19th Ward Youth Conference

Our youth conference almost didn't happen this year.  We were trying to plan things with the YM but not really making a whole lot of progress and the time was ticking to the date that we wanted to have it.  Then about three weeks before the YC was supposed to happen the YM president lost his job and had to move.   We scrambled to get this together and we made it happen.  We went to the SL temple to to baptisms and then spent time at temple square looking through the visitor's centers and walking the grounds.  We saw some window cleaners up in the big circle windows and saw how those windows open (they spin on an axis).  It was pretty interesting.

We stayed overnight in Provo a the Super 8 motel, and let me tell you, it was pretty super.  (Of course, it was pretty cheap. We were on a budget and didn't want to bring all our gear up to camp for just 1 night.  And we wanted to be able to swim.)  The motel was, uh definitely a roach motel.  Although we didn't really see roaches we did see a sign on the hot tub that it had been closed by the Utah Health Department.  I should have taken a picture of it.   No worries though, conveniently I found a pic on the internet.  (Now why didn't I find this picture before booking there???)  There was one difference from what we saw and the photo.  The area in and all around it was stacked full of random storage.  It was unlike anything I have ever seen before.  It smelled funny.  The carpets were dirty.  The person who had recently painted the motel didn't bother to take the light bulbs out of the bathroom fixtures and it looked like a bird had repeatedly dive-bombed it.  It was actually pretty funny.

In the morning we got up and ate the free continental breakfast (which was also pretty "super") and hit the road for Provo Canyon to do the Stewart Falls hike.  We had a little trouble navigating (thanks or no thanks to Google) but finally made it there and enjoyed that beautiful hike.  And we also had a few more interesting navigational moments when we were trying to drop off one of our leaders with his wife in Orem and also in trying find a place to eat lunch in Payson (which is something that I don't recommend

you ever do).  See, the idea of stopping in Payson was twofold:  1. Stop and see the new temple that they are constructing because some rumors say that the one in Cedar City might look like that and 2. we wanted to get some of the driving out of the way before heading home.  After searching for WAY too long for a restaurant we abandoned the temple drive-by and just went home.

Stewart Falls

Emilia was SO excited to see Mallory from Studio C at Stewart Falls.