Dear Friends:
This is the third post about our recent Pioneer Trek near Lampasas, Texas. If you want to see the previous post, click here.
When we last left off, everyone had dinner and were engaged in discussions with their respective Bishops. Next, we decided to let the kids blow off a little steam with a giant dance...a hoe-down!
I spent dinner getting the sound system working, and we held the event in a large barn. I have no idea what the horses thought of all the noise...
If only the pioneers had computers to run their dances ; )
Our youth love to do certain line dances. One of these is for the song Footloose. It never fails to get everyone on the dance floor! The video is a little dark, due to the barn, but you'll see what I mean:
Here's some footage from the square dancing:
After walking several miles that day, I'm impressed with the level of energy those kids had ; ) They slept as well as they could that night.
The next day, we arose to a tiny rain shower, at almost exactly 6am - the perfect alarm clock, so that I didn't have to work as hard to get all the kids up ; )
Delicious breakfast...
My wife was one of the official photographers of the entire trek. She not only walked most of the trail, but did so with a giant camera and lens strapped to her neck. I believe this might be the only picture of the two of us together:
After cleaning up the campsite, we had all of the youth move to a different part of the ranch to participate in a service project. Service is something we really want the kids to understand and enjoy. The owner of the ranch was kind enough to allow us to use his land and we wanted to pay him back by getting real work done. They needed us to gather the cedar that was cut down, to burn it off. There are very few times that ranchers can actually burn open flames, in these drought conditions. This just happened to be one of those days. The youth worked very, very hard:
Service...with a smile!
You know most of they young men loved watching this... ; )
We finished the project and got back to the carts. We had to walk another 3 miles to the finish of the trek:
Some had much more fun than others. Here's a Ma and Pa that decided to pull the handcart in a unique way ; )
Trying to guide some of the carts through rough terrain...
We made our last push around a beautiful pond, and up a hill to our Welcome to the Valley event...
These are images as the handcarts pulled into the final area. We invited all of the parents and families to travel to the ranch and welcome their children home. In the original pioneer trek, many people would stop their work and run to greet the dozens of handcarts that would arrive into the Great Salt Lake Valley. We wanted the kids to feel proud of their accomplishment and for their parents to see them in action:
These young men were unique. They arrived at our original check-in building by taking a series of city busses all across Austin. The arrived with little to no equipment. No sleeping bags and no pioneer clothing. Their families don't have much, so we quickly solved all of the equipment issues so that they could fully participate in trek. I think you can see smiles on their faces right here:
Fortunately, my in-laws - who had been watching our kids while we were on trek - brought the kids up to the ranch for the close of the activity. It was fun to the show G-Man and L our pioneer clothing and all of the handcarts that we used.
I was so pleased with how the activity went. We were blessed with amazing weather, great teamwork, wonderful youth and I think the kids had a really good time. I'm grateful to have witnessed the joy on their faces:
Thanks for reading!!
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