Rendezvous

Back in July Ben said that he thought it would be fun to go to a mountain man rendezvous. I used to go every year with my parents when I was a kid so I thought it would be fun. So, we loaded up the car and took off to lovely Evanston, Wyoming. We stayed at the motel 6, I would not recommend staying there. It was kind of a dive, but then we decided that everything in Wyoming is a dive. Saturday morning came and we drove to Fort Bridger. Wow! I was amazed at how big this event was. When I was a kid and went with my parents, there wasn't much at the rendezvous. This time, there was tons of tents and teepees, food and entertainment. The girls eyes were huge. I just hope they didn't notice all of the men walking around in their loin cloths. The girls had a great time watching people making candles and bullets and planing boards by hand. After a few hours, we had all had our fill of mountain men. We found a few little trinkets to bring home and found our way out of the maze. We then headed for our next destination, the booming metropolis of Rawlins, Wyoming. We wanted to extend our vacation and decided that Yellowstone was too far away, so we thought we would check out Martins Cove. My fourth great grandmother came across the plains with the handcart pioneers and I thought it would be really cool to see some of the historical places along the trail. This time we stayed at the Best Western, which was not a dive. The girls had fun swimming at the pool and we ordered Kung Fu Panda and watched it on our huge comfy beds. Sunday morning we headed to Martins Cove. We drove through some of the finer parts of Wyoming and wandered through a canyon. It was great, the road would go from paved to unpaved and back again several times. We saw lots of antelope and pretty scenery. When we reached the end of the line, we pulled into this little tiny city called Alcova. They had one tiny little convenience store and a few trailers. After looking at the map again, we finally figured out how to get to Martins Cove. We finally made it. The visitors center was very nice, but I don't think they get a ton of visitors. We were swarmed by the couple missionaries who were happy to have us there. We pulled a handcart around the gardens, watched a movie and wandered through the visitors center and grounds. We decided to hike out to the actual cove. We got to the fork in the trail and decided that we had gone far enough. We sat and rested and the girls found some rabbits that kept them entertained for quite some time. We made our way back to the car and hit the road again. After a nice dinner in Rawlins, Ben decided he wanted to go home. We drove through a horrible rainstorm and finally made it home at about 1:30 am. We had a lot of fun as a family, we haven't been on a family vacation in a long time.