We drove over to the Grand Canyon Friday. It took three hours from our home in St George to arrive at the North rim. We found that May 21st may be just a little early. The elevation of the north rim is around 8000. there are some sections of the road through the forest that are more than 9000 feet. So even though is has been 80 to 90 degrees in St George it was really cool in the Park.

We hiked out to "Bright Angel Point" and drove to Imperial Point where we had a nice lunch. We took quite a few pictures. It was really breath taking on the hike. Two ways, very pretty and hard to breath because of the elevation.

We then drove back to St George after spending several hours at the Canyon. We had never been to "Pipe Springs National Monument" which in on the way as way to Grand Canyon. We discovered that the area was a large Church ranch in the 1850s where there were thousands of cattle and sheep were kept. They would provide Meat, Milk, Butter and Cheese for the workers on the St George Temple as it was being constructed.

Pipe Springs in now on the Southern Piute Indian Reservation and so there it several displays talking about the relationships between the Indians and the settlers. The are really favorable to the Church and talk about how the Mormons assisted the Indians. I was surprised that there would be such a great missionary tool in a National Monument. It was really neat.

Zions Park

We have been in our new home for almost a month now and things are going well. Mom has been asked to serve at the ward organist.

She is relating well with all of the young people in the ward. We may be the oldest members in the Riverbend Ward

The weather has started to get warm so we have started to spend some more time visiting the area. We went to Zions Park f0r a picnic and took a hike to Emerald Ponds. The first of three ponds is only a easy hike of .6 miles. There is a water fall that goes over the trail from the middle pond to the lower pond. It is great to have such a great place so close.

We are going up to Sandy this week end for Bruce's Graduation and some other business that we need to take care of so we will be bringing a other load of stuff from Sandy. We are going to fill up the car each time we make a trip to St George.

We found a kind on neat place just down the road from our house called Johnson's farm.

Several years ago the owners of the farm found some unusual tracks in the ground. They are Dinosaur tracks. They have also found many fossils in the area so now there is a area where they are recovering the fossils that is open to the public to visit for a fee. There is a open market every Saturday at Tuachan with entertainment and Crafts, food and Produce for sale. We will be going there next week to see what is going on.


Emerald ponds, you can see how the water falls from the middle pond over the trail as you go the the middle pond. The upper pond is another .3 miles and is at the bottom of a water fall the comes off of the high wall. the water falls around 1000 feet.