TRIP 19 | Saturday-Sunday, April 6-7, 2013

Allison is getting married in a week in Seattle. Both extended families converged in Provo so Allison could go through the temple for the first time. We planned to fly to Utah and then drive home in the car Allison was using at school. Carolyn drove to Google and we took the bus to Seattle and the light rail to the airport. After flying to SLC, David picked us up at the airport and I delivered a tube guitar amp I had built for him. The next morning Carolyn and Allison took off on errands all morning. In the afternoon both families met for the first time at the temple. Afterwards, David and Anissa fixed a delicious dinner for everyone at my parent's house. On Saturday morning we took off in Allison's car for home.

Butte, Montana

We drove north through Utah and Idaho and into Montana. When we hit I-90 we turned east for 5 miles to Butte, Montana. A year or two ago Carolyn and I listened to a really good book by Leigh Montville about Evel Knievel. Knievel grew up in Butte and spent most of his adult life there as well. The book made Butte sound like a rough mining town. We were not disappointed. From what we saw, the town is old, run down, and looks like the last construction took place in the 50's or 60's. It was great! The town was built on a hill. Beneath that hill are great deposits of silver and copper. From any vantage point in town there are a dozen old head frames visible perching over mine shafts.

Mighty heaps of earth

This view reminds me of Ether 10:23 - "...and all manner of metals; and they did dig it out of the earth; wherefore, they did cast up mighty heaps of earth to get ore, of gold, and of silver, and of iron, and of copper."

View of Butte from the top of the hill

Butte spread out below

From Butte we drove west to Missoula and then climbed through the Bitterroots before dropping down to the Silver Valley and Wallace. All was well at the Wallace house. It was raining. The weather in Wallace is similar to Seattle, lots of rain, but great summers. I planted a couple of blueberry bushes in the back yard.

Grandfather clock

Right before we left Utah, Carolyn's mom gave us this grandfather clock that had been in the house Carolyn's whole life. The clock was broken.

New suspension spring

We took the clock to Wallace and I brought it inside. I know nothing about clocks, but I opened the back and looked at the mechanism. After trying to figure out how things worked and how the pendulum attached to the gears, I noticed there must be a broken part. With the clock's instruction manual was a small envelope and it contained a new suspension spring, the exact part that was broken. I replaced the spring, wound the clock, and it appears to keep time and play the chimes.

With the threat of extended freezing weather passed, I turned off the heat in our house and in John's house. On Sunday after watching General Conference, we packed up and drove back to Seattle.