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