Year 8 Week Three: Whew, A Whirlwind Week
22 January 2015 | Tucson, Arizona USA
Dave/Mostly Sunny
Since Mary Margaret at times spells me when I write the blog while cruising, it is only fair that I spell her occasionally when she has the blog responsibilities here in the US. Thus, you are stuck with my writing for this week.
As it turned out, this was a very hectic week with time spent in Southern California; Las Vegas, Nevada; and Tucson, Arizona. So far, we have put over 2,000 miles on the car that our daughter Heather and we bought together about a month ago.
We spent a few days in Lake Forest, California where we lived for 12 years, starting in 1988. We had our annual dental checkups and meetings with tax and financial advisors. Given that this trip to Lake Forest was moved up at the last second, we really did not have time to visit many of our old friends. That will have to wait until we return in April. However, we were able to visit with our old buddies the Kanda’s, Robin Fields and our former neighbor Glenda Thomson and her daughter Alicia and granddaughter, Tiana. It was like old times and we really enjoyed ourselves and basked in the warmth of their company. Robin promised us that she will be coming to Tucson to visit us and spend more time together. We are really excited about that!
From Lake Forest we drove through the Mojave Desert to stay with our good friend Joe Kennedy in Las Vegas. He had just returned from Hawaii, where his wife, Valerie, still is visiting with her parents. While we missed Valerie, Joe was the supreme host and drove us out to see the 50 acres of ranchland they just bought. It is along the Muddy River and while its just desert land, it has water frontage and water rights and in the desert, that has significant meaning. He also drove us over to Mountain Meadows, Utah, where we visited the historical monument marking the location of the Mountain Meadows massacre. It is a tragic part of the history of the Mormons in the US. A group of Mormon militiamen attacked a wagon train with 140 people and murdered all of the women, men and children above the age of 5. They then took the 17 remaining younger children and either gave them or sold them to various Mormon families in the area. It was not until 1876 when the leader of the attack was prosecuted and hanged. This is an ugly part of the US history that has been mostly ignored in the history books. You can learn more about this tragic incident by visiting the website created by the University of Missouri – Kansas City School of Law at: http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/mountainmeadows/leeaccount.html. I found this website to offer the least biased and most objective background of the various ones that exist.
Just about everywhere we have traveled seems to have tragic stories like this one to tell. It is not unique to the US or the Mormon culture but is present in the nature of human beings. During our travels around the world we have discovered how violent, selfish and horrible we humans can be at times. This visit gave us pause to reflect on the ugly side of human nature.
From Las Vegas, we next drove across the Sonora Desert and arrived in Tucson, where we will be staying for the next couple of months. Our other daughter, Christina and her family live here. We have rented a house to stay in during our visit here.
Just hours after our arrival we rushed over to Christina and Michael’s lovely house so we could see them and our two beautiful grandchildren, Isaac and Stella. This was the first time we have met Stella as she was born while we were sailing from Malaysia. They are all doing well and it was a joy to be surrounded by such warmth and love. We look forward to our stay here spoiling Isaac and Stella.