Trek Day 1

So I have been wanting to journal our trek experience since we got home but have had trouble finding the time. I decided that the situation was not likely to improve in the near future so I just decided to suck it up and do it. I will break it down by day to make it easier to follow.

I have to admit that Day 1 was hard. We needed to be at the stake center at five in the morning which meant waking up at four. The problem was compounded by the fact that we could not get a decent nights sleep. We had to leave Bailey with Jenn's folks which while we know they are capable was still hard. Plus there were the nerves and anxiety about Trek. What if our kids misbehave? What if they won't listen to us? What if we have trouble buying into it? So plagued with doubt and more than a little fatigued we made for the stake center.

Families were not assigned at this point so we listened to some speakers try to set the tone of what we were doing and then made our way to the Trek site. We rode with two of the young men from our ward. The drive was uneventful (save for the vicious cows on the road) and we arrived on time. There was a lot of milling about without any of us really sure what we were doing but then the families began to be assigned. I felt like the youth were sizing us up as they made their way over to join our family (except for Marleena who at least knew of us). We did have one boon to our family in the form of Mindy Childs. Her dad supplied us with a sturdy rod to loop about a leading rope on our wagon, the result, a two horse team! (It will make sense as you look at the pictures).

We listened to more speakers as the youth chomped at the bit to be off. Jenn and I were supposed to be cheer leaders to see that everyone's spirits remained high but to be honest with as much sleep as we got it was all we could do to plod on. I can only speak for myself but I definitely had some internalized murmuring.

Their were a few vignettes, most of which we missed being at the end of the company. Nevertheless our youth were great, they were eager to pull the cart, fun to engage in conversation and all seemed to have great attitudes. It was funny that a number of them had parents on the trek who would come up to us and thank us sincerely for helping their child. I could only reply, "your child is amazing, it really hasn't been a strain on us." I would like to reaffirm that sentiment the youth that we had the privilege of getting to know gave me faith in the rising generation.

There was a lot of stop and go which inspired some pioneer road rage but there were no fatalities (fortunately a pioneer drive-by involves pine cones).

One incident I think bears mentioning is that they had a raid of our handcarts to catch smugglers, (stashed i-Pods and the like). They made us completely empty our cart after having only recently loaded it. One of the "sheriffs" commented about the ponchos somewhat mockingly. He said, "It's like they expect it to rain or something." Famous last words. We reached the rendezvous and thick gray clouds began gathering above us. Then a few drops became a few more and the rains came down upon us. I bet there were more than a few Trekkers glad for those ponchos.

They really stressed the need to keep our families together but we quickly found that it wasn't really feasible at the stops. They were good youth and we just had to trust them. At the rendezvous we had black powder shooting, archery (nailed me a boar I did), apple fritters and a stick pull among other pioneer like games and activities. I met my match in the stick pull, literally. My son Scott Dover and I could not budge the other one inch, finally we broke the stick. We tried again with similar results. We were forced to admit that it was a draw.

The night brought a fireside from our spiritual leader, President Challis (always great to hear him speak) and some wicked cool Spongebob jammies (Daniel). Then it was off to bed under the stars, well under the clouds anyway.