This Is The Place Park, And Other Fun Weekend Stuff

It was Saturday, June 8, 2013. We had arrived at the Carlin's house the evening before, and were still waiting for the rest of my family to arrive (my parents made it to their hotel by mid-afternoon; my brother Ray and his family not long after). What to do while we waited? My sister had a brilliant idea: she had bought a membership to This Is The Place Heritage Park several months ago, and it was about to expire. Why not take advantage of it one more time? So off we drove to Salt Lake City.

Here's the statue of Brigham Young famously saying, "This is the place" when discovering the valley. Silly me...I always assumed the statue was the only thing up here in the park. I was definitely proven wrong.

This Is The Place Park is a tribute to the Mormon Pioneers who traveled thousands of miles to arrive in the Salt Lake Valley in 1847. It's primarily a recreation of a typical pioneer village, with faithful recreations of pioneer homes, gardens, schools, hotels, businesses, and tradesmen spread throughout the grounds. There are also several larger buildings that can be rented out for special events like weddings and family reunions, as well. There's also a petting zoo, an Indian village, a min train ride, and several stores open for business, including a candy shop, donut shop, and gift shop. This Is The Place has quite the variety of activities, and we sampled a little of everything while we were there.

Panoramic picture of the lovely view

What follows are many, many pictures from our day at the park:

Here's the shuttle that took us all around the park. Good thing too...it's pretty hilly and it was a hot day, so the kids would have been pretty worn out otherwise.

Lorelai is "the dunce" at the local pioneer school...

...while Celeste and Aurora are the "star students"! Celeste even wrote her name out for us to see.

Here are some of our petting zoo adventures, which ranged from the adorable to the terrifying...

Lorelai with a shaggy cow...her favorite animal!

There were lots of cute little chicks to hold and pet.

Our cousins Elaine and Abby also loved holding the chicks. Elaine broke her collarbone recently, hence the sling.

This was the "freakin' scary" part of the petting zoo...these grumpy oxen. Yes, they were big, and yes, their horns were sharp. How do I know this? Because when we tried to pet them, they waved those horns angrily in our direction! With me, they slapped my hand rudely aside. With my niece Elaine, they SHOVED HER AGAINST THE FENCE AND RIPPED A HOLE IN HER SHIRT. No kidding! Nathan managed to pull her away in time; otherwise those horns might have gone right into her gut. It was pretty horrifying; Elaine was crying about it for an hour afterwards. And how many park employees were around to assist us (or at least apologize for their dangerous animals)? Oh yeah...NONE. Yikes; this was the definite dark spot of the trip. We're glad no one was hurt; still, WHY ARE THESE OXEN EASILY ACCESSIBLE TO CHILDREN??

We also visited several of the tradesmen working in this little pioneer city...

Here's the blacksmith, making some nails and pins to be used in larger projects later.

We also went to the printing press, where we got to watch an old-school press in action.

Here's all the tiny letters & words; it was within easy toddler reach! I'd be scared of losing pieces.

All the older kids got a turn "pressing" the page into the ink, creating a mini-Deseret News!

Here's the leather shop...

...where the kids got to make leather imprints to take home!

They also got to pan for gold in this tiny stream.

 Here are some other cool things we did at the park:

We peeked inside original pioneer cottages;

visited pioneer drugstores...

...and various other shops (this was the tinsmith's shop; there was a shoe store as well.)

We took a ride around a miniature lake on a miniature train.

 

We climbed around inside a replica of an old sailing ship. These are bunk beds inside the ship; not so comfy!

We took a quick peek inside the Indian village's hogans.

We checked out a replica of  the very first Brigham Young Academy building (forerunner to today's BYU)...

...and then we all ate fresh-fried donuts.

Mmmmmmm....donuts.

After our snack, the girls took advantage of our pony ride coupons...

 

And finished our time at the park with another trip to the petting zoo...a GENTLER trip, far away from the murderous oxen.

Cute little sheep!

We had been at the park all morning and had a great time...but we were pretty tired out by now. It was time to go out to lunch! Paul remembered a pizza place from his college days nearby, so off we went!

It looked like a dive, but The Pie Pizzeria was quite delicious...and dark! Which was not a bad thing after being out in the sun all morning. More than one cousin drifted off to sleep either during the meal, or immediately thereafter, in the car.

After arriving home, we were able to crash only a short time...because then the rest of the family showed up! It was great to catch up with my brother Ray and his lovely wife Adrienne and their two adorable girls (including their youngest, Charlotte, whom we met for the very first time!). It was also fun for the girls to play with all the other cousins, and to climb all over Grandma and Grandpa in delight.

Since nobody had any energy to cook (and because an inexplicable power failure had left the Carlins' home without light or oven capacity), we ordered chicken dinner from El Pollo Loco, then had a late picnic dinner in a nearby park (very late, since the restaurant kept screwing up my dad's food order. They ran out of lettuce! Seriously??):

I am not used to Daylight Savings Time anymore. We stayed at that park until past 9 pm, but the sun was shining all the while! Crazy. Luckily, the neighborhood power was restored right around the time of our trip, so the sweet sweet air conditioner was working at full tilt to lull us to grateful, exhausted sleep.

Sunday church was actually semi-restful, since I wasn't pacing around worrying about Primary the whole time! Celeste got a lovely hairdo, thanks to my sister and her sweet braiding skills:

After church, Jocelyn went all-out and put together a huge ham dinner for the whole family. We spent the evening eating, laughing, visiting, playing games, and loving being together.

But this wasn't the end of our family reunion! There was still a lot of fun ahead that week.