A Pioneer Handcart Trek!

A couple of weeks ago, our Bishop stood up and asked for 2 volunteer couples to be a 'Ma and Pa' on a stake youth activity handcart trek. Dale and I looked at each other and figured it would be an adventure so we decided to sign up!

We had NO idea what we were getting ourselves into!

Dale and I were the Ma and Pa for the Jacob Hamblin Family. We decided to use a family name so we could tell our 'children' family stories! We had 5 children, 2 boys and 3 girls, plus we had 2 Aunts who were there occasionally to help. We also had a baby along the way and named her Pauline. Unfortunately she died along the trek and we had to bury her. It's amazing how you can get attached to a doll, a few of our girls who had cared for her were a little sad :(

Our family picture above shows everyone and our handcart behind us, except our one son, he managed to hide himself very well in the background! (you can only see his hat)

This is the beginning of our handcart trek, we began very early Thursday morning and hiked for 6 miles this first day. Lucky for us, St George decided to finally climb into the 100 degree weather for the summer! It was hot! We were very very sweaty. As you can see we had to pack all of our belongings in our handcart. With 9 peoples' gear plus cooking, camping equipment, and water, it was a heavy load.

We luckily had 2 big guys in our family. Dale and Leonard were the only reasons we survived! There was a morning where all the men in the trek were called off to fight in the 'Mormon Battalion' We then had a women's pull up a hill. It was rough but thankfully it was short and we had dumped all our water that morning so our cart was about 100 lbs lighter!

Dale was famous for wearing his handkerchief in this very stunning way! Trying to stay cool was impossible. It was unbelievably hot, and along with the millions of gnats and bug bites, it was slightly less than a comfortable journey! (when we came home we counted and found I have 108 visible bug bites, Dale's bug bite count= 0)

Every night we set up our family camp, this is us trying to make shade. It worked very nicely. At night, Dale and I slept in the middle with the boys on Dale's side and the girls on mine. The ground was very hard but we survived. Thank you Pioneers for doing what they did. The only reason we made it was because we knew it would be over in a couple of days and we had hot showers and comfy beds to look forward too.

We trekked 8 miles the 2nd day, that was a killer! Luckily they dropped 6 miles of the trek, so we only did 14 of the original 20. What a blessing!

Most of the meals we had to cook ourselves in our families, we had a dutch oven and the stake gave us portioned food each day. It was amazing how well our food turned out considering we didn't really know what we were doing. Either that, or we were just very hungry after hiking all day. All in all we had a very enjoyable time. I don't think we'll be doing another trek ever, but we're both glad we went and respect our Mormon pioneer heritage a little more.