…---…/…---…/…---… SOS,SOS,SOS

So we’re heading south from the dino tracks and still have half the day to scrub off so that we don’t end up in Las Vegas during rush hour traffic. We decide to look for the Daughters of Utah Pioneers Museum in St George. I googled the directions on my blackberry and read the directions to Tom. It gets us off the freeway, into town and then onto more and more narrow residential streets. Now keep in mind that we are driving a vehicle as big as an entire neighborhood. I’m getting the instructions off the phone, yelling them to Tom and we are both getting pretty excited. He’s sweating, I’m freaking out and suddenly there is a roundabout in front of us! By a divine miracle (more on that in a few minutes) there is a huge parking space just in front of us. It’s marked “Busses Only” but we are in no mood. We sit there for a few seconds, taking inventory of our senses and suddenly a lovely man with a beatific smile appears at the side door. He’s holding a book in his hand. My first guess, Jehovah’s Witness. Better guess since we are in Utah, he’s the caretaker of the Brigham Young museum which we have just parked in front of. So he gave us a tour and let us keep the parking space. We learned many things. When the Mormons first came to this area, it was during the civil war which interrupted the flow of cotton to the west. So Young and his buds marked off plots of home sites in the little new town, gave a plot to every man who wanted to come and set everyone to work planting cotton, growing mulberry trees for silk worms and planting vineyards for wine. And I know what you’re thinking. Mormons don’t drink wine. But, as Brother James carefully explained, that was before. Now is after. Ahhh… Anyhoo, the cotton explains why every third business in St George has the word Dixie in it.

Interesting detail, Young was St George’s first snowbird, taking refuge from Salt Lake City’s winter in the place where “the sun spends the winter.” Not only that, he was the possibly the world’s first telecommuter. Because of the telegraph lines that finally made their way from Salt Lake to St George, he didn’t have to be in freezing Salt Lake for the winter. And he could be far more productive and look after his 55 or so wives in a more comfortable setting.