Tuesday July 12th
Our stake (Forest Grove Oregon Stake) was having their second Pioneer Trek since becoming a stake 8 or 9 years ago. They were looking for volunteers, so Garrett and I decided to be a ma and pa again, because we had such a great experience last time. We must've forgotten how hot it was (110 degrees--no exaggeration), and how long we walked and how dirty it was. Ha ha! We both felt the spirit and our testimonies grow about faith, the pioneers and trusting in God.
We thought for sure that Lydia would be able to join us on this one, since she was going to be 14 in November and the age limit was 12 and up on the last one. Well, they had new people in charge and I guess they were trying to simplify things so they changed the age to 14 and up. You had to be 14 by the time school started in September. Garrett talked to the Bishop, the Stake YM presidency and even the stake president. But, no one was budging on their decision. We were pretty upset about it, but we accepted it and moved on. (I'm not sure Garrett accepted it, he was still pretty mad.)
They asked all the ma's and pa's and anyone on any of the committees to be up at base camp the night before. We went up with another couple from our ward, Randy and Ellie Harward, who were also going as a ma and pa. So we drove up Tuesday night and got some dinner along the way. Got there kinda late and set up our tents. Trek this year was up around Mt. Hood, so it was going to be beautiful!
For last year's trek, as soon as I got home, I spent the next week writing every detail I could remember into my journal. For this trek, I only wrote down a few things that happened everyday. Needless to say, I hope I can remember stuff about this trek and the feelings I felt. Hopefully as I'm blogging about it, more will come back to me!
Wednesday July 13th
Jim and Georgia watched our kids for us, but since Maggie was supposed to be at the stake center at 6 am, we had her friend Emma and her parents pick Maggie up so my in-laws didn't have to. They met at 6 and got checked in, but didn't start driving until 7 am. They were supposed to arrive at the camp at 9:30.
Meanwhile, back at camp, we had to be up and moving pretty early too because we were having a meeting at 7:30 to get last minute things taken care of. We drove up to the place where the trek was starting and had to get our carts put together, load our stuff, get water etc.
This is what the carts looked like originally. TINY!! We had to fit 12 people's gear in that, plus water coolers, tents and cooking stuff. Luckily, they added some plywood sides so our stuff didn't fall off--it was really bumpy, rocky terrain!
This was the bottom. There were so many problems that first day...more on that later!
The kid's belongings came up on a different vehicle than the kids did, so once we got the names of the kids that were in our group (there were 10 kids in each family this year; 8 last year) we had to find their stuff--buckets, and sleeping stuff; and then load it onto the carts. I think this year because we didn't have as much room and more people, that they transported our tents and food coolers to the stopping points for us because we just didn't have room, and there was a weight limit on the hand carts. Garrett brought poles to put in the corners and tarps to cover everything and then bungee cord nets to keep everything in. It worked pretty well.
The buses arrived at 10 o'clock. I heard from Maggie that it was a long, uncomfortable and boring 2 1/2 hours. There were 4 buses...one for each company. And there were 4 families in each company. I can't remember, but I think Maggie and her friend Emma were in different companies so they weren't even on the same bus. It turned out that our company bus was the first to arrive, but the last to get off the buses. So, they had to stay on the bus for a bit extra. They unloaded the buses one family at a time, so it took awhile. And our family was the very last to get off the bus. We only had one kid from our ward in our family and I had heard of a couple of the other kids, but didn't really know them.
Waiting for our kids to get off the bus. Each family had a color and they were supposed to wear a bandana with the family color all the time. Those are the blue things I'm holding.
This is our cart, but we were still missing one girl's belongings.
After everyone found their kids and got their carts situated, they had some announcements and then the trek choir sang. Maggie was a part of this, but I don't think she's in the picture.
Then we started lining up. Our company was going to be the leaders for the day and our family was the first to start trekking. These are some of my daughters...Jenna W, Jenna K, Paige and Annabelle. (and Jenna K's mom who was on the committee)
Some of our sons...Tyler, Liam, Joe and Josh
This guy fired some old musket and that was the signal to start.
And we were off...the first part wasn't bad at all. Not a lot of rocks, no hills, wasn't too hot, and beautiful scenery.
Ma McKibben.
I tried to do my part and jump in the front to pull here and there...especially when the trail wasn't too bad. I have to say that most of these kids were awesome about doing their part. Some of those guys (and girls) never quit and didn't like to give up their spot pulling.
One thing I do remember from the first day was the awful noise that the wagon wheels made as we walked along. They would screech and grind and it was so loud!! I had such a headache from the noise. That night, they attempted the quiet the noise with either a bunch of WD-40 or axle grease or something because it was much better the 2nd day!
I love this picture because the guy in brown waving is our Stake President, President Richardson. (Was our stake president...he was just released a couple of weeks ago after serving for 10 years!!) He is such a great guy and has such a great attitude and is always so positive and upbeat. (He's also our eye doctor.)
We walked for about 3 hours and then stopped for lunch. It was a welcome break. They had provided PBJ sandwiches, a granola bar, goldfish and a fruit roll up. The food committee was fabulous because they planned and prepared every meal. The only thing we had to do was warm up some meat once. It was FABULOUS!!
Two of my kids on the left--McKenzie L, and Josh T. You can see Garrett on the ride side...I was sitting against a tree on the ground behind these guys.
Most of our family--Tyler C in back, Paige S., McKenzie L, Annabelle W, Jenna K, Jenna W and me.
The terrain was starting to get really uneven in parts and had rocks and ruts that we had to navigate around.
Because of the rocks and the ruts, the carts were not doing well and breaking down a lot. So there was a lot of time spent unloading all the carts then sitting around while they were being fixed. I think every family in our company had theirs break at least once, some families multiple times. Luckily ours was just once. Maggie's family's cart broke down multiple times. At least we got a chance to sit and rest.
This is ours getting fixed.
Waiting to get moving again.
Maggie and one of her brothers.
I don't have any pictures of this, but we stopped for a break at one place along the trail. There were bathrooms (port-a-potties) and snacks--delicious apples, and stories about pioneers by a lady in our ward (Holly Robison) who is a professional story teller. She is so fun to listen to. We also got our first reward for working on our Trail of Faith booklet. The Trail of Faith booklet was something that everyone got months and months before we came out to trek. It was a way to get us physically and spiritually prepared. It was a great tool to help everyone, if they did it.
These are some of the pages.
Anyways, we got a doughnut at this stop for our reward. It tasted pretty good!
We gathered as companies and they sent us off one company at a time. For the next 30 minutes to an hour (can't remember how long) we were to do a silent pull. They didn't want anyone talking for this amount of time--they wanted us to think about our pioneer ancestors that we had chosen to walk for and about their story. Or just the pioneers in general and about their faith and dedication. It was pretty cool.
They are telling us about the silent pull in these pictures.
Beautiful scenery that we got to pass by.
Right after the silent pull, we still had to walk and pull the cart, but we could talk at this point. I remember that it started to get really hard. We had to climb up this hill--it wasn't really steep, but it was a bit of an incline that seemed to go on forever. It was pretty hot by now and by this time, we had been walking for 6 hours or so. One of our daughters was struggling and she had a heart condition, so we got her a ride in a truck to the top of the hill.
At the top of the hill, we had to hike on this black asphalt road for awhile. This is Maggie's family, but she must be in the back.
Even though my family started off first that morning, we somehow ended up very last. We were the last ones to walk into camp. One of our sons was having a lot of trouble with his feet--he had so many blisters! So we stopped for awhile to get those bandaged up.
It was beautiful there!
This is us trailing behind. At least we made it though!
Apparently they told us that we made it to camp 3 hours before we were supposed to. I guess we were walking a lot faster than they had planned.
We got into camp and had to set up tents. We were in what they called grass, but were really long annoying weeds!
Some of the tents
Once we got ours set up, I needed to rest!! It was a long day!
The committees got to work trying to come up with ways to fix the hand carts so that they would be more sturdy and not keep breaking down.
They had all the food set up chuck wagon style so that we would take our mess kits and just go down the line and grab the food that was laid out and went back to our families and ate sitting on our buckets. (The buckets had all our belongings in them.) The food was yummy and it was so nice that we didn't have to cook and clean up after such an exhausting day. That night we had baked potatoes with ham and cheese on top and watermelon.
After dinner we had a devotional that was prepared by one of the oldest kids in the family. Then we just hung out and talked for a bit, then hit the hay! All in all I was told that we walked 10 miles that first day. Not bad!
