buildings on campus.

After picking up a few more groceries, we didn’t feel like just sitting in the apartment so we took a ride to Tunbridge to see what we tell people about. (Joseph Smith Sr. met Lucy Mack at the village store in Tunbridge). It turned out to be quite a nice little town. Several covered bridges, etc. It is about 6 miles from South Royalton.

Tunbridge Cemetary

Tunbridge

We, again, had to accommodate extra hours to our schedule for tour buses on Thursday. We had over 200 people that day and, as usual, greeted more people that we knew from American Fork, Midway, and St. George.

The closest town to the JSB Memorial is South Royalton. We decided to snap a few pictures of the town "green" and surrounding buildings and homes. The Vermont Law School is right there as well.

The park in the center of town is called the "Green"

Stores

Post Office

Bank

Vermont Law School

Some Church

Homes


More Homes

Saturday morning, we decided to drive up to the Memorial and hike "Patriarch Hill" which is the highest hill over-looking the original Solomon Mack farm.

We did fine on the road where we often take visitors in the golf cart. But once we started on the actual hiking trail, the leaves were so thick that we could not tell where the path went. We wandered around a while until we finally spotted a tree with a little blue arrow. Hurrah! We were back on the path again!
The hike ended up be a little longer than I had expected, but it was a perfect day and really seemed good to be out and moving around.