Part 2

I was very excited to visit a ghost own while in St. George. I love history, not in books but when it comes to life and i can actually see where things happened. I think that's why I loved Boston so much. Anyway I had been reading about one such town that was touted as having "homes, churches, specialty shops, a brothel and even a Chinatown" and I couldn't wait to get there and have a look around at all that history. Sadly it was not to be. The "town" consisted of the bank and this

Talk about disappointed! We couldn't even tell where anything used to be. There were a couple silver chutes that had pieces of them left but no homes, no Chinatown and definitely no brothel. What a rip off. We did get out and walk around for a while and were told that anything we find on the grounds we could keep. I found about eight handmade pottery cups that I am going to use as planters and Rob found an old mountain dew can. We drove around and look at the cemeteries which was fascinating too. Most of the tombstones were from the 1870s. Crazy. We found an abandoned mine too. It was blocked off so we couldn't see in more than 50 feet or so but standing at the opening it's not hard to imagine what it was like when it was bustling with workers mining silver. This is one of the chutes. I'm assuming it has to be about 150 years old. It reminded me of this scene in The Mask of Zorro.

Another much anticipated activity was Zion National Park. I hesitate to even show pictures because they aren't even a smidgen as pretty as seeing it in person. There is an ehike that has some great pictures of the park. We saw some people doing what they are in picture number 12. Never in a million years could I do that. Just looking at the pictures gives me vertigo. We did do two hikes, the Riverside Walk and the Emerald Pools hike. The Riverside was a nice walk on a paved path. It leads to the world famous Narrows. Never heard of them? I hadn't either until we got there. Apparently people travel from all over the world to hike them though. It was cold so we didn't go any further up into the canyon but what a cool trip that would be. Our second hike was a little more work. The Emerald Pools, which by the way are not emerald green, was quite a hike. There is a lower, middle and upper pool. Once you pass the lower pool it is climbing, climbing and more climbing. Mostly on small boulders and sand. Then the upper pool was a nasty rust color. I could've done with seeing a picture but we had a good time. I somehow misplaced all the pictures from the second part of this hike so I will post a few and once I figure out where they've gone I will post the rest.

It is amazing how being in a place like Zion makes you feel so small. And it shows how big God is. This is only a fraction of what he did and it is breathtaking. I thought of this song while looking through the pictures.

After we left here we headed to another ghost town called Grafton. This one was better than the first in that it actually had buildings standing. These building are being restored so they look very nice.

This was the church/school.

This is a house on one side of the street...

...and directly across is this "little house on the prairie" house.

I can't imagine what life was like living in a place like this.

I love that on the tombstone it says he was killed by Indians.

And to end part two...any mother can tell it's been a long day when she turns around and sees this.