Here we are in Cardston, Alberta. The weather today was beautiful and we have had a busy day again. I will need to come home to rest, cause so far on this trip we haven't done alot of that.
Driving around Cardston reminded Dan of Preston, Idaho alot. The Stake Center, right across the street from the Temple, is almost exactly the same as the church building in Grace. And the rolling farmland and pastures are just like it was when we were driving home to Idaho for weekends from Utah State Univ.
Cardston is a little Mormon town settled in 1887 by Charles O. Card. He brought 11 mormon families with him from Logan, Utah to form a small community in the hopes that the Canadian government would allow them to continue living as poligamists. The government said no but they stayed anyway and helped develop the region. He brought only his 4th wife with him to Canada, and she was the daughter of Brigham Young. Imagine leaving as a prominent citizen with wealth and luxuries and moving into a little (very little!) cabin in the wilderness with your family of four. Not the life for the faint of heart.
They turned his original house into a museum, which we saw this morning. The whole downtown is only about 6 blocks long and we walked to the Cards home and had breakfast and walked back.
After breakfast we went to the Carriage Museum. Oh, I know what some of you are thinking! Carriages????? But it was very fun and interesting also. Just to give you a couple of highlights:
It is the largest collection of carriages in North America.
They repair or restore carriages for people from all over both countries.
They have some that have quite interesting personal histories. (like the queen rode in two different ones on a couple of occasions)
And we sat in a replica of a stage coach that was used to film Shanghai Noon. (I sat where Jackie Chan sat!)
Fun stuff huh?
After that adventure we stopped at the grocery store and came back to the hotel to get ready for a Temple Session.
The Cardston Temple was incredibly beautiful and very unique. They used wood for the interior from all over the world. And when they redid the front of it to enclose a little pond, someone had stored enough of the original granite so that the whole new edition could be built out of the same stone. The other thing I have to say about it is it has more stairs you need to climb up and down on than any where else we have been. What a workout.
When we went outside to take pictures of the outside, a gentleman in the visitors center told us about owls that have made homes high up in the window ledges of the temople and have raised two sets of babies up there. They are enormous, Horned Owls. The story went that the Temple was having a problem with pidgeons and the people were praying for a solution to the problem and the owls showed up and nested. Owls scare away any other birds and prey on local rodents and small animals in the vicinity. A win, win situation for all (except for the pidgeons and the rodents).
This evening we are organizing our clothes again. Condensing our bags (we brought so many because we were in the car and had the room). And doing laundry. OK Dan did two loads of laundry while I checked blogspots, facebook, e-mail and did this blog. Hopefully we will get to bed at a decent hour(too late...it is almost midnight) and get some good sleep cause tomorrow will be another busy day!
Love and Kisses to all, squishes to the babies, and a big good night!
Dan and Nic
The Bits: August
5 years ago
