Chapter 12 - Our Many Travels

In chapter three I mentioned some of the trips that I took with my parents prior to my marriage, all of which were in the Western states.  I am sure those trips instilled in me a desire to explore and visit the many varied places that I have seen.  My navy experience provided me the opportunity to visit a few foreign countries, including China (Shanghai), Formosa (now Taiwan), and the Philippines.   My missions with my wife took me to New Zealand, Australia, Samoa, Tonga and Tahiti.               Jeanné and I also took several trips and tours abroad; they took us to Mesoamerica, United Kingdom, Switzerland, Israel, Jordan, Egypt, Italy, Germany, Austria and Denmark.  As you will see, I have also visited almost all of the States and most of the providences of Canada so you could say I have seen much of the world.

 

While working as a Hospital Pharmacist I was able to visit a few cities.  During my work at the County Hospital I took Jeanné with me when I attended a hospital pharmacy conference in Los Angeles, California.  (Elizabeth Earl, the daughter of our dear friends Clive and Nellie Earl, tended our three children while we were gone.)  On that trip Nellie Vanderlinden, chief pharmacist at St. Marks Hospital (at that time and who later replaced me at LDS Hospital,) and a lady pharmacist who worked at Holy Cross Hospital in Salt Lake (whose name I can’t remember) both attended the conference with us, they took Jeanné and me to Catalina Island with them, as we had taxied them around the city in our car.   While working at LDS Hospital, I attended Pharmacy conventions in Connecticut and Toronto, Canada, and later went to Chicago where I visited the Chicago Clinics hospital pharmacy for a week.  Chicago Clinics pharmacy had just been recently remodeled and their chief pharmacist, Paul Parker (whom I met in Connecticut), invited me to stay in his home.  In chapter seven I mentioned how the trip was intended to help design the pharmacy in the new LDS Hospital expansion.  The visit to Connecticut was my first to New England and I was very impressed by the beauty of the area.  Jeanné was able to go with me when I went to Toronto.  During my trip to Chicago it was so humid that I sweat "gallons" of perspiration every day. The light summer-weight suit I had worn on that trip was always soaking wet. Was I glad to get out of that climate!!   Despite the humidity, it was a wonderful experience. As mentioned in chapter seven, Paul Parker later came and visited Jeanné and me here in Salt Lake, and stayed with us in our home a few days.

 

Our first car was a used light-brown 4‑door Ford sedan.  The most memorable thing about that car was that it would vapor lock -- sometimes in the most embarrassing places, like the middle of an intersection -- so I would have to get out and push it across the street.  Not too long after Reid was born, we drove up Parley's Canyon in that car to enjoy the fall colored leaves. We returned home via American Fork Canyon.  The car kept boiling over so we had to stop frequently to add water to the radiator.  It was uncanny -- each time we stopped we would listen carefully and we could hear water running -- in a stream not far away.   We would get the needed water (we always felt Someone was watching over us) and be on our way again.

 

Other than our trips into the nearby canyons, we never took a real vacation at that time.  The first true vacation we took as a family was the year that I went to work for Lowes Pharmacy.  As it worked out we had three days, Friday, Saturday and Sunday, between when I left the LDS Hospital and began my new job at Lowes.   We decided we would take the children and visit Bryce, Grand Canyon, and Zion National Parks.  It was a whirlwind trip, but we surely enjoyed it.  John was not yet 2 years old, and needed to be carried much of the time, but that was fun.  Because of our concern for the safety of our children, we tied them all together, using a clothesline, to keep them close (and make sure no one fell off a cliff.)  Don't know if it helped, but it made us feel better.  We must have rented cabins on that trip as we had no camping gear.

 

On our next vacation took us to Teton and Yellowstone National Parks.  By this time we had a new car, a black Ford Falcon station wagon.  To hold our tent and supplies, I built a box of plywood which I attached to the rack on the top of the car.  I painted it silver.  Our camping gear was a tent and some sleeping bags.   We borrowed a white canvas cabin-tent from our friends Bill and Jane Tucker.  That trip got us hooked on camping!  We learned from that that we really enjoyed camping as a family, and also recognized that we could afford to go many more places if we didn’t have to pay the cost of renting a cabin.  At that time it only cost $5.00 a night for a tent camp site.

 

It wasn't too long until we purchased a tent of our own:  Blue canvas, tall enough to stand up in, with two side rooms, and large enough to hold us all comfortably.  That was the tent we used the year we attended the 1962 Worlds Fair in Seattle, Washington; the first vacation we took of any length.  We traveled through Idaho and along the Columbia River highway to Portland, where we stopped to visit my Uncle John Thorup, and his wife, Aunt Kate.  While at the Worlds Fair in Seattle we stayed in the home of a L. D. S. Church member.  Members in the area were renting out bedrooms in their homes as a project to earn building fund money, and we took advantage of it.  It was a lovely experience.   We visited many of the exhibits at the Fair, and stood in the long line to go to the top of the new Space Needle.  I believe the kids enjoyed it; they were even interviewed by a Korean (I think) reporter about their reaction to the Fair.  We never did see the article.  Following our visit to the Fair, we drove into Vancouver, Canada, and

 

Reid, Ann, Jeanné & John – Victoria City

 

took the ferry over to Vancouver Island, where we found a nice campground just north of Victoria City.  We drove around the island and took the (then) unfinished road across the center of the island where our children got their first view of the Pacific Ocean, and played on the

beach.  Of course, I had to take my family to see the Bouchart Gardens that I had fallen in love with when I had visited there with my parents.

 

Not too many years after buying our tent, we traded it in on an Apache tent trailer (a brand no longer made.)  It offered us both a tent and a trailer all in one. The advantage to us being that it was relatively easy to pull, when compared to a regular sized trailer. When it was open it had two double beds that pulled out on each side.  By sleeping two children in one bed, and one in a sleeping bag on the floor, we all fit comfortably.  The door was to the back and there was a cupboard along the front that folded down under the beds and slid back into the trailer for traveling.  With a little ingenuity, and adding a few pieces of camping gear, some of which I made, we were able to make ourselves quite comfortable.  We got to love our little home away from home.  It was so much quicker than having to put up and take down the tent, and we could easily pack everything we needed inside the trailer.  We were hooked, again.  That was the trailer we traveled with when Maria Carmen came to live with us.   Ann and Maria were both 18. During the year Maria was with us we visited Zion, Bryce, Yellowstone and Teton National

Parks, and traveled to Disneyland the week between Christmas and New Years, all six of us in that first little trailer.

 

We have also camped at or visited Arches and Capitol Reef National Monuments (they were not made into National Parks until some years later), Dead Horse Point, Goblin Valley, and Bryce Canyon, Grand Canyon (North and South Rims,) and Zion National Parks, as well as the newly created Canyonlands National Park, and of course Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks. Our favorite place in Utah became Zion National Park, with Arches, a close second.  I have lost track of the number of times we have visited those two places; often visiting Arches in the spring and Zion in the fall.  However our all‑time most favorite camping spot has got to be Colter Bay in Grand Teton National Park.  We started going there the year after they created that beautiful campground.  Over the years we have probably visited the Tetons more often than any other place, many times staying at Colter Bay campground twice a year.   The Tetons were also a favorite spot of Grandpa and Grandma Baird’s.  They would often come up and rent a cabin at the Teton Lodge and visit with us while we were there.  We also went with them into Yellowstone where we would go fishing on Yellowstone Lake – catching a lot of fish.  Fun!

 

We traded our first trailer in on a new larger Apache trailer the year following Maria’s visit.  This trailer had two beds that pulled out, front and back, with the door opening on the side.  The new trailer included a dining table (which converted into a bed to sleep two), a "gaucho" bed, which slept one – so we could nicely sleep seven people – plus had a sink, propane stove and space-heater. 

That summer Ann worked at Yellowstone Park and Reid worked at Rockport Dam, until July when he left for his mission to Australia.  After Reid left, Jeanné and I took a vacation to visit Peggy Marshall in Seattle, Washington.   John had been selected to work at the Salt Lake Council Explorer Basin (on the Snake River - not far from Jackson, Wyoming) but his job didn't begin until after we were to leave for our trip, so we took John with us, travelling for our first time through Yosemite National Park, and then up the coast highway through the Redwoods to Portland where we put John, all alone, on an airplane to Salt Lake so he could begin his job at the Explorer Base.  From there we drove to Seattle and visited with our friend, Peggy Marshall, who was attending the university that year studying for her Masters Degree in psychiatric nursing.  Peggy had a friend, Dave Thomas (who was also from Salt Lake.)  Dave met us in Seattle and we all took the ferry together to Vancouver Island, Canada, this time traveling  through the San Juan Islands – a beautiful trip.  We all stayed in our trailer for a couple of days, and had a good time.  After leaving Dave and Peggy in Seattle, we drove, along the beautiful Canada Highway 1, to Yellowstone to visit with Ann.  This was the first time we had ever gone on a vacation without our children and we couldn't stand being alone any longer, so we drove day and night, straight through!  At Yellowstone we then had Ann come with us (she was working at one of the Old Faithful Lodge restaurants for the summer.)  We drove down into Grand Teton, and Colter Bay.  Ann's friend, Carol Kingston (from our ward,) was visiting with her grandparents.  Carol’s grandmother was an artist and they lived during the summer months not far outside Teton Park in a double-wide prefab home.   We had a nice visit with the Kingstons.  It was the first time Ann had seen our new trailer.

           

As a family we have traveled all over the western United States.  We visited Southern California (including Disneyland) at least three times and we have visited many other places along the West coast, from Tijuana, Mexico to Vancouver Island, Canada.

 

Several years ago we vacationed with John and Leslie and their young family.  We went to California together, with John's van pulling the trailer.  We visited Disneyland, Knott’s Berry Farm, Sea World, and several other attractions, and we had a ball.  We felt we got to know John’s and Leslie’s children better on that trip than at any other time.  I have always felt sorry that the opportunity never arose for us to have a vacation with Reid's young family as we had with John and Ann (as I will mention later.)  It was a situation of Reid and Eve having two families to compete for their time, and Eve's usually won out.  And that is as it should be.

 

 After our children returned from their missions and were all married, Jeanné and I,  during the summer months, traveled many places together.   Jeanné and I particularly love the Redwood forest along the California coast, and the highway along the Oregon coast, as well as Vancouver Island, as mentioned before.  We have also taken our trailer as far East as Buffalo, New York, and into Canada a couple of times.  The Tetons still remained our favorite place to visit and a few times we took Becky Westberg, a young girl who worked with Jeanné at Hillview School that we sort of fell in love with; and one time took Becky along with us to the Tetons as a companion for our neighbor, Tammy Green, as they were about the same age.  

 

In 1976 Maria Carmen, who was visiting in-laws in New York City, wanted to come and visit us.  This was during the time Jeanné’s parents were serving their mission in Nauvoo, so Jeanné and I drove back to visit them.  We had agreed to drive over from Nauvoo to Niagara Falls to pick up Maria if she would take the train from New York City to Buffalo, New York.   On or way back to Salt Lake, we stopped at Nauvoo again with Maria so she could visit Jeanné’s parents.  That was a lovely trip, and was the last time we saw Maria before she was married.  After her marriage she had three children, two girls and a boy.  Maria has called us from New York a couple of times, while visiting there, but wasn’t able to travel to Salt Lake until May of 2006 when she came and stayed with us for several days.  It was so good to see her again, and she is just as lovely as ever.  We learned all about her children, who were by then finishing high school and college.  One of her daughters, Raquel, attended a university in Texas, and we had hoped to be able to visit with her while she was here in America, which finally occurred in the summer of 2012. 

 

By that time Raquel had finished college, received her Master’s Degree in Environmental Engineering, and was working as an intern with an engineering company in New Mexico.  She visited with us over a weekend and we had a delightful time with her.  We went out to dinner with Ann, Reid and Eve, and John and Leslie at the Olive Garden cafe.  The next day we visited This Is The Place village where Christine (who has sung there for several years) brought her singing group and sang for us on one of our stops during our visit.  On Sunday we visited saw the Mormon Tabernacle Choir in the Conference Center and took a tour of Temple Square.  I think we all fell in love with her, and she reminded us so much of Maria Carmen.

 

When Ann was living in England, we visited her several times; Jeanné traveled there four times and I went three times.  On our first visit we took Ann and Steve with us on our trip into Germany and Switzerland. We flew into Munich, where we rented a car and drove to Ulm where Ann had served on her mission.  Ann had a desire to revisit some of the areas she had served in while in Germany, but hadn’t seen some of them   From there we visited all three of King Ludwig's castles in Bavaria that Ann had not been able to visit.  It was sad though in that when we got to the Neuschwanstein castle, Ann got feeling sick and we had to leave her on the front steps while the rest of us went inside!  From there we drove to Lucerne, Switzerland where we met Jeanné’s parents, who we had made arrangements to visit, as they were on a tour of Europe at that same time.  We purposely had our paths cross so we could all have a nice visit together for the day, then they went on with their tour and we drove to from Lucerne to Bern to visit the Swiss Temple.

 

Our dear friends, Stan and Helen Rees, were serving as Swiss Temple president and matron at that time, and Ann and Steve, and Jeannè and I all visited with them in the lovely home that the Church provides for it’s temple president.  Our drive into Zollikofen, which is the village where the Bern Temple is, was hilarious.  We arrived late Sunday.  As we drove into the city we could see the beautiful temple, all lighted up on the hillside, but as we got closer it just vanished.  We couldn't see the temple anywhere.  We had lost our way.  We stopped and found a phone and called Stan Rees.   He drove over in his car and rescued us.  He didn’t realize how late it was and that the lights on the Temple automatically turn off at 10 P.M.!   Since the Temple was closed on the following day, Monday, Stan took us all sightseeing.  We went to the top of Schilthorn one of Switzer-land’s famous mountains from where we could see the Eiger, Monch and Jungfrau mountain peaks.  It required five lift (cable car)  rides to get us there!

 

 

 

 

Top of Schilthorn mountain at 9748 feet

 

 We also visited the lovely city of Interlaken that day.  It was truly a marvelous vacation, and it left us wanting to return to that beautiful country.   It was the only time we enjoyed a vacation with both Steve and Ann together.  It may well have been the only nice vacation they ever had together.

 

On our last visit to England to see Ann, Jeanné and I decided that we weren't going to just sit looking at the four walls of Ann's house as we had done on our prior visits.  As long as we were spending the money to travel there, we decided to take a tour through England, Wales and Scotland.  We had invited Ann and Steve come with us, but they were having marital problems and Steve wouldn’t go, so they stayed home.   Jeanné and I enjoyed the trip a lot, however the seat-size of the English bus was rather cramped for me.   The buses in England are built with large windows just for sight seeing and do provide a wonderful panorama of the landscape.  We learned one thing though; you get what you pay for.  This was a "budget" tour and that is what we got.  Many of the places on our schedule we were to see allowed just that, to "see it".  The bus would park on the road, some distance from the site, where we could look at it and the tour guide described what we had hoped to visit.  The bus would not even drive on the site, let alone let us much more than view it!  We must say we did enjoy the trip and it gave us a good impression of what Great Britain is like. 

 

After our bus trip, we then left Steve at home, with some lame excuse, and took Ann and the children on a camping trip to visit some fun places in England.  That was quite an experience!  There is so much rain (and dew) in England that you often need to wear rubber boots (in England they call them Wellies), in the mornings especially.  That gave us some problems in trying to keep our tent dry!  All of the tents in England are made of an inner tent and outer tent.  The double tent is the way they keep all that moisture from coming right through – especially where you would touch it!  One night, at one campground, they had no outside lights and it was raining quite hard.  Jeanné and I found ourselves wandering all over the place during the night looking for the bathroom!  We finally found it, but that is not much fun to try to find your way around in a rain storm!   David had the best camping spot of all, as he slept in the car’s boot (English for trunk) and so he was quite comfortable ‑‑ and dry!  We visited a nice American‑style amusement park (can't remember the name) and I think the Ann and the children had a very good time.

 

In 1982 we traded our beloved Apache tent‑trailer for a new Starcraft tent‑trailer.  I should explain here that every time we purchased a new tent-trailer; we got as almost as much on a trade-in as we had paid for it!  As we were getting older we figured we deserved something a bit fancier.  Our last trailer, which we sold to John and Leslie when we went on our mission to New Zealand, is about the same configuration as our old Apache, but also had hot and cold running water, a shower, and a refrigerator that worked on either electricity or propane.   It also had inside dome lights and a queen‑sized bed on one end.  We loved it. 

 

Touring with Mom & Dad Baird

 

Jeanné and I went on two tours with Mom and Dad Baird (one of which included her brother Steve and his wife Delpha.)  On both trips we went on their favorite ‘Southern‑states’ tour, taking us through Louisiana, Mississippi, Georgia, South Carolina and Florida, at which time we also visited Cyprus Gardens and finished by spending two days at the Epcot Center.  On two other trips, again with Steve & Delpha, we went to Hawaii for Mom and Dad Baird's 60th and 70th wedding anniversaries.  On the first trip, in 1985, we stayed in Honolulu three days in a condo overlooking the beach.  While there we visited the Polynesian Cultural Center, and had fun snorkeling and sightseeing.   Following our 3 days in Honolulu we took a cruse ship and toured the Hawaiian Islands for a week, stopping at Hilo and Kona, on both sides of the big Island of Hawaii, and at Maui and Kauai.  It was such a fabulous experience, that as you will read later, Jeanné and I took our children on a similar trip in 1997 for our 50^th wedding anniversary. 

 

On the second trip with Jeanné’s parents to Hawaii, which we took in 1995, we stayed our entire time, 8 days, on the island of Maui at the Makena Surf condominium.  It was right on the beach and one of the most delightful places I believe we have ever stayed at.  During one of our days Jeanné and I drove a rental car around the island to the city of Hana.  It was a long ride and the highway has many curves as it followed the waving coastline all the way.  On Mom and Dad's 70th anniversary (June 17, 1995) we all took a boat tour that took us out to a couple of reefs out in the ocean where we spent the day snorkeling.  That tour provided us with both a continental breakfast and a nice lunch.  It was a fun day.  Dad was in his wheelchair, and he and Mom stayed on board while the rest of us snorkeled.  Dad Baird passed away the following year, so it was a wonderful opportunity for us all to be together one last time.

 

ISRAEL

 

Probably the most thrilling vacation Jeanné and I have taken together was in 1996 when we took our first tour of Israel with Dr. Michael Wilcox.  We had been taking scripture classes from Bro. Wilcox for two years prior to this, and when we learned that he was guiding this tour, we jumped at the chance to go.   Since Jeanné's, Dad and Mom were not in the best of health, we worried about leaving them, but the family all rallied around to help us.   There were 49 people on the tour, including Dr. Wilcox and his wife, Laura, and their daughter, Megan Crandall.  Mike, as I shall refer to him hereafter, would take one or two of his children on his tours with him.  This year was Megan's turn.

 

We started our tour by flying into Tel Aviv and stayed there the first night.  Tel Aviv is right on the Mediterranean Ocean, and the first stop on our tour was the little city of Jappa, just South of Tel Aviv.  From there we went to Caesarea, built by Herod the Great as his summer palace, which he named in honor of Caesar Augustus.  Many, if not most, of the places we visited were in ruins, some of them, such as Bethel, are now no more than piles of rocks.  Cities such as Caesarea, which had been built by the Romans, were all in various states of restoration.  Then there were cities, like Bethlehem and Jerusalem that are today thriving, growing cities.  There were some cities, such as Nazareth, which occupy today a different location than they did in Jesus' time; with the old city in ruins nearby.   Interestingly, all of the cities where Jesus walked, that were on the Sea of Galilee, are all gone or in ruins.  The only city today on Galilee is the modern city of Tiberius which did not even exist during the lifetime of Jesus.

 

 

We spent 15 days, touring all the sites "from Dan to Bathsheba" as they say there (from one end of Israel to the other).   Our tour also took us into the country of Jordan, where we visited Jerash, Amman and Petra.  Amman was the only city of historic interest in Jordan, as the other two were built long after Jesus' time, but they were fascinating anyway.  Amman was known as Rabbath in the Bible, and was the city where David sent Uriah to have him deliberately killed.  A few ruins from David's day are still there.  In Israel we also visited the Golan Heights where many of the terrible Jewish/Arab wars of recent years have been fought.  There still are some fields of live land mines, reminders of the war.  They have been left there (surrounded by fences and signs) just in case they are needed again!  We visited Eilat, a Jewish city on the Red Sea, but a relatively recent addition to Israel.  Eilat has wonderful scuba diving where we were able to see many beautiful varieties of "tropical" fish!   We visited Masada which was Herod the Great's winter palace, and Qumran of the Dead Sea Scrolls fame.

 

What an experience!  In our 15 days, we visited 40 sites, plus Jerusalem. Almost all of the places we visited had a Biblical connection, and when the trip was over Bro. Wilcox gave us a sheet with a Biblical quotation about every spot we had visited, which I have included in our pictorial journal of the trip.  Because of the amount of ground covered and the complexity of the trip, no one would want to read all about it here, so suffice it to say between the picture journal and the itinerary which we have of the trip we would ask anyone interested in minute details to refer to them.

 

On that visit we spent five days in Jerusalem, which was a thrill all its own.  Jerusalem is truly a beautiful city.  During the time we were there, President Gordon B. Hinckley was touring Israel with his family.  He was scheduled to talk to the students at the BYU Jerusalem Center, but as it turned out the students were away visiting Egypt that week.  Therefore all the LDS bus tours in the city were invited to come to hear Pres. Hinckley, and so we were able to attend.  One of the members of our tour was Ariel McBaine.  Ariel sings with the Metropolitan Opera Co., under her maiden name, Ariel Bybee.  Many places where we would stop, Ariel would be asked to sing a song for us and she was so gracious in doing so.  What a beautiful voice!  The night that President Hinckley spoke to us, he asked Ariel to sing, which she did of course.  We were amazed to find that her daughter (who had joined our tour late) was an accomplished pianist and accompanied her on the piano!  Her daughter had been working on a "dig" that summer and was returning home to attend medical school.  (I can't think of her name ‑ sorry.)  It was a tour we will always remember for the privilege of being able to go on.  It has been said that once you have been to Israel you will never be the same.  We couldn't agree more. 

         

 As you will see, we later visited Israel a second time – this time with Reid and Eve.  I have made a scrapbook of all of our tours with Michael Wilcox.  I invite you to see these for pictures and additional information about any of those tours. 

 

 

HAWAII ‑ 50th WEDDING ANNIVERSARY

 

For our 50th Wedding Anniversary (15 September 1997) we decided to take all of our children and their spouses with us to Hawaii.  We had enjoyed our experiences with Mom and Dad Baird so much that we wanted to share this with our own children.  We followed roughly the same agenda as we had with Mom and Dad Baird on our first trip to Hawaii.  We spent four days in Honolulu and then seven days onboard the USS Constitution, touring four ports:  Kauai, Maui, Hilo and the Kona Coast.  I made a pictorial record of this visit, so please refer to it.  I believe all of our children (and their wives) enjoyed the experience greatly.  One of the highlights to this particular trip was that we attended a session at the Hawaiian Temple following which we took what is named the "Ambassador" tour of the Polynesian Cultural Center. This tour provided us with our own personal guide, front row seating to everything, and a wonderful all‑you‑can‑eat buffet in the evening.  We also took helicopter rides over both the island of Kauai and the volcano on the big island of Hawaii.  What magnificent views!!   Jeanné and I couldn't have had a better anniversary than to be able to share that time with Ann, Reid, Eve, John and Leslie.  I could only hope that we might be able to vacation together in a similar manner some time in the future.  Nothing could please me more, except that we might be able to include our grandchildren!  I do love my family and thank my Heavenly Father for such a great blessing.

 

In June 1998, John and Leslie, together with April and Keith, and Erin, had planned a trip to Hawaii together.  Ostensibly it was an opportunity for them to go scuba diving, to which John became sort of addicted to following our wedding anniversary trip the year before.  When Jeanné’s sweet mother passed away in April, John and Leslie invited us to go with them.  We immediately accepted the invitation.  The trip was for just a week (actually 7 nights and 8 days) and it was very enjoyable.  As for Jeanné and me, we ran into a bit of a problem however.  Jeanné had been having a problem with nose bleeds the week prior to our leaving and had had to have her nose cauterized twice by her physician cousin, Dr. Richard VanOrden, an ear, nose & throat specialist.  He gave her a clean bill the Saturday before we left; with the admonition that there were good doctors in Hawaii should any problem reoccur.  Well, we hadn't been in Hawaii much more than 24 hours before her nose began bleeding again.   She was up most of the night with it and about 6 a.m. we called the hotels concierge to see if they could recommend a doctor.  They said that "Doctors on Call" would pick us up in 10 minutes!  We couldn't believe it.  We were in the lobby in 5 minutes and the car was already waiting for us.  We were whisked to an emergency clinic where they determined Jeanné needed more help than they could provide so they took us to a nearby hospital emergency room.  A physician by the name of Frederick Chinn took such good care of Jeanné we could hardly believe it.  He was so careful with her and ended up putting a nasal tampon in her nose to put a pressure on the bleeding spot, and other than some considerable discomfort on Jeanné’s part because of the tampon, it worked.  When we were taken back to the hotel we were truly surprised when the Doctors on Call van wouldn't take any money for carting us all around that day!  Dr. Chinn made an appointment with a regular ENT doctor for Saturday morning.  That doctor took out the tampon and gave her another clean bill.  Only thing he told us was to not do anything requiring exertion, such as bending over, picking things up, etc. It sort of put a lid on any activities we might have done.  However we were there mostly for the rest and this just reinforced it!

 

The scuba diving didn't go quite as well as John had hoped it might, so he cancelled the rest of the "dives" he had planned, and they did other things.  We attended the Polynesian Cultural Center (on the Friday that Jeanné had the plug in her nose) and had another lovely experience.  April and Erin took some surfboard lessons, and Erin got hooked, as she took lessons on two more mornings after that!  Unfortunately the surf was not the best and she was a bit disappointed in not finding any good waves to "ride".  We attended Church on Sunday morning and spent the rest of the day sightseeing around the island.  On Monday, Keith and April decided to take a plane to Kauai and hiked the NaPali coast all day, returning that night.  That gave John the opportunity to schedule a couple of dives, including a night dive which he had missed earlier.  Everyone came home happy, after enjoying another lovely week in Hawaii.

 

TWO MORE TOURS WITH MIKE WILCOX

 

In 1999 we took two more tours with Mike.  The first was a two week Mesoamerican Tour that began in Guatemala on June 18^th.  We flew into the Guatemala airport in a rather bad storm in which it took the pilot two separate approaches to finally land.  Whew!  We toured through Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico and Belize.  It was a very spiritual experience in which Mike related to many of the places mentioned in the Book of Mormon.  One especially was the first site we stopped at in Honduras that Mike likened the appearance to what the land could have looked like when the Savior visited the Nephites after his resurrection.  We really enjoyed that tour.

Just a week after we returned from Mesoamerica, on July the 9^th, 1999, we went on an American Heritage and Church History tour with Mike and his wife, Laurie.  We visited Washington D.C. and many historic sites, Williamsburg, Jamestown Virginia, Yorktown, and Mount Vernon.  We toured the Capitol building, one of the Smithsonian Museums, and the Jefferson Memorial.  We visited the Gettysburg battlefield, and Philadelphia (Independence Hall and the Liberty Bell), Ellis Island, Statue of Liberty and the Empire State Building.  We went to the stage production, Beauty and the Beast, and then drove up into New England and saw the Plimoth Village, Mayflower II, Plymouth Rock, Walden Pond, Concord, and toured Boston, Massachusetts, including the U.S.S. Constitution.

 

From there we visited all of the early LDS Church historical sites beginning in Sharon, Windsor County, Vermont, to Nauvoo and Winter Quarters; enjoying the Hill Camorah Pageant in Palmyra.  It was a whirlwind tour, but we loved it and came home with wonderful memories.

 

Again, both of these tours are documented in separate scrapbooks.   I invite you to peruse them if you would like to know more about these fascinating experiences of ours.

 

FOUNDATIONS OF THE RESTORATION TOUR WITH MIKE WILCOX

 

From July 4-24, 2000, we travelled through Europe beginning in Italy, then Switzerland, Germany, Holland, and England studying the Foundations of the Restoration of the Gospel,

 

 "The great wisdom of our Heavenly Father consists of his ability to bring about his eternal purposes without violating the human agency of his children. . . From the dark night of

worldwide apostasy, the Lord brought the world to a point where the Restoration could take place and survive. Through chosen men and women, placed in their own unique circumstances -

step by step, century by century, through the Renaissance, the Reformation, the Enlightenment, the translation of the Bible into English, the invention of printing, the discovery of American, etc.

- the Lord prepared the way for a spring morning in 1820. "

S. Michael Wilcox, tour director

 

            We flew into Rome, Italy to begin our tour.  From there we travelled up the coast of Italy then into Switzerland, Germany and Holland.  We took a ship (ferry)  from Holland to England to finish our tour and flew home from London.  As with all our other tours I have prepared a scrapbook with pictures and would refer you to this for further information about this remarkably beautiful and educational tour.  Jeanné and I have been so blessed in our lives to have been able to enjoy so many tours with Mike and his wife and family.

 

            Our two missions to Nauvoo and Pacific Islands Area are told in other chapters.

 

After arriving home from our mission to New Zealand, we didn’t do much traveling for a while.  So in November 2006, we took a guided tour of Branson, Missouri by ourselves.  We went with Shields Tours, with whom we had travelled when we toured with Jeanné’s parents.  It was for a week and we found it a very delightful experience.  The bus we used was small, with only 18 people on it, and because our group was small we were often escorted right to the front of other tourists who were with big groups -- when we went into dinner, etc.

 

2007 was a busy year for travelling.  We learned that Michael Wilcox was taking another of his tours to Israel and since we had always wanted to go again we invited our kids to come with us.  Ann couldn’t afford it and John and Leslie didn’t feel they could spend two weeks away from their business, so we were pleased that Reid and Eve could go with us. 

 

We left on May 3, 2007.  This trip to Israel was much different than our first one in that it also included three days in Egypt. Again I will defer to other notes in our pictorial journal rather than include the details, but we had a delightful time.  Many things had changed about Israel since our first tour, including that BYU no longer sponsors tours.   They had been the sponsor of all our others previously taken with Mike.  This tour was sponsored by “Fun for Less” tours, and to keep the prices as low as possible, they did a few innovative things such as having Mike guide two tours, back to back, and included two other guides – John Lund and Jose ??                - who in honesty were very good, but not up to the potential of Michael Wilcox in my mind.  Because of the current political situation, the tour was unable to visit some places we had gone before.   We did visit a new archeological dig in a recently found city of Lehi (the Jewish pronounce it Layhee), which was fascinating.   Jeannè stumbled while visiting the dig and hurt herself a bit, but we made it; even though we recognized that we probably wouldn’t be taking strenuous tours like that again.

 

            For our 60^th wedding anniversary we had wanted to take our family to Walt Disney World in Orlando, Florida, as we had for our 50^th anniversary in Hawaii.   Unfortunately Reid and Eve couldn’t come this time because Eve was working in the new hospital (Intermountain Medical Center) who had put a moratorium on all their employees’ vacations while they transferred the patients from LDS Hospital to the new center.  However we had been pleased that Reid and Eve was able to visit Israel with us earlier.  This time we were accompanied by Ann, John and Leslie.

 

            We stayed in a lovely motel (Ann stayed with us in our room) and we rented a car to get around in.   We visited Epcot, Disney World, Universal Studios, and MGM Studios, and I hope everyone had a lovely time.  We certainly did.  Jeannè and I were a bit slow in walking, so John and Leslie rented a scooter for each of us each day – we had no trouble keeping up with them after that!  On Sunday we found a nearby ward and attended church. 

 

            On the day after Christmas in 2007 we accompanied John and Leslie and all their family on a cruise to the South Caribbean Islands.  John & Leslie used some of their frequent flyer miles and upgraded our plane tickets to First Class.  How nice!  By now I had been diagnosed with my congestive heart failure and so I had made arrangements to have an oxygen generator delivered to our stateroom on the cruise ship.  That worked out quite well, except that the generator was quite noisy - and it stopped working the last day of the cruise!  It was really fun to be with John and Leslie’s children and grandchildren, little Autumn being only 2½ months old.  The ship had tenders for all but the youngest children and it was fun to watch them as they followed their directors and played together on those days.  I need to refer to the itinerary, but we stopped at several islands, most of the family laying on the beach or swimming, while Jeannè and I relaxed in beach chairs.  As with all those cruises, the food was great, and the entertainment was really fun.  It was a special time – and may have to be the last time we go on such a vacation.

 

            During the spring of 2008 (May) Jeannè and I took Ann and drove up along the Columbia River highway to visit with Jennifer, Jayson and their three lovely daughters.  We spent a day with them, going to dinner at I-Hop together, then we travelled on over to the Pacific Ocean and enjoyed a leisurely drive down the beautiful Oregon coast.  We spent one day on the Rogue River and had a beautiful ride up that lovely river, eating lunch at the mid-point of the ride.  Following that we drove down into California and visited the Redwood Forest on the way down to San Francisco where we had lunch at Fisherman’s Wharf.  From there we travelled to Yosemite National Park.  We had only visited Yosemite once before, when we had John with us, and it surely has changed!  But it is still beautiful.  We then drove over through Nevada to home.  It was a lovely trip, and fun to be with Ann.  We carried my oxygen concentrator with us and I got along just fine.

 

            In the spring of 2009 I accompanied John to a retreat provided by Coldwell Banker, as a reward for their employees, to Puerto Vallarta on the Mexican coast.  We stayed in a hotel in which everything was paid for – including meals and sightseeing – so we had a fun time together.  I think I gained about ten pounds!  Again, I had made arrangements to get a smaller oxygen concentrator from my supplier and they wrapped it up and placed it in a box so I could carry it on the plane as luggage.  It was interesting.  The Mexican boarder people had to undo the whole thing as they weren’t familiar with that type of machine.  But we got along fine.  It was nice to be with John – Leslie didn’t feel like she could be away, so I went in her place.

 

            We had a vacation at Colter Bay with John and his family the summer of 2009.   John and Leslie had given all of their children nice tents for Christmas the prior year, and they all used them.  Angie found that they could reserve a ‘family’ tenting area at Colter Bay and that made it really convenient.  Jeanné and I stayed in a cabin because of my oxygen, but we were with them every day.  John and Leslie took us all to the Bar X Ranch for dinner and their cute show – again – as it was the second time they have taken us to Bar-X.  It is such a cute program, and the children loved it.