Coming Home From Back East

I visited all kinds of interesting historical sights with my family on our 1971 trip back east.  It was an amazing adventure, and it helped to prepare me for my American History studies in high school and college, and later when I taught 7th grade American History in Junior High.

We also visited some of the major church historical sights for our church, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day-saints.  Being a teenager, I don't suppose I paid as much attention to these places as I would have if I had been older, but still, they made a difference.

One summer evening we went to the Hill Cummorra Pageant outside the town of Palmyra, New York.  The pageant is performed during the summer and depicts the beginnings of the church.  The pageant is very popular, members of the church come from all around the world to see it, so dad dropped Keith and me off in the middle of the afternoon to save seats for our family.   There were lots of people doing the same thing, and missionaries roamed through the crowd, visiting with people and explaining about the church to nonmembers.  A couple of missionaries came over to talk to Keith and I, and we visited with the elders for awhile, telling them where we were from and asking questions about their mission.  The missionaries were beginning to get excited as they talked with us, thinking that they had found some interested investigators, I suppose, until they asked if we wanted to find out more about the church.  Then Keith burst their bubble by telling them dad was a bishop in the church and we already knew all about the church.

We visited other important places on our way home, slowly making our way back across the country towards Arizona.  We drove through Colorado on mom's birthday, enjoying the beautiful scenery and cool weather, although mom wasn't too thrilled with the steep cliffs and winding road as we crossed the Rocky Mountains. 

Early the next morning, on my 15th birthday, we crossed into Arizona at Four Corners.  Here it was possible to stand in one spot and touch Colorado, Utah, Arizona, and New Mexico all at the same time, hence the name, Four Corners.  This was in the middle of no where, on a high, flat plateau.  Dad surprised me by asking if I would like to drive the truck for a while.  I was thrilled, a scared!  I suppose dad figured there wasn't anything I could run into so it was safe, and he was right, but it was still pretty exciting to get to drive for the first time in my life.

We got home late that evening, ending three and a half weeks of traveling all the way across the country with eight people in the back of a pick of truck (inside a camper, of course.)  It had been a glorious vacation, but it was sure good to get back to our own house, our own beds, our own bathrooms, and lots and lots of room!