Pioneer Tour in Salt Lake City

Here is a Pony Express Monument dedicated by President Hinckley at This is the Place. Owen, Olivia, Levi and Peter pose in front of a horse switch.



Levi and Olivia enjoy the free space and chasing unsuspecting Canadian Geese.


After that we had a quick stop at the Salt Lake Cemetery to visit the Hinckley Family grave.

Nothing like a quick ride up the elevator to the 26th floor of the Church Office Building. The boys drew a lot of attention from the sweet elderly ladies conducting the tour. They thought the "cowboys" were cute.

And last stop: The Beehive House to tour Brigham Young's house.

WHEELer farm

April 2, 2009
I happened to have a dentist-ish appointment across the street from Wheeler Farm, so I packed up the boys and we went to the farm afterwards. It was cold, but bearable for an hour or two. Since we started learning about covered wagons we took pictures by any old farm equipment that even slightly resembled a wagon. Here are some fun shots:

 
This bedless wagon was great for getting a close look at the axles and wheels

 
A plough, but it has wheels and an axle!

 
I'm not sure exactly what farm chore this was used for, but it looks wagonish (Yes, Alexander is wearing his Batman pajamas shirt)


Alexander was asking about the barbed wire (he's pointing at it with a stick here), and I realized that we never really did the barbed wire inquiries in the "Last of the Old Cowboys" section. So, I quickly explained here. Now can we put another cow on the wall?

This Is The Place Monument

3/17/09
Salt Lake City, Utah

With the promise of warm weather we visited This Is The Place Monument (but not the Heritage Park where you have to buy a ticket) to picnic on the grass, read a cattle trail book we wanted to finish, draw and log, and soak up some old west pioneer spirit in the historic place where the Mormon pioneers entered the Salt Lake valley. The day started off chilly, but warmed up later (must have been the luck o' the Irish). After awhile we took a walk along the statuary path, where we saw several pioneer and early settler memorials, including a fun Pony Express monument. The Pony Express Line actually passed through this canyon, I believe. It was fun for me to see that monument since I'm reading a book about the Pony Express right now. We'll have to come back to here later when we officially get to that section of our theme.
 
Alexander's drawing of This Is The Place Monument. Pretty good, eh?

 
It was hard to get both boys to hold still at the same time in front of the monument


Alexander pushing an iron handcart. The real pioneers had a little more success in getting their handcarts to move.

In February we took a trip to the pioneer museum in SLC. Lucky for us Siena was in town too. Owen poses in front of a handcart.

Parts of a wheel: hub, tire and spokes. We know those well.

Looks like this pioneer company is ready to depart for their next adventure.

The song says You Don't have to push a handcart, but we do anyways.

Singing Cowboy/girl Guitars

Alexander and I made these guitars for the "Singing Cowboy" section of the Wild West theme. This was our last big cowboy activity we did before finally moving on to pioneers (though I think we'll never be able to really say we've ended our "cowboy school" as Alexander calls it).

We cut up some large cardboard boxes to make three guitars: one for Alexander, Lincoln, and me. Alexander only did a little of the cutting, in case you were worried.

Alexander was better skilled at cutting the duct tape he picked out with Daniel at the hardware store, though even that proved to be sticky. Ha ha. Actually, he was really good at taping the guitars together. We had a lot of fun making them.

Like all the singing cowboy's quitars, ours had to bear some great western graphics.


Alexander's: That dark figure is himself as a cowboy, lassoing the smiling cattle and/or horses you see scattered around. You may be able to spot his nickname "Ale" among the coils of the very long lariat.

Mine: Dreaming of Daniel (in his Sheriff Woody costume).

Lincoln's!

We put strings on the guitars, following an online tutorial for making cereal box guitars. The strings are stretchy cord for making beaded bracelets. With some effort the guitars can be tuned and played, but we're not very skilled in that area. I was hoping Uncle Mark would help out there. We ran out of cord before we did Lincoln's, and still never got to it, even after buying more cord.  This picture was taken after we reinforced the bendy necks with narrow wooden dowels.

And now for a special treat! Another video of my awful singing! Please stop groaning, it's rude. I just wanted to show them in action. We're just strumming, not trying any chords or anything remotely complicated. Notice Alexander's "wah wah wahs."

Brigham Young

We learned about the life of Brigham Young and the influence he had bringing the saints to Utah. The next day we visited the Beehive House and The Daughters of Mormon Pioneers Museum. Both are free and very interesting. Brigham Young's house ran like clockwork. He required for his children 8 hours of work, including school, 8 of play and 8 hours of sleep. Peter liked seeing Brigham Young's top hat and Owen liked the toy room.

I couldn't find my camera that day so these are bad cell phone camera shots.

We walked over to his grave in a near by park but unfortunately the gates were locked. We were lucky to have Mark with us this day. He had a meeting downtown so it worked out perfectly.