Mud Mountain Dam!!

So some spark of parenting ingenuity crept into my mind this past weekend and I decided to take our family on a "General Conference Saturday Adventure!!" The ambitious endeavours of my parents to keep conference weekend lively when I was a kid really spurred this idea forward. We used to load up the ole Ford Pickup Truck with supplies and throw all us kids in the back, long before riding on the tailgate was banned from safe family activities, then we would head to the mountains behind Vernon, AZ. After finding the perfect spot, we'd prop open the door of the truck and tune into the often static ridden AM radio station that conference was being broadcast on. We would then lay out the homemade picnic blankets and spend an entire afternoon just being together in the stillness of the beautiful outdoors. Somewhere, there is a tree that we all carved our names into, please note that this was long before we knew that carving names in trees was an act of vandalism. The beauty of glimpsing the fading green of summer and the blooming vibrancy of fall has always held a special spot in my memories. I will always miss my White Mountains (hills) in Arizona but nothing can beat the beauty of the autumn months here in Washington, the colors so vivid, the smell of rain so pungent, and the coolness of impatient winter so present, I love it in a way one acquires new tastes as they age. Avonleah was leading the hike at a pace that only a Marine Drill Sargeant would appreciate and finally stopped to rest in the above picture. . .poor Scott with his cane was not particularly thrilled with the hiking part but was a great sport. We finally made it to the view point overlooking the Mud Mountain Dam which apparantly was undergoing some construction work (not quite what view we were expecting), but a view nonetheless! It was a fun Saturday although for future reference the internet, DVR, and other modern luxuries have made the idea of conference being broadcast on an AM radio station completely obsolete!!