St. George

We have a deal with our friends Bill and Trudy Ostler.  They visit us once a year and we visit them once a year.  Since they live in St. George, this seems like the best way to keep in touch with them.  Our turn to visit them came up last Monday.  So we flew to St. George and joined them in their lovely house at the base of the red rock mountains.  The red dirt of southern Utah is enchanting.  It fills the countryside with amazing mountainous shapes, in red, often ribboned through with white dirt.  It is such a sight!  Imagine growing a garden in red dirt!  People there do.

Bill and Trudy had our days scheduled with visits to Bryce and Zion parks and sights in between. We drove and hiked and took endless pictures.  And we talked and talked.  Trudy and I walk the same mental path in most things, so our conversations flow and build on each other.  In most categories anyhow.  Bill and Layne get along very well too.  So spending time with these friends is a treat.  Bill had our days planned much as Layne likes to do.  By the time we did all that he scheduled us for it was time to go home.

It is interesting to see such varieties of beauty in our world.  If I were to describe a nature scene that is most beautiful in my mind, it would be filled with trees, green grass and flowers, with a bubbling brook nearby.  Southern Utah has none of these things.  Well, very little.  It is filled with desert plants, lots of dirt and rugged mountains.  Many of them red.  In spite of the contrast with my vision of natural beauty, I found the scenes we experienced awesome in their loveliness.

Bryce provided us with quiet pleasures, while Zion was filled with lots and lots of people.  As it turned out, the week we were there was spring break.  So the area was filled with families.  We took a bus through Zion and visited with several strangers.  This may sound to you like an exaggeration, but everyone we actually visited with was from Boise!  Yes, it was actually true.  Crowds filled all the special places in Zion, so it wasn't as much fun for us as our time in Bryce.  But it was all a wonderful adventure.

It all ended early Friday morning when we returned home.  It is so good, always, to be home.  And now everything is pretty much back to normal.  At Church today our stake president told us that he had been notified by Salt Lake that we could be finished with our mission in May!  Or we could continue until November, when our two years would be up.  We have our choice as it turns out.  So now we must make a decision about it.  I'm not sure what the best thing to do is.  We are thinking that we would like to do one more mission but the question is, when?  Our year is filling up, working around a November release.  Perhaps we should keep to that time frame.  I just don't know.

Trudy and me in Devil's Garden, near Escalante, Utah.

Bill "pushing" on a local rock, with Layne, in Devil's Garden.

Our room at a Bed and Breakfast in Escalante, where we spent one night.

Our scary hike along Shakespeare Trail in Kodachrome Park.
If you look closely you can see some of us on the path.