Calcite and halite

I thought I had a brilliant idea this week to get more steps in. Most of the time at work, I'm just sitting there, so I thought there was no reason I couldn't do 1,000 steps every hour. So that's what I've been doing. (It often involves being as inefficient as possible; for example, I found a small pile of garbage, so I threw it away one piece at a time, walking back and forth to the garbage can.) But I don't know how long it will last.

See, I've been having stressful dreams that make me toss and turn and sleep poorly, and at least one of them is directly related to dreaming about taking more steps. So if these stressful dreams keep happening, I'll have to abandon the stepping.

That increased my steps this week. But so did crossing off two more things from my bucket list.

Yesterday (Saturday), I went down to Timpanogos Cave, which I had never been to. My dad came with me for the hike, but they were sold out of tickets for him to go on the cave tour.

The hike was a mile and a half one way, with a climb of about 1,000 feet, and it was all paved. So not too strenuous or difficult. It was a lovely hike up American Fork Canyon. We headed up through various geologic formations, including three that I remember from my field studies class five years ago: Tintic Quartzite, Ophir Shale, and Maxfield Limestone. (Every August, I find an excuse to talk about that class.)

The cave is located in the Deseret Limestone. There were various interpretive signs up the trail that showed the ages of the formations, but they didn't say what period they were. Once we got to the cave, I heard that some people hadn't showed up for their appointment, and they ended up letting my dad in the tour, even though he didn't have an appointment. So that was nice.

At the beginning of the tour, our guide said it was mostly a geological tour. So I asked what I thought was a straightforward geological question: "Is the Deseret Limestone Mississippian in age?" He said that was too geological for him to know. (Turns out it is, indeed, Mississippian.)

It was a wonderful cave, with all sorts of calcite formations. Caves are pretty fabulous. But as they talked about the formations and geared it to kids, I remembered that in elementary school, they emphasized the difference between stalactities and stalagmites. Of all the things we could learn in school, that's what they think is important?

The great heart of Timpanogos.

 Once our tour was over, we headed back down the trail and drove home. I was happy to see changing leaves. Fall is my favorite season, yet summer is the only season that I'm sad to see end. What's up with that?

But that wasn't the end of my bucket list day. In the evening, I took three friends up to the Great Salt Lake. The second saltiest body of water in the world is in my home county, yet I've never gone swimming in it. I had to fix that! So I headed up to Antelope Island to swim in the briny waters.

I must say it was less gross than I expected. There were lots of brine flies, but they flew away as you approached. The water was cooler than I expected for a lowland lake in August, but it was tolerable. And true to its reputation, it made me float. I can't float on my back, but I easily could in the GSL. I didn't put my face in the water, but as I got some water splashed in my nose, it was painful. I also found it charming to taste the saltiness on my lips. (I didn't deliberately drink it, of course.) I also liked admiring the brine shrimp. I felt safe in the water, because I couldn't sink, and there aren't any dangerous animals.

I would say that I feel like a true Utahn now. Except that I've never been skiing. And I have no intention of doing so. 

But since I spell it "Utahn," I am a true Utahn. It drives me nuts when out-of-staters insist on calling us "Utahans."

A Capitol idea

My county seat quest continued this week. (As I have told people about my goal, I have been surprised by the amount of people who don't know what a county seat is. So if you're one of those people, a county seat is essentially the capital of a county. I just have to visit the city, not necessarily the county offices or courthouse.)

I learned that the Wayne County Fair was this week, so I thought it would be a good time to go visit Loa. My day off this week was Tuesday, so off I went.

On the way down, I went through Salina in Sevier County. As I saw signs in the town, I decided to visit Miss Mary's Historical Museum, which is Salina's Daughters of Utah Pioneers Museum. I had heard the story behind this building through a song, so I was happy to see it. The way I understand it, a Presbyterian church was built in Salina in the 1880s, but it was later abandoned. In the 1920s, Mary McCullum was sent as a Presbyterian missionary to the Latter-day Saints (since I'm not allowed to say "Mormons" anymore 🙄), but that wasn't too fruitful. Soon, she painted an old piano pink and operated a musical school for all children, regardless of denomination. She became widely respected and kindly remembered.

Like all DUP museums, they had random artifacts. They had the original piano, but they had restored it to a wood color. WHY WOULD THEY DO THAT!? You can see wood pianos anytime. I wanted to see it pink! If they had to restore it anyway, they should have made it pink. Sheesh.

 And of course they had to make a nod to sericulture.

Then I headed down to Loa, Wayne County's seat. I learned it was named for Mauna Loa, because one of the settlers went to the Sandwich Islands on his mission and thought a nearby mountain looked like Mauna Loa. Earlier this year, I visited Iosepa, but I didn't know Utah had two pseudo-Hawaiian towns. I even had a Hawaiian-themed sandwich at a restaurant there, and I didn't even do it on purpose!

It turns out the Wayne County Fair didn't really start until Wednesday, so I was a day early, and it sounded more like a series of community events, not a fair like I imagined it. (I was imagining something like a state fair but on a tiny scale.) But I did go through and look at things in the town. I saw two polygamist wives go shopping at Family Dollar, one of them wearing a camo skirt. 

Loa also had an old tithing office, and a plaque on the lawn had an authentic piece of Hawaiian basalt from Mauna Loa.

 I was impressed by the beautiful Loa Ward building, but there weren't any signs saying how old it was.

 It happened to be open, so I wandered in and was awestruck by the beauty of its chapel.

Once I had finished my time in Loa, I figured I was close enough to Capitol Reef that I might as well go visit.

When I think about all the Augusts of my life, 2012 and 2013 stick out as the gold standards, the very best. August 2013 was when I first visited Capitol Reef as part of my geology field studies class. It was fun to be back at the Capitol Reef visitor's center; I hadn't been in the park since 2014. I bought a few souvenirs, but since I didn't have much time, I turned back around.

However, before I left the park, I decided to visit Chimney Rock. I saw signs pointing to it and cars pulling in, so I thought I would check it out.

There was a little trailhead and a sign saying the loop was about three miles. I was wearing my trail shoes, so I decided I had time to run it. It was cloudy and lightly sprinkling, which meant it wasn't too hot for running. 

It was simply amazing. I have never run in a national park before, and the views were stunning. I'd get to the top of a switchback and admire the view.

However, I was worried for part of the time; I worried the storm would get worse, and the signs were confusing, so I worried I was headed out on another eight-mile hike. But I did successfully and safely figure out where I was and made it safely to my car again.

And I felt pleased with myself at the end: the sign said the loop I went on was "strenuous," but I didn't think it was that strenuous, and I ran the whole thing!

Then I drove home, with a couple of stops along the way. It was a fun day.

That was the highlight of the week, but it wasn't the only highlight. 

Grapes are in season, so we made grape crisp, my famous grape bread (somehow I didn't get a picture), and grape juice.

At work, we discovered a mud wasp nest on our antique cash register. So my boss sprayed it down, and I broke it apart. Inside it, I found at least one spider and a wasp larva inside a papery coat. It was interesting, but it also made me shudder.

And since I missed the Wayne County Fair, I went to the Davis County Fair. They had a patriotic flag-burning ceremony. But really I only go to fairs for the food.

Simple pleasures

Sometimes it's about the little things in life. And August is full of simple pleasures.

For example, there are few things more enjoyable than picking plums from your own tree on a summer evening and eating them directly off the branch. Sadly, the plums are basically over for another year, but I got good use out of them. I love that they come back every year like clockwork; I can depend on them every August. We didn't have as many this year as we did in 2016, but last year we didn't have any.

 I made them into plum rosemary upside cake and plum crisp. The cake was especially yummy.

On Tuesday, my grandparents took me to see Pirates of Penzance at CenterPoint Theater, which I had never seen before. It was a little weird getting used to a nineteenth-century musical, even though I'm in the nineteenth century every day. I enjoyed it, and I enjoyed the outlandish costumes and the snarky, anachronistic comments on the supertitles.

Wednesday was my day off this week, so I used the opportunity to hit up four more county seats for my bucket list.

First I went to Heber (Wasatch County). I didn't do anything substantial there; just looking for fall treats to review. (I still haven't found them.)

Then I drove to Duchesne (Duchesne County). I had lunch in a little diner called Cowan's. When I got there, a white-trash man and a white-trash woman were fighting with each other over something. They looked like they could have been a father and daughter. They had ridden to the restaurant together, but she walked home. All the waitresses were perplexed about the whole incident, and I heard one of them say that the woman had applied for a job at the restaurant. Pro tip: If you want a job at a business, don't go to the business and behave badly. One man asked the waitress how you pronounce Duchesne. And there was a man doing a radio spot for the Duchesne County Fair and an advertisement for the restaurant. He was glad the fighting couple had left before he did his live radio recording.

Then I headed out to Vernal (Uintah County); my uncle used to live there, so it wasn't a new experience. The last time I was there was back in 2012. I was on my way to the Utah Field House of Natural History, but I saw a sign pointing to the DUP museum, so I took a detour there. It was across the street from the Vernal Temple, which I haven't been inside since its open house. The DUP volunteers were happy when I told them their museum was better than the ones in Ogden and Logan.

Then I headed to the dinosaur museum. Just like Salem, MA, has taken witches as its theme, Vernal has taken dinosaurs as its theme. Dinosaurs > witches. The Morrison Formation from the Jurassic Period of the Mesozoic Era in eastern Utah is fabulous. What I also like about this museum is its display of mammals from the Eocene Epoch of the Paleogene Period of the Cenozoic Era. Dinosaurs get all the publicity, but uintatheres and brontotheres are pretty cool too.

I had recently told my friend David about my plan to visit these county seats, and he suggested I could hit Manila (Daggett County) the same day as Vernal. I'm glad I listened to him. I drove up past Flaming Gorgeous (sorry) into Daggett County, my first time in that little county. Along the road, there were geological signs explaining what geologic formation you were in, what the age was, and an interesting fact about it. I appreciated it. I drove through the Cretaceous, Jurassic, Triassic, Permian, Pennsylvanian, and Precambrian, with a random spot of Oligocene.

I stopped and ate dinner in Manila, which was a tiny county seat. All these little towns have restaurants that try to be sit-down restaurants when they should really be fast food joints. I said I wanted water with my meal, and my tree-hugging conscience was dismayed when they brought me water in a paper cup with a plastic lid! At least I didn't have to use the straw!

This is the Daggett County town hall.

 Then I drove home through Wyoming. I could make some disparaging remark about Wyoming, but they have Yellowstone, so I won't.

It turns out Wednesday was also International Cat Day. It is entirely ridiculous that a useless little creature of another species should bring me such joy.

Saturday at This Is the Place was Dog Day, where entrance was only five dollars and people could bring their dogs. I was dreading this day, since dogs aren't my thing, and it was going to be busy, and I was stationed in the Native American Village (NAV), my least favorite place to work. But it was surprisingly not that busy, and there were few dogs. A coworker from another team was visiting the park with her mom, and the mom asked for my contact information because her company is hiring! I realized that This Is the Place really would be an ideal job if I didn't already have a degree. But I didn't go to college to work with no air conditioning and no benefits.

The park was also hosting a Lower Lights concert, right across from the NAV, so all day I got to see them set up and rehearse. One of the set-up crew was wearing a kilt, and he brought his daughter in a witch costume. Weird. I attended the concert in the evening as a guest, not as an employee. We usually see them at Christmas, and indeed, they apologized for becoming a Christmas band. They really are a lot of fun to hear live. I speculate that they were all in town the past week to record new albums, since it's been nearly two years since their last one.

I hope the rest of August turns out just as simply delightful.

A quintessential Mormon weekend

The past few days were a quintessential Mormon weekend. Like, they could have come straight out of a Deseret Book ad.

My YSA stake held a campout over three days at Cinnamon Creek, a Church-owned camp in Cache County. The stake has been planning and encouraging this camp all year. I signed up for it while I was unemployed. If I had had a job earlier, I don't know if I would have taken the time off for it, but since I had already signed up, I did take the time off. I'm glad I did. It amazes me that I was able to go camping with good meals and high-profile speakers all for free.

Thursday morning, we boarded school buses (owned by a transportation company) to head up near Paradise, Utah. We all unloaded and set up camp. There were two stakes there, so it was a giant group, and we had to spread out over several camps with Book of Mormon names. I was in Lehi, while most of the activities were in Gideon. (Both of those are Old Testament names as well.) Between Lehi and Gideon was a small trail, a little more than half a mile long, with a climb of 120 to 180 feet, depending on the direction. Rather than walk on the dusty road or crowd in the back of a pickup, I ran on the trail every time we had to switch between camps. It was enjoyable. I even used my headlamp to run back in the dark.

We had a lineup of special guests and speakers. After dinner on Thursday, we heard from Paul Cardall, a pianist who was born with heart problems and had a heart transplant. But he didn't do anything musical, so he just talked. I didn't dislike what he said, but sometimes it felt like he threw things out and didn't know where to go with what he said. He brought Jordan Moyes, a guitar-playing singer who was very talented, to fill in on the music.

After Paul Cardall, we heard from John Bytheway, the standup comedian/motivational speaker/scriptural teacher. He impersonated Barney Fife and gave good advice. I could tell most of his jokes were rehearsed (he calls Deseret Book "Desperate Book" because they publish him), but he began talking about metaphorical winds in life when it began to get windy at the camp, and he had some funny off-the-cuff things to say about it. But he said he doesn't understand where dinosaurs fit in, even though they seem straightforward to me!

It was great to hear speakers in such a lovely environment.

 A member of our stake presidency works for the Church. (Previously, I have been very annoyed by this member, as he once gave an insulting elders quorum lesson, and he literally dictated how bishopric members should sit next to each other in stake ward council meetings. But he hasn't done anything offensive recently. We're good now.) He had planned to premiere the new Book of Mormon videos at our camp, and he got approval from all Church departments to do so. But the First Presidency said no, because they want to wait until after general conference to debut them. Therefore, I suspect that (a) there are more massive changes coming at general conference, or (b) they are showing the Book of Mormon videos during general conference. Or both. Regardless, I am excited for that.

So instead, they brought in TC Christensen, who showed us clips from his movies 17 Miracles and Ephraim's Rescue. Just last week, I remarked to someone that TC Christensen is a filmmaker and not a historian, and the things he said about making movies totally confirmed that for me. I immediately recognized some problems with the Ephraim's Rescue clip. They had a Q&A session at the end, and I thought about asking him where he got his historical sources, but I didn't want to be a heckler. (Also, I don't like asking questions in big groups.)

After sleeping poorly in my tent, on Friday we got to choose three speakers to hear from out of four. First I heard from Michael Dunn, the managing director of BYUtv, who spoke on enduring. Then I heard from Brad Wilcox, a BYU professor who's famous for speaking on grace. After lunch, I heard from Sharon Eubank, first counselor in the general Relief Society presidency, who spoke on being spiritual first responders. I chose her instead of the other speaker because her venue had shade, and because I appreciate hearing from women after working on At the Pulpit. I appreciated hearing from someone who's not married for once.

On Friday evening, my ward had to help clean up after dinner, and one of our caterers owns the Thyme and Seasons restaurant in North Salt Lake. I felt really dumb and intimidated around him, because I felt like I kept messing up around him. But I think it's because he gave poor instructions.

Then Friday evening, we heard from Marlin K. Jensen, who formerly served as Church Historian and is currently a patriarch. Some people were annoyed with how long he spoke, but I wasn't. After he was done, I went to him and told him about working for the Church History Department and asked him a question about patriarchal blessings. I felt bad keeping him later, but I appreciated his response.

On Saturday morning, we could engage in various activities. I was excited to go to Porcupine Reservoir, just outside the camp. I went without the rest of my ward, who were doing other things. I stood up on a paddleboard for the first time ever, and I swam to the opposite shore and back. When I got done, people from my ward had come and were there cheering for me. Thanks guys! The "lake" was my favorite activity.

Then we helped do trail maintenance/creation for a service project, but I didn't know what I was doing, and to me, the trail looked fine just as it was. 

Then we finally headed back home, and in another bit of ultra Mormon-ness, the others on the bus were singing Disney songs and hymns.

But that's not quite the end of the ultra Mormon-ness. There's an old joke that says, "Why do Mormons lock their cars when they go to church? So no one puts zucchini in them." When I was cleaning up my campsite, there was a bag of zucchini and squash, so I took it with me. When we got back to our church, I asked others if they knew whose it was. They laughed that it was still hanging around, and they said it had been at the church when we left on Thursday, and they didn't know where it came from. No wonder Google's Fourth of July doodle featured Utah zucchini bread!

It was a fun weekend, and I'm glad I went. But it did give me some melancholy reflections on my mortality--not my mortality on earth, but as a YSA. Next summer is my last as a YSA. I think I was the second-oldest member from my ward. Most of the people from my ward were part of a youngster clique, and I didn't always feel included. I often thought that if I turned up missing, no one would notice. Of course, that has as much to do with my own awkwardness, shyness, and standoffishness as it does with anyone else. Today in elders quorum we talked about being more unified and not having any manner of -ites. I need to do better at that on my end.