Decoration Day - Saturday, May 28, 2011

First stop, Mt. Pleasant, Utah
I still need to see a map, but south of Provo, we drove up Spanish Fork Canyon and veered south again.  We're close to central Utah.  The loop we took today was a beautiful drive.  This is sheep and turkey country, some ranching, some farming, and small towns with well preserved pioneer homesteads, churches, and civic buildings.  I'd only been here one other time in the early 1980s, and I had forgotten about the horseshoe.  There's a small mountain range and at the top there is a natural formation that looks like half of a hollowed out crater.  It's called the Horseshoe, and a lot of businesses from the area use it in their names.  Today it was covered with snow and quite breathtaking.  We toured a renovated pioneer farmhouse that sits just a few miles from the base of the Horseshoe.  There's nothing between them and the mountain, except deer, elk, and pines.  Beautiful.

Horseshoe - Sanpete County, Utah

This area was settled mostly by Danish and Swedish Mormon immigrants.  We found graves from my mother's side here.  They had about a hundred big American flags surrounding the square of military graves.  There was a small group of senior citizens who had set up a bake sale.  The proceeds would go to their community center.  I wish I would have bought something.  We also saw a local pageant queen with her gown, sash, and tiara, as she stopped in at the cemetery restroom.  I don't think there was a parade, but there must have been an official appearance that she had to make.

Second Stop - Spring City, Utah
We have ancestors from both sides of my family in this cemetery.  Years ago when I came here, I was amazed by everyone who came to clean up the weeds and celebrate the day with a graveyard picnic.  Everyone brought lawn chairs and visited with friends and family members who stopped by.  Now they have grass planted, so we didn't have to do any clean-up, but the place was still hopping with people.  As Dad found one of his aunt's grave sites, he also found a second cousin, and then a couple more cousins.  They swapped stories for a while and had a good visit.

Third Stop - Moroni, UtahWe decorated the grave of Soren Christian Christensen who is my great grandfather on my mother's side.  This is the only great grandparent that I knew.  I've been told that he use to say insufferably long prayers before meals.  I just remember visiting him in a nursing home.  He was funny and kind and always had a bowl of lemon drops that he would share with us kids.

Last Stop - Fountain Green, Utah
This is where James Campbell Livingston, my great, great grandpa, is buried.  The church has a DVD, Mountain to the Lord, about the building of the Salt Lake Temple, and much of it is the story of James Livingston who was the superintendent of the quarry where they got all the granite.  There's a monument to him up Little Cottonwood Canyon where the quarry is.  The church now uses it as vaults where they keep records buried.  He had an accident with some dynamite and eventually had to have his arm amputated.  He kept it with him in a box for the rest of his life because he wanted all of his parts buried with him so that he could be put back together quickly.  Part of this cemetery was flooded out years ago.  His is one of the graves that had to be moved.  I hope his arm made that last move with him.

We made four cemetery stops today.  We did a drive through in Nephi, but we don't have any of our people there.  Every one of them were full of flowers and flags.  They were interesting and beautiful.