Week 44 - Hegsted Mission

 21-May-2023-Sunday

So good to have Anna with us.  The Ewers were kind and worked our shift today so we could spend more time with Anna.  What a blessing.  The drive to Rutland was nice.  The river a little higher from the rains yesterday, but already clear.  The Branch had taken the youth to Palmyra to the temple and then visited the sacred sites there.  Sacrament Meeting was based on the trip and after two short talks, the remainder of the testimonies were given about the trip.  That was good.  Anna and I attended Sunday School and I really like the way Brother Weight gets participation from the  group.

Since we did not need to get home quickly, we chose to visit waterfalls and bridges on the way home.  The water levels are not a high spring flows, but still doing well.  We visited the following falls (although not in this order).

Bailey Falls which is next to a sky lift owned by the Middlebury College.  There is no clear path, but the results were fantastic after bush-whacking to them.  There are actually two sets of falls and these pictures show only the upper set.

Second to last falls visited.

Texas Falls which is on National Forest Land and thus has parking and is very accessible to the road.  Dede and I have been here several times, but it is really a "do not miss water fall."  It was a shorter walk than other falls and after bush-whacking that was nice.

This was our last water fall.

Carver Falls.  We viewed this from the New York State side of the river where we had access.  It has been a power plant for years and has been rebuilt at least 3 times.  However the power station has remained pretty much unchanged since the late 1800's and is built on solid rock.

Gully Brook Falls.  This was fun to find.  We were to go less than 2.6 miles down the road to a turn-out that would hold three cars and take a faint trail down to the brook and then walk down stream.  There were many turn-outs and no trails, but we made it.  In the first picture, Anna and Dede are standing at the top.  It never ceases to amaze how a small amount of water can make such a wonderful set of falls.

Meade Falls or Rutland Central Falls we have visited before.  It is such an impressive set of falls and so easy to get to.  The railroad bridge and tunnels in the surrounding granite are so impressive.

I did not take a picture of Sutherland Falls.  We have been here before, but I was silly not to take a new picture.

Chaffee Falls was a nice 1/2 mile walk in to view.  The falls are wide and if you look carefully, you can see there is a house at the top of the falls.  I think they are off to one side, but from my view point it looked directly on the top.  I think these people wanted white noise for sleeping before they made an App.

We came home with soar muscles and hungry bellies but were well fed on French Chicken.

22-May-2023-Monday

Another great day.  We still have Anna, whom we left sleeping as we went to our prayer meetings.  Elder Buswell discussed teaching to all senses.  I must admit, this seems odd to me as I do not think in this way.  However at least intellectually it makes sense why one should do this and how it is to be done.  Thus I will attempt to utilize his thinking.  Sister Ewer discussed using anticipation in stories.  This seems more natural to me, but I have not tried it in the past, but did so today.  We also watched a video of the Buswell family union when all of the children came to celebrate his 70th birthday.  It was delightful.

We were very busy.  We had 4 woman come in who were having a girls' party.  Three of the four knew Sister Buswell, so she came in and finished the tour by taking them to the monument and the foundations.  How fun.  One of the four also knew my grandmother Mabel from Aberdeen.  That was fun.  We also had a family of 6, she was a member while the rest of the family were not.  They were delightful.  Another mixed couple one member and one non-.  She wept almost the entire tour.  He was kindly attentive.  Truly the Lord brings people to the site.  

After a scheduling meeting, we picked up Anna and went out to our last touring expedition in VT.  We went to Quechee and watched people blow glass at Simon Pearce.  That is fun to watch.  We also looked at the waterfall and wooden bridge there.  From there we hiked down and back up Quechee Gorge.  This is such a beautiful hike and the water was higher than we have ever seen.  Once back to the top we stopped for ice cream and a break.  This led us to the falls above the Gorge and then into Woodstock (VT) not to be confused with Woodstock NY to see the Taftsville covered bridge as well as the center bridge in Woodstock.  Finally we went to Lebanon to shop and get gas so we can leave early tomorrow for Gloucester to try once again to do a whale watching tour.

23/24-May-2023 Tuesday and Wednesday

We traded PDAYs with the Buswells so we could do a whale watching trip with Anna, since it was too windy last Wednesday and the trip was canceled.  Thus we left early Tuesday morning and headed for Gloucester Mass to do a trip with 7-Seas Whale Watching Tours with whom we went with Sara's family.  The weather was not as warm and there was a good breeze, but it was a good trip.  We covered 28 miles, which was a record for them for this season because we could not find whales.  Luckily another boat had found whales way to the south of the banks we were searching and we got there to watch them.  Other wise we would have only seen one juvenile (and rather small) humpback whale.  As it was we had five whales and got right in the middle of them.  There was one pair and one trio set of whales and at one point the pair were right off one side of the boat and the trio off the other side.  Made for good pictures and lots of fun for all.  I do feel sorry for those who get seasick.  Luckily we were all okay.  We spent a good deal of time with the whales before returning.  Obviously pictures are in order and here they come.

  

We did not want to go to the hotel too early after getting back to the dock about 3:30 so we headed to Maine to show Anna the Nubble Light House before eating and heading to the hotel.  This way Anna could add Maine to her list of visited states.  We had to have Anna at the airport at 4:50 am so we had a room close to the airport.  We were glad we took her.  When we returned it was about 4:55 and a large group was waiting for the shuttle bus and we heard that it had already left 10 minutes early leaving many people stranded for 30 minutes.  I hope they made their flights.

Obviously we awoke early Wednesday, but we did come back a sleep for 90 minutes before arising, eating and going to the temple to do a 9 am sealing session.  May I say it is frustrating to drive in Boston.  Depending upon the time of day, it can take anywhere from 30 to 90 minutes to make the trip we made.  It took us 60 minutes, but we had a great session.  There were three temple workers with us and so we did all of our cards (5 couples, 10 men sealing to parents and 2 women sealing to parents.). Then we did a number of temple names.  All good fun.  One of the sisters with us was telling us about her Chinese heritage and how records were lost in WWll.  It sounded much like Germany where churches were bombed and records lost.  She did not know Bob Dunkle who works on Wednesday at the temple and is getting a degree from BYU in Genealogy, so we set her up to meet him.  I hope he does not mind.

We drove home.  Not one serious slow down and so it took us 2:12 to get home giving us time for a nap and to get ready for work.  We took over from the Ewers a family of 3.  Grandma and two granddaughters.  May I say attentive granddaughters.  It started to rain, but we had two families of 8 and 5 come in to round out the day.  I spent most of the time with the family of 8.  They are on a tour to visit the church sites west of the Mississippi and we were the first stop.  They were wonderful and at the restoration board they had such good things to share.  They will have a great trip and we were blessed to have them.  Despite the rain, they went down the foundations in the golf cart.  Great sports.  Dede's family had been at the site several times, but she enjoyed them.  They were from Massachusetts and know the Arbon's who are the hosts at Camp Joseph.

25-May-2023-Thursday

The month is quickly fading away.  We had only 6 visitors during the morning shift.  But one set stayed nearly 3 hours.  They were a member and her nonmember friend.  Both loved to talk and provide opinions.  It was interesting.  The nonmember wants to join, but has a word of wisdom issue to overcome.  I offered to baptize her in the pond and then needed to backtrack quickly.  I think the uniqueness of the offer appealed to her.  She needs to have this done correctly.  We also had the missionaries.  Elder Lloyd goes home tomorrow and has never had a tour, so we gave him one.  So fun.  The last were a couple who were walking and whom I ran down to offer information.  They merely wanted to walk.

In the afternoon we shopped and shopped.  It had been some time since Anna arrived that we had shopped and we needed to replenish the cupboards, so we needed to get out.  We will need to do so on Monday before Danielle's family comes in.  We also were looking for stuff to install the air conditioners as the weather is supposed to change next week and become warm while Danielle's family is here.                                                                 Finally we had dinner at Tozier's Restaurant with all the missionaries.  President and Sister Ewer wanted to get us all together after their absence and it was nice to be together and to have Bob (FM manager) and his wife with us.  What a wonderful group.

26-Mary-2023-Friday:

Such a beautiful day for the initial day of the Memorial Day Weekend, but such a slow day at the site.  There is just no telling who will come in.  This morning we had three people.  The first a man with his family in the car was given a 10 minute tour by the extraordinary Dede.  She did great.  The second was a couple who graduated from BYU and seem to be just touring.  They wanted a 30 minute tour also done by Dede.  Did I mention how great she is?

Bob Arnold the FM manager had offered to let me fix the rocks in the walk way up to the monument.  I do not think he had any idea how many of the stones had become loose.  In the picture you can see the rock way and I pulled up 26 of the stones, vacuumed the stone and back and then glued them back down to the cement under-base using liquid nails.  May I say very old and nearly dry liquid nails.  I was supposed to start Monday morning, but the slow day allowed me to begin today.  I think I did about 25-33 percent of the stones in the first little bit of the walk.  I did not make it halfway to the stairs and blew threw the 8 tubes of liquid glue he supplied me.  The Bergers got 6 more tubes so I can continue and then they will order more by email.  With Danielle and family coming in next Tuesday, this will last me until they leave.  I also fixed three stone close to the monument that are often stepped on and people comment about.  Hopefully other sections are not as bad.  This section is the narrowest and gets all the traffic.  When one starts up the stairs, the walk is wider and hopefully the spread out traffic will be easier on the stairs.  Also, more than 2/3 of the stones requiring repair were edge stones.  We will see.  The walk is pretty, but it appears to becoming a maintenance nightmare.  Bob would like to see the church put in a granite walkway like other sites.  Not sure if that will happen, so glad to help out.  President requested a count to pass on to the Historic department.

I came home and slept.  I did not feel well last night and was up for about 90 minutes over two different occasions.  Gave me lots of time to ponder.

27-May-2023-Saturday

Not sure what is going on.  I feel as tired as I did with Covid, although not as sick as I was with Covid.  Anyway even after sleeping in, I was exhausted.  I awoke with the hope and plan to work on the review, but after looking at the weather forecast, realized I needed to stop and put in air conditioners as it will get hot and we have the Larsen's coming.  Last year, we had two and this year I wanted to add a third as it was so hot up stairs.  Naturally we did not have the parts needed.  We tried a local shop that did not have the parts and so lost 30 minutes had I gone straight to Home Depot.  All the parts were purchased and the three air conditioners are installed, but it took the whole morning and I was depleted by the time we went to the site. Plus I did not get to write in my review.

In the morning, the Buswells were smashed with people.  We had 10 people and had such a delightful time with them.  The last couple was the best.  She was wheel chair bound and they traveled in a mobile home so they can take care of her.  We spent a good 90 minutes with them perhaps more.  I drove her up to the monument and then over to the house in the golf cart.  I have not done that before, but it is a golf cart and it can handle grass.  I then took them below.  What a special time we had with them.  This is why I love our mission.  We have time to give people all they want and some people want so much.

After our shift, we went to Camp Joseph where we were hosted by the Arbon's who are the camp hosts.  We had samore's and talked about our ancestors since it is Memorial Day weekend.  Good fun, but by 9 pm, I was totally wasted.