This is The Place!

Becca and I planned a fun outing to This is the Place on August 19. It is such a cool place. First we took the train to Brigham Young's house (although, he never really lived there).


Sorry, but Austin had to have his own picture with the statue.

I'm still trying to picture Rachel in a dress walking across the plains. Especially with how hot it was on the day we were there. On the train. We loved the train. I think we rode it about 20 times. The park is situated on a hill, so I would recommend taking the train around once to get the layout of the stops, then get off at the top of the hill (with the Teepee's and Hogan's), and walk down.

Here's Brigham with the kids. He was great. He was very good at answering all the kids questions (and Austin had a lot!). We also loved that we could walk all around the house, and touch stuff, and really get a sense of how they really lived (with out A/C).

The gazebo in the back is where people get married. If you were to get married here, would you have to have a bonnet?

This is the Deseret News building. We spent a lot of time talking about how Mike would have worked here. He would have had 6 twelve hour days, a lot of it spend setting type (a VERY laborious task), and making paper out of old rags. He would have come home all ink-y, and not done a whole lot of writing. This was showing us how the type was set, and how the press worked. Austin, of course had many questions for him as well.

The Heber C. Kimball house (actually a mirror reproduction). This house was so cool! We weren't allowed to touch hardly anything because a lot of the items in the house were really his! Also, my kids loved the window into the cellar, and talking about the advantages of having a refrigerator. President Kimball had a kind of wacky floor plan because he was continually adding to his home to keep men working. He was very generous.This home was a home that held 9 family members. All these log cabins on First West were small homes that were built to house large families. How grateful I am that we each have our own room, and not one large room to share between the 5 of us.

Austin and Winston riding together. Mitchell was too cool to ride, so of course Colton was, too.

This petting zoo was so cool!! You got to go into the pen and pet the pygmy goats and cute sheep. There was even a baby sheep that was so soft. We also got to look at the pigs and rabbits (they WERE in pens). Their water came from a beautiful waterfall in the middle of the pen.
Becca and I loved the Relief Society Hall. Women would come to work on projects... and then they would leave them out! and just close the doors, without worrying about having the kids destroy them! This is a novel concept, and one I think we should revisit today.
The Pine Valley meeting house. We are still not sure why it's on the second story, but there was a stage, and they used this as an all purpose gathering place for plays, church meetings, and other group events.We rode the little train around the lake that supplied water for the mill right next to it. This is where you get the best view of the valley (as Austin is so aptly demonstrating).

We headed (walked/hiked) up to the Indian Village, and I discussed my new lashing skills with the Indian that built his teepee with his lashing skills (thank you 11 year old scout camp!)
We sat in these cool chairs where I proclaimed "These are pretty comfortable", and the girls replied, "Hey, these ARE comfortable!".We ALL made arrowhead necklaces in a Hogan that was very hot.
A visit to the millinery. The lovely milliner was gracious enough to let the girls try on her hats (which were BEAUTIFUL, by the way). This hat really fits Rachel's personality, I think). They just WERE NOT allowed to touch at all! She had a sewing machine in her shop, and I mentioned that it was an old sewing machine that she probably made her hats with, and she said she makes them all by hand. WOW!!
Ellie just HAD to visit the schoolhouse. So we did.
It was interesting to find out that the girls sat on one side of the room and the boys on the other. Austin, of course, had to know which row he would sit in if her was in 2nd grade... and was a bit disappointed to learn that she did not have a definative answer because it depends on which children were in the classroom.
Probably my favorite part was the chore house. I loved watching them do laundry, and beat the rugs clean. I think it really brought into perspective for the kids just how hard daily life was.
And here is where Becca and kids leave us...but we decide to stay and see a couple more things.We rode the train twice around to finally get off on the right stop to walk to Mary Fielding Smith's home. This was a beautiful home off the beaten path, but worth the walk. (Plus we loved the rest on the train. Have I mentioned that it was pretty hot that day?) Her home is off to the side to represent that she built (what a woman) her home in the Millcreek area away from the majority of the saints. Her home was fairly big, and light and airy. I loved it.Another view of our beautiful valley from a higher perspective.
We all decided that we wanted to see everything by this point...and we were pretty tired. However, there is a cemetary up above the main village, so we decided to walk up to it. We took a shortcut through a field, and ended up fairly close, and then we just had a little hike up on the sidewalk to get the rest of the way to it. Boy am I glad we made the effort. It was beautiful... and so serene. Even with Rachel throwing a fit (as evidenced in the above picture.).
A couple more out of the way houses (The Ashby Dugout, like the one the Ingalls family lived in in On the Banks of Plum Creek-Thank you Mitchell, The Ottinger-Little Hall, a firehouse), and were hoping to make it to the Huntsman Hotel, but they closed. Made it to Madsen Furniture and ZCMI, where we tried on these adorable hats:
We finished up the the Andrus Halfway House, a boarding house that had a beautiful kitchen.
It was such a great day; exhausting, but amazing. Even the kids said they loved it (including Mitchell), and wanted to come back with our neighbors. We opened and closed the place... and that's good enough for this year.