Temple Tourism

Today I drove 120 miles up the freeway to St. George, Utah, to be a tourist. I don't believe I've ever stopped in St. George longer than it took to put gas in my car and/or grab something to eat. Once, a couple of years ago, I also went to Dillard's there and bought a pair of shoes. It was just a longer than usual pit stop.

But today, my destination was St. George. It was novel to go there and have it be the end of the trip. When we lived in SoCal, St. George meant The End of The Desert, and that was a good thing. It meant that we were no longer traveling through a vast wasteland, and that, if our car broke down, there would be someone living within walking distance and we wouldn't die. But seriously, it was always a relief to get to Utah because each mile from then on (on the trip north to Wyoming) was going to be cooler, rather than hotter, than the previous mile.

So, I pulled into St. George today and got off the freeway and wandered around in an older residential area until I got to the temple. It was built in the 1870's, when the people were hardly established there, and still lived arduous lives in a harsh climate. It is a beautiful relic that is still extremely useful. I was struck by how small it is, particularly compared to modern temples like L.A and Washington D.C. The rooms are intimate, but the ceilings high, so you still feel the grandness of the edifice. It has pioneer period furnishings, and so you have the sense of being in another era, in a grand parlor and you almost expect ladies to have their hair swept up in buns with their long, silk skirts sweeping the floor in a hushed swish. It was nice.

After a couple of hours in the temple, I went to my other destination: Dinosaur Discovery Site at Johnson Farm. There are signs along I-15 beckoning the traveler to stop. It is a small museum/learning center that has been built on the site of an amazing find. A man who owned this property for his whole adult life, began to level off a hill in 2000. About 20 feet of dirt was removed, and he got down to a layer of rock. Using the digger bucket, he started to pull up the rock. One big slab dropped out of the bucket and turned over so he could see the underside. There was a large, 3-D mold of a three toed foot, that looked for all the world like a dinosaur footprint. Except that it was a cast, not a print.

Well, I'd read all of this in the materials, and watched the informational film, and wandered around looking at all the specimens, and then I went back to the front desk to ask some questions. I waited patiently for the lady to finish talking with an elderly man, and then she turned to me. I said I had a few questions about the large area of rock and I pointed behind me. She directed my attention to the elderly gentleman, and said, "He can tell you all about it." It was the Dr. Johnson, whose property this was, and who had been digging in 2000 in an attempt to level the piece of ground. (!!!) So we stepped over to the side of the railing and he told me about what he'd been doing and why and where back then.

He'd called the Smithsonian Institute in DC when he first found the slab, and they directed him to a palentologist in Salt Lake City. This scientist couldn't understand what he was describing and, frankly, didn't think it could be what the doctor thought it was. Finally, after about three months, the man was in the area and he came by to look up the doctor and see what he'd found.

"And did he blow a gasket when he saw what you had?" I asked. Well, yes. The doctor's daughter-in-law wrote an article about it, and quoted the scientist, and gave the article to AP. The family was soon inundated by gawkers from all over the world. They had to build a fence and hire security to keep people from trampling the site and stealing rocks with tracks. In 2004, the center was built with generous grants and gifts from local people and the city, and now you can go there to study, or have a field trip, or just marvel at it, like I did.

The doctor was at the site this afternoon because he was with a group of adult Down's Syndrome people, one of whom was his own son. There were about a dozen people waiting in a state of chattering excitement near the door, so I thanked him for his time, and told him I was a teacher with my enthusiasm for dinosaurs still high. He loved telling me his story and I loved listening to it.

What an astonishing thing to discover when you're just out digging around on your farm, trying level a piece of ground! It had been there for thousands of years, unknown. What great timing I had today, asking a question of the desk lady right at the moment the man who would know all the answers was available to talk to me. Serendipity strikes again. It must be a magic place on earth.