Day 3 Downtown/SnowCanyon

 
We spent the morning exploring downtown St. George.  We started out at the Daughters of Utah Pioneers museum.  I had no idea that I had many ancestors here.  As I was looking at these pictures, I was surprised to see many of the names that I recognized.  These are my ancestors!
 

I often tell the girls the story of wee granny (Mary Murdoch), one of my great grandmothers, who joined the church in Scotland.  She was only 4'7", 90 pounds.  I sometimes wonder if this is the gene that has made my girls small.  She had 8 children, lost her husband, joined the church and traveled west to America and to Zion.  She suffered many hardships.  She died on her journey to join her son, John Steele.  She sent a message to tell her son she died facing zion.  You can see the picture of John and Ann Steele.  Further details of the story can be found here: http://www.handcarttreks.com/Documents/MARYMURDOCHWEEGRANNY.pdf


Daniel D. McArthur, my great-great grandpa, is shown in this photo above, baptizing Indians, including the chief.  Initially when he met the Indians they whipped him.  As they whipped him he would yell, "whoppeeee!"  He didn't want them to know how much they were really hurting him.  This story reminds me of my Grandpa Ross McArthur, their attitudes are similar.

As we were walking from the Brigham Young's winter home to the tabernacle we found this jewelry store.  My Grandpa Ross McArthur's brother, Tom, owned this jewelry store.  Now it has been bought out by someone else.  We still went in and talked with the owners.  Jeff commented that he should have done research in my family history and bought our wedding rings here.  :)


 
We then went over to snow canyon which is only 10-15 minutes away from St. George for a horseback trail ride. 


Joelle was pretty confident on her horse.  She kept trying to get her horse to pass me.  As she would move left, my horse, that was directly in front of hers, would move left.  She would then try to move right, my horse was not a second behind in moving right.  She wouldn't let Joelle's horse pass her.  Somehow, unexpectedly, Joelle got her horse to quickly trot and pass.   My horse did not like that and all of the sudden bolted.  I haven't been able to ride horses very much.  I have been bucked off two different times in my life.  I was concerned that this was going to be my third.  I felt myself going back and then my neck whipped forward.  Ouch!  The front of my head and the back of my neck throbbed!  I managed to hold on and in a blur the horse stopped.  This also set a chain reaction to the other horses, fortunately, everyone else was okay. 

 

By now you might think my daughters have a case of heliophobia...
 

It was another beautiful day!  The weather was in the 60s, great for all the things we did!  We ended with another swim at the resort and a movie, The Princess Bride.


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