Vander Linden Musings

This year for our vacation, we decided to do a “Staycation”. We stayed home and took in the sights around us.

We took the opportunity to visit Mt. Timpanogos and its incredible cave. The boys were truly impressed with the beauty and wonder of the cave. The hike up is about 1.5 miles, on a paved path. You’d think it wouldn’t be that difficult, but we had to make a few stops along the way. The view was beautiful up on the mountain looking out to the Salt Lake valley. Once we made it into the cave it was about a 30 minute trip through the three separate caves. There are some really incredible views of rock formations within the cave. Some that you can’t see anywhere else in the world.

We visited Antelope Island and the herds of Buffalo and Antelope. The interesting thing about visiting the island is that because of its isolation from the rest of the valley it has remained as the pioneers would have seen when they first entered the valley. There is a ranch on Island that has been around since the mid 1800‘s. It has obviously changed over time, but it was interesting none the less to see all the tools, pictures, and buildings. The boys really seemed to enjoy themselves. We saw a number of buffalo and antelope as well.

Finally, we took an early morning trip out to the Dugway Geode beds. It’s only 95 miles away, but takes almost 3 hours to get there. For the first 40 miles of the trip we were on small highways. However, thereafter we turned onto the old Pony Express route. We left early that morning, around 6:15 AM, so we reached Lookout Pass just as the sun was coming up. We got out of the car for a bit to enjoy the sunrise before continuing on.

When we finally got to the Geode beds we spent the first hour digging in a spot that was void of our treasure. We were getting ready to leave and decided to check the notes that we brought with us. We realized we needed to drive another half mile in from the sign. Once we did that, we found hundreds of these cool rocks. We dug up a number of whole stones up while finding many, many other pieces. It ended up being a very successful trip.

All in all, it was a good week. We spent a lot of time together as a family and created some good memories. It was definitely time worth spending.