Memorable Memorial Weekend

 Tom and I love exploring Idaho and Memorial weekend is the perfect opportunity to go somewhere we've never been before.
This year, because we were meeting my siblings in Logan on the Saturday before Memorial day, we decided to take the long way to Logan
and go through eastern Idaho.

So Friday morning we drove across the state and started our adventure
in Lava Hot Springs.
I think I'd been there many years ago, but things have changed over the years.
This is the hot springs swimming pool
with the high dive and now a fancy water slide.

The train still runs right through the town.

Here's the train on the hillside above the hot spring pools.

The state of Idaho has done a good job landscaping and designing the pools with cement stairs and hand rails and even canopies.

Too bad we didn't have time for a dip.

Everything was so beautiful and green in eastern Idaho because of all the recent rain. As you can see in this picture, the rain clouds were coming.

We stopped at a grocery store in Lava and bought "fixins" for a picnic lunch.

The rain came right about lunch time.

Good thing we found a picnic table under a covered pavilion.

We drove from Lava Hot Springs to Mike's Place.

Tom's aunt's Dad, named Mike, donated this land to the

state of Idaho for fishing and wildlife.

Then we drove through Bancroft

and on to Soda Springs.

There really is a geyser in Soda Springs. 

A man made geyser but a geyser just the same.  

It goes off every hour.

As you can see, we missed it and didn't want to wait for it. 

Here's the scoop:

Soda Springs has the only captive geyser in the world.  It was discovered in an attempt to find a hot water source for a swimming pool.  On November 30, 1937, the drill went down 315 feet and unleashed the geyser.  The extreme pressure is caused by carbon dioxide gas mixing with water in an underground chamber.  It is now capped and controlled by a timer.  It erupts every hour on the hour.  The geyser reaches heights of 100 feet year round. 

Next we drove to Montpelier, Idaho where we went to the Oregon Trail Museum

and then it was on to Paris, Idaho.

This is the old tabernacle built by the pioneers

between 1884 and 1889. It seats around 2,000 people, nearly four times the population of the city. Pretty impressive.

Next stop was Garden City, Utah right on the shores of Bear Lake.

We'd heard stories about the delicious raspberry shakes at the Home Town Drive-In so we had to check it out.

And here's Bear Lake.

It is a beautiful turquoise color.

I think we need to invest in a selfie stick.

You can kind of see Bear Lake in the background.

We drove up the mountain and through Logan Canyon and ended up in Logan in time for dinner and movie.

We spent Saturday morning looking around Logan and then met Pam, Patty and Hal, and John and Cindy at the Logan Cemetery.

It had rained cats and dogs all morning but by the time we arrived at the cemetery, the rain was gone.

Evan and Kelly's flowers were even more beautiful than usual.

It was so fun reuniting and honoring our parents.

We were sad Kay and Ken and Roger couldn't be there with us.

We found this gravestone from our Goodsell relatives had been knocked down over the winter,

so we talked to the cemetery and took it to Brown monument to get it fixed.

Next stop was Wellsville to honor James and Sarah Park, Grandma Libby Fox Peterson's foster parents.

Last and definitely not least was our stop in Brigham City for lunch at Maddox.

The place was hopping with other Memorial weekend diners, but we waited it out and got seated.

It was so fun being together and making plans for our next get together.

What a handsome group!

We love our brother John

Then John and Cindy and Tom and I hit the road and drove back to Idaho and Pam and Patty and Hal headed back to Salt Lake and Elk Ridge.

Monday night we hosted Devin and Sarah and family for our first barbecue of the season.

We had a delicious feast complete with J-Dawg's 

(grilled hot dogs with special sauce)

barbecued ribs, grilled vegetables, pasta, and corn salad, watermelon, chips and cupcakes for dessert.

Cute little picnickers.

Not sure who those guys in the background belong to.

It was a great weekend and a great way to kick off the summer.