Martin's Cove <3

Okay so as I'm sure most of you know i had the opportunity to go to Martin's cove this last week. I definately wasn't the most excited to go, but i am REALLY glad that i went, and it was probably the most spiritual experience of my life. When we got to the visitor's center we watched a little video. in it President Hinkley said that martins cove was probably one of the most sacred places he had ever been in, and was one of the most sacred places on earth. If you think about all of the places he has been, that is a really huge thought to think that a patch of sagebrush between two hills, in the middle of wyoming could be the most sacred places on earth. When i saw that movie, I didn't really know if i would think that too, but now i definately know that martin's cove, the patch of sagebrush, is definately one of the holy-est places i have/will ever been. SO! this post has LOTS of pictures, but i really wanted all of them on here so you could see my experience! so here we go! Well, we had to be at the stake center at 4:30 AM!! it was crazy...so after only 4 hours of sleep we left at 5 oclock. We drove for about 2 hours, and got about 25 miles out side of soda springs when we pulled over into some random man's front yard because our bus was making a beeping noise. We found out that there was a problem with some water valve and ended up being stranded for 2 hours waiting for a part...lovely. so that put us 2 hours behind on our trip. and also our 10 oclock stop for breakfast behind....we were STARVING by the time we got to rock springs! So anyway we had some fun at this man's house

This is my family: from left
1:Pa:Floyd, Ma: Suzy, Cassidy
2: Andrea, Brekah, Amy , ME (i look yucky)
3:Brady, Tanner,Preston This is the man whose house we ended up at! ha ha! his neighbor called him and told him the Amish people were all in his front yard, so he had to come out and investigate. Ended up we were all just a bunch of crazy mormons dressed up as pioneers, and he ended up being mormon, so he understood....kinda

After another 3-5 hours we FINALLY ended up in rock springs for breakfast. This is Brekah and I in the ever-going wait for the bathroom!

After about 9 hours on the bus (I HATE TRAVELING by the way...it was not so much fun) we finally got there, and got pulling, the boys actually did help, but we were headed towards the womans pull here so they weren't with us. The carts werent that hard to pull but as you can see we had a very wet trip, and went through alot of puddles. But the trail really wasnt mud, just wet sand, which was ALOT easier to go through than dry sand.

here we are on the womens pull, this picture is kinda small, im in the back, but it is alot harder than it looks. And all of the men are at the top watching (they "went to war" so they could only watch us struggle up the hill, and not help) we ran up the hill, so we did pretty good, but it was really hard!

Once we got to the top all of the boys surrounded us and sang a really pretty song to us about the importance of women, it was really neat!


After three miles of hiking in the rain, we were totally drenched, and our feet were freezing...i was really thankful to see our little tent city all set up for us and dinner waiting for us to eat!

The next day started off really windy and cold but by the time we got on the trail it was really sunny, so we could cross the sweetwater and go into the cove...it was really great! So the story of the sweetwater is that when the pioneers reached this river, they had already lost around 14 people to the crossing of the platte river, and it was 22degrees outside so they knew they couldnt survive another river crossing. but 4 young boys stepped foward (one was as young as 16) and carried everyone across the river in safety. The all consiquently died. We usually all cross the sweetwater, but the river was too high, so about 6 men carried some girls across..this shows you how high the river was...it was about waist height and was a pretty wide river...

after you cross the river there are 3 monuments showing the 4 men that risked their lives for their comany...this is in front of one of them...its our entire ward and leaders...our ward had 2 families total.

after we crossed the sweetwater we took our handcarts to handcart parking so we could eat lunch and go through the cove (w/o our handcarts) well when we got lunch we ended up with a huge, weird, hard, stale cracker, super tough jerky, dried apples that had been rehydrated, trail mix, fruit snacks, hard candy, and a drinkk....it was a very...interesting meal...but we didnt really want to complain...because we'd rather eat that than the 4 oz. of flour the pioneers were rationed....as you can see by the red haired boy towards the back right, we didnt really enjoy the cracker!

here we are walking towards the Dan Jones cove to have a fireside, before we walked up the hill into Martin's cove, we had a really nice fireside, and it really set the spirit for the upcoming hike!

here we are in the actual cove, it was a really really spiritual place, and i could definately feel the person whose name i had brought with me, in my presence. it was amazing!

we walked to the top of the cove and had another little mini devotional...this guy you cant really see him so great in this picture, but he reminded me of my Grandpa Hunter SOOO much! he looked like him a little bit, he talked like him, he told stories awesomely like my grandpa does, he had little mannerisms like grandpa...it really made me smile alot!

like i said, our trek was REALLY wet, but on the second day it was sunny. well when we got back to camp on the second day it started to cloud over, and we had this HUGE hail storm...it was sooo big that we had to hold our tent up from the inside. we got probably a half inch of hail in about 10 minutes...it was CRAZY!!!!! it ended up giving us a little hole in the bottom of our tent, and there was so much water under the tent from the storm that it flooded our side of the tent...the holes were right under my sleeping bag, so it got really really wet. fortunatley they had drying tents with cash cookers and things to dry them out, and our support couple had extra sleeping bags! but this is how much hail we got....

and this is what our camp looked like after it melted....it was pretty much a huge marsh!

oscar the dog!!

when we got to the visitors center on the first day they told us about this huge white dog that lives around here, he doesnt bite, wont eat human food, doesnt bark, and doesnt come to his name. But every once in a while he picks a group and will follow them everywhere, sit in their devotionals (w/o making a peep) and will protect everyone from coyotes, rattle snakes, and any other harms. Well on the last night he showed up in our stakes camp and followed us around for that night. Well that evening we could here some coyotes getting really close...but oscar (the dog) came to everyones rescue and chased all of them away! :) he was really neat!

On the last day on our way home we stopped at independance rock. The pioneers would use it as a landmarker, that if they hit this rock by July 4 (hence the name) then they would miss the winter storms by the time they got to salt lake...there are alot of really cool names and years that they carved into this rock...but we got to climb it...thats right i climbed clear to the top of this rock! it was sOOOOO hard....you start on the left side of the rock and just climb straight up to the top...it was soo steep! but it went really fast and i felt soo accomplished after i climbed it!

see how little the people look...ya its that big!

this is the woman whose name i took to the treck! I LOVE THIS WOMAN! she was such an amazing person, and is such an example. Her name is Tamer Washburn, and she was an amazing person with an amazing life to read her history go to this website and scroll down until you reach her name! it's really interesting!

http://wildingbowles.blogspot.com/search/label/Tamer%20Washburn

She really is an amazing woman and i was so glad that she was with me on my trip to help me! it was soooooooooooooo cool! I had a blast at martin's cove! sorry this post is really long but i just had to get it all written down! LOOVE loove looove martins cove!