Summer Trip (Part Two UTAH then home)

Welcome to Texas

The next morning we headed out early, driving up to Jackson, then across to Dallas, and finally up to Amarillo. We spent the night there then up before dawn to Utah. There was a pretty spectacular lightning display between Amarillo and Tucumcari NM. We also saw a bunch of light off to the north. We think it was a windmill farm.

We ate breakfast in Santa Rosa and a little cafe. Then on to Albuquerque, Gallup, then across the Indian reservation to Page and finally to Hatch.

At Hatch we hung out with Grandpa Ed, went exploring the back road from Hatch to Panguitch Lake, and did our usual morning hike at Red Canyon.

Red Canyon

Road to the river in Hatch

We also drove over to Cedar City to get Kira moved out of her apartment. Between her car and the CR-V we managed to get all of her stuff packed up. (We did have to leave a Styrofoam ice chest in Hatch - we were that full)

On the 29th of July we drove up to Salt Lake to see Jessi and Peter.  Since Kira still didn't have a place to live, JoAnne (through the miracle of mobile internet) found a place that eventually became Kira's new home. They decided to skip on the house where they smoked pot and ran around with no clothes on. Her new home was occupied by good LDS girls - some students, some working.

Aunt Susan's house

Peter had arranged for us to stay at his Aunt Susan's house in Cottonwood Heights. She is a nurse and was serving a tour on a Navy hospital ship (USNS Comfort, I think). Peter's brother Paul and sister-in-law Kylie live in the basement, but they  were out of town, too. (this is were Jessi and Peter are currently living while Aunt Susan is serving a mission in Vanuatu.)

View from Aunt Susan's house

While driving around looking for some stuff for Kira's apartment, we had a little incident. A pizza delivery car ran into the back of the three-week old CR-V. Damage was minor and didn't affect anything on the trip, but was aggravating. (BTW - the other insurance paid for the repair and all is well on that issue.)

Rumpled fender

On the 30th, Kira had to work, but Jessi, JoAnne and I went up Big Cottonwood Canyon to hike to a waterfall. It was a nice (steep) drive and hike. (We got 189 mpg gas mileage coming down the mountain.!)

That afternoon, we met Peter near where he works for lunch at Gourmandise restaurant. They had a bunch for baked goods that were really good. We also visited City Creek Mall right across the street from Temple Square.

City Creek Mall
Roof closed when it is hot (or cold)

City Creek Mall
Roof open when it's not hot

 On Saturday, August 1st, We went back downtown with Kira and Peter. We spent some time on Temple Square, and then about 7 hours in Deseret Books. (Don't let facts get in the way of a good story!)

SLC

On Sunday, we went to sacrament meeting at Jessi and Peter's ward, then headed out of town. We decided to take I-80 across Wyoming rather than the usual route up I-70. We hadn't been that way before.  There was a bad motorcyle wreck just before we got to the Wyoming state line. We read later that at least one of the riders died, and they had to close the freeway for a life flight helicopter to land. Other than that an uneventful drive. We spent the first night in Limon, Colorado.

Statue of Lincoln at rest area in Wyoming

The next day we drove I-70 across Kansas and Missouri and spent the night in Illinois. We did stop and have Czechoslovakian food at a little restaurant in Kansas.

Our last day took us through Indiana, Kentucky (traffic detour took us past some amazing horse farms in Kentucky) Tennessee, North Carolina, then back home to South Carolina.

Indiana welcome center

Tennessee welcome center

Back in South Carolina

Home

Rescue HC-97

HC-97G, tail number 522782, was built by Boeing in 1952 as a KC-97G-29-BO Stratofreighter (tanker) in 1952. In 1963, it was converted to a HC-97G, air rescue aircraft. It assigned to the 55th Air Rescue Squadron at Kindley AFB, Bermuda. This is were my father flew this airplane. The airplane remained at Kindley until 1966 when the 55th ARS converted to HC-130s.

Building a rescue aircraft is difficult as no one builds rescue version models. So I bought a standard cargo version of the C-97, 1/144 scale, and converted it. I had to research the paint scheme in order to paint it. Fortunately they now make decal paper you can run through a ink jet printer. Pictures of the rescue airplanes are a little scarce, even using Google.

Anyway, here it is. It didn't come out as well as I hoped, but better than I feared. I had to make the decals for the yellow stripe around the tail and the "Rescue" stripe across the vertical stabilizer, and of course the correct tail number. I would like to make one for Granpa Ed, but I don't know how I would get it to him. Props and landing gear are a little fragile.

HC-97G 52-2782, 55th ARS, Kindley AFB, Bermuda

I also did some work on the Cutty Sark today. Most of the deck stuff forward of the main mast has been installed. It is coming along slowly.

Catchin up

It has been a long time since my last blog, so let's see what has been happening.

First, I have pretty much finished the USS Constitution. There are some tweaks that I might get around to sometime, but I am ready to start on something else.

Constitution trivia: the real Constitution is going into dry dock in 2015 for a 3-year overhaul. They will re-copper her hull, and do some major work on the bow and stern - hopefully to get her closer to the way she looked in 1812. They will also be doing some inspections and repairs as needed.













We have gone on several adventures in the last couple of months.  In October JoAnne and I flew to San Antonio for her Fall break, and drove out again for Thanksgiving. See Vanessa's blog for details about both trips since I don't know when we will get our blogs up to date on those trips. I did get one picture from the flight to San Antonio that I liked. I took it right after taking off from Greenville-Spartanburg airport.

So my next project (which is going very slowly) is the British tea clipper Cutty Sark. Built on the Clyde in 1869 for the Jock Willis Shipping Line, she was one of the last tea clippers to be built and one of the fastest, coming at the end of a long period of design development which halted as sailing ships gave way to steam propulsion. Unlike Constitution which was made entirely of wood, Cutty Sark has an iron frame with wood planking and decking. She is preserved in Greenwich, England. She was recorded as going 17.5 knots which is faster than most of the steamships that replaced her. But she could not use the newly constructed Suez canal so the steamships could make the trip from Shanghai to London quicker. She was used for many years to haul wool from Australia, and spent some time under the Portuguese flag as a tramp cargo ship, then returned to England as a training vessel.  She is now in permanent dry dock for display as a museum ship.

Cutty Sark in Greenwich 1987

The model was a gift for Christmas last year. They don't make the kit anymore so my kids found one on eBay. It is one of the original 1959 versions. The model is in good shape. The decals may be a problem, but I scanned them so I can make new ones if I need to.

I have just started painting the hull. Here you can see the white stripe on both sides, and the copper bottom on the on the starboard side (both sides have been "coppered" now). I also have gotten the decks mostly painted.

 It is a busy time of year so this is going very slowly, but maybe I can get a little more motivated.

Family History - Outside the Box and Into the Oven

Kingdom of Bohemia
Coat of Arms

These past few weeks JoAnne and I have been working towards setting up our ward's participation in the church's pilot Billion Graves projects (program to be rolled out to the US, Canada, and Australia in 2015) I have spent some time thinking about families, and relationships we have to our ancestors. Then I read an article by Nelda McAllister, a Latina member for the church from Columbia, and her struggles to maintain her cultural ties to her home country despite innocent ignorance about her background by well meaning people around her. (Hint: Columbia is not Mexico...or Cuba or Argentina for that matter.) In it she described her efforts to keep her connections to her Raza (race) alive, much as those of us with pioneer heritage do every July.

I got to thinking about my own cultural background. I have ancestors from England, Bohemia (Czech Republic now) Denmark, Switzerland, among others. Other than the English heritage that many Americans have inherited from our nation's ties back to England, I know very little about my cultural heritage.

Grandma Turek's kitchen in Hatch

Then I remembered a pastry my Grandma Turek used to make, and the story behind it. Born in Utah, her ancestry was English and Danish, but my Grandpa Turek was born in Nebraska to emigrants from Bohemia, and grew up speaking "Bohunk." He came out to Utah in the 1930s working for the Union Pacific Railroad Utah Parks Company helping to build a water pumping station and power plant in the bottom of the Grand Canyon to supply the then-under-construction lodge and cabins on the north rim. That is where he met my grandmother. After they were married, she went out to Nebraska to meet his family. One the things she learned from my Great-Grandmother was to make kolache (singular kolach), a pastry filled with fruit or poppy seeds. (If you see a "kolach" advertised with meat in it, it is technically klobasniky and was invented by Czech immigrants in Texas. Just FYI)

My grandmother passed away years ago and I was afraid that this link to my Czech past may be lost. I called my dad, who happened to be staying at my grandmothers house in Hatch, Utah to see if there was a cookbook or recipe card at the house. Is answer did not surprise me that grandma usually cooked from memory and there was no recipe at the house. But he did say he would check with his brothers to see if any of them had the recipe.  Uncle Wynn and Aunt Shauna in Washington, Utah came through with Grandma's recipe. (Note the assumption that we all know how to make "sweet dough!" JoAnne thinks the yeast pastry she uses for her Christmas "candy cane" pastry should work just fine). While other fruit fillings could be used, this is how Grandma Turek made kolache as passed on from Great-grandmother Turek of Plzen, Bohemia.

Kolach Recipe

Ingredients: Sweet dough, dry cottage cheese (if unavailable you can use 4% large 
curd from Wal Mart, cinnamon, raisins, sugar, eggs.

Mixing the ingredients: If dry cottage cheese is available place it in a bowl (24 oz 
carton will make about two dozen kolache) If dry cottage cheese is not available 
empty the contents of a 24 oz 4% large curd carton of cottage cheese into a 
strainer where it can be washed with cold water and get the milk out of the chunks. 
After drying for a short time place the washed cottage cheese in a bowl which will 
allow you to mix the following in it. There is not a set amount of cinnamon, sugar, 
or raisins (put in as many raisins as you would like) that I mix in the cottage cheese. 
I generally put about three heaped up table spoons of sugar in the mix along with 
about 1/2 tea spoon of cinnamon. After mixing the cottage cheese, sugar, and 
cinnamon good, I taste the mixture to see how it tastes. I then add an ingredient if it 
seems to need more. You will want the mixture to taste quite sweet because some 
of the sweetness is lost in the dough as it bakes. 

After getting the taste right, mix the raisins and two whole eggs in the mixture. After the dough is prepared and can be rolled out in a thin layer, cut the dough into about 4 inch squares and place a spoon full of filling on the dough, and then bring the 4 corners of the dough together at the top of the filling and get them to stick together. Place the dough filled with your mixture in a baking pan and let them raise for a few minutes. When the dough is raised enough bake kolache at 350 degrees F in the oven until it is golden brown.

Grandpa Edward F Turek
and Grandma Julia Marie Huntington

Great-grandma Marie Houska Turek

An Adventure Out West - Part 4: The Weekend

Saturday morning, Peter, Paul and Rex (their father) all wanted to go golfing. (Brent says the Cedar City golf course is a great place to get a hole in one because of all the prairie dog holes in it. Sure enough, Peter landed in one.)  Julie and Kylie wanted to go for a hike, but Kira didn't bring any hiking shoes. So Kira, Jessi and I decided to go over to Hatch for the morning. Dad was going over there to spend the week. We would go help him open up the house and visit for a while. Dad texted us that he was leaving at about 0845. We didn't get out until nearly 0910. We tried calling him to see if he was still getting groceries. The call rolled to voicemail, so we figured he was already on his way over the mountain and was in one of the several cell phone black holes. So we started over the mountain ourselves.  Even though the leaves were out in Cedar, we didn't get very far up the mountain to the point they were not. Up on top, at the meadows at the Cedar Breaks turn off, there was still a little snow. (A week later there would be a lot of snow with a storm that dumped about 4-5 inches on Cedar City while Kira was there.) We stopped to take a couple of pictures. (Temps in Cedar during the day were in the 80s)

Meadows on Cedar Mountain - Over 9000 feet elevation

We continued our drive to Hatch, noting that things were pretty dry.

When we got to Hatch, Dad wasn't there!  Jessi was bummed because she brought her cross stitch project to work on and forgot the pattern. So we drove over to the church where we could get a  wi-fi connection so she could download it to her tablet. Then we went back to the house, planning on taking a short walk to the river. About that time, Dad drove up. His cell phone had accidentally gotten turned off which is why we could not reach him. We took his stuff in, and helped turn on the water and get him settled in. Then we just sat around and listened to him tell stories about family and stuff. Jessi had the presence of mind to get her phone out and record part of that conversation. That changed the tone for the rest of the trip. Kira took a bunch of pictures of the inside of the house at Hatch. It is pretty much the way it was when Grandma lived there.

"TV" room

Kitchen

Kitchen

There is something familiar here!

Christmas ca.1958

May 3 2014

We had to leave Hatch in time to meet Peter, Rex and Julie (and company) for a BBQ in Cedar City. But Elijah made us make one stop on the way (Malachi 4:5-6). We stopped to take some pictures at the Cedar City Cemetery on the way out of town. (These pictures will or have already been added to familysearch.org)

Grandma and Grandpa Turek

Aunt Eileen and Uncle Vince

Aunt Kay

Cemetery view

Great-great Grandma and Grandpa Barnhurst

Great Aunt Lucille and Uncle Wiley

Kira plans on going back to Hatch to get some stories and histories from Grandpa as a project we came up with on this trip.

Meanwhile, back in Cedar, Peter's family was preparing a picnic for us all. We met them at the mouth of Cedar Canyon, at Canyon Park.

We ate hamburgers and hot dogs, and had a good time. We played bocce. Peter calls it Italian field curling. So I didn't know the proper terms, so I will make them up (then give you a web site where you can get the official version - mine is more entertaining.) One team take a small yellow ball I call the snitch and tosses it out a piece. Then they take the first of their larger balls (the quaffle) to see how close they can get to the snitch. Then the other team throws their first quaffle. Which ever team is not closest to the snitch continues to throw their quaffles until all are thrown. (You can use your quaffle as a bludger to knock the opposing teams balls away from the snitch.) The team closest to the snitch at the end scores points. (For real rules, go here.)

That evening we went (singing the soundtrack to Frozen at the top of our lungs) to Paul and Kylie's house for pizza, then went to our new favorite ice cream place, The Fix. The ice cream was really good, but the service was terrific. When we went in, Paul and Rex wanted banana cream ice cream, but they didn't have any out. When they asked, the manager said, "Let me look" and went back into the back. When we came out, he told us he had the stuff to make if and would whip up a batch for us. Everyone got what they wanted, but Kira didn't see a flavor that she wanted. When the manager saw everyone had ice cream except her he asked her what was wrong. She told him. He then asked what flavor she wanted so he would have it next time. She said peanut butter. He said, "Oh! We have that!" and went and got it for her AND DIDN'T CHARGE HER FOR IT! On the way out, I asked if by chance he carried pistachio (I was perfectly happy with the chocolate chip mint I had) and he said, "Sure" and went and brought me out a small cup of it.  So if you are in Cedar City and want ice cream, go to:

The Fix

1760 North Main

Again that evening we stayed up too late talking.

Sunday, we went to church at PB&J's ward. Even though it was fast Sunday, Jessi and Peter sang a special muscial number. I actually took the time to bare my testimony. We got to meet a couple that had just moved there from Greenville. After church and lunch of leftovers, it was time for Jessi and Peter to pack up to go to Salt Lake for the summer. Peter will be working as a manager trainee at Cafe Zupas, and Jessi is an intern at the Chruch of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints data center. Rex and Julie took some of their stuff in their car, and we packed up the rest in the Accord. Mid afternoon, Kira and I were on our way back to Vegas, and PB&J were on their way to SLC. I was sad to go, but with everyone leaving there was no reason to stay, plus I don't think Renee would pay me for ever long if I stayed! 

On our way home, I took Kira down to Moapa Valley (Logandale and Overton, Nevada). We stopped at the cemetery where my Grandpa and Grandma Leavitt are buried. I don't think I had been to the cemetery since the mid-60s. The valley has grown so much that I was having a hard time finding it. We drove past the old high school and the house Mom, Mike, Sherri and I lived in while waiting to go to the Philippines to join Dad in 1970-71. We also drove past Grandma Leavitt's old house.

Grandma and Grandpa Leavitt

Aunt Verna and Uncle Grant
(Uncle Grant sealed JoAnne and me at St George Temple)

Monday, Kira went back to work and I hung out with Aunt Kelly. I joined Kira for lunch at Cafe Rio (last of my pick list of places to eat along with Cafe Zupas and All American Classic Diner). I picked her up after work and we went to Krispy Kreme for donuts. 

Kira's School

Tuesday morning about 0500, Kira dropped me off at the airport for my trip home. The trip was exactly like it was supposed to be, which was a nice change from the trip out. I was pre-checked with TSA so I didn't have to get computer out or take off shoes. Flights all left on time and arrived on time. USO was open in Houston so I didn't even have to buy anything to eat. Only remarkable thing on the trip home was the plane that took me from Houston to GSP, was one of Southwest's special livery airplanes - Maryland One.

Maryland One - my ride home

Arrived at GSP on time, picked up my bag, and the Passport and headed home. Only glitch was traffic on I-85 was a parking lot right at GSP, but it opened up after about 2 miles. (Have I ever mentioned I hate I-85?)

GSP from the air

Trip started off "not so good" but ended up great. Only regret was the JoAnne couldn't go with me. I really enjoyed my time with Peter and his family, and especially with my girls.