What a Year

Look! Dr. Rugh is totally famous. They had a cool article about her in the Daily Eastern News today. The article was entitled "Family Traveling Critical Part of American History," and began with the line: "Susan Rugh believes nothing is more important than family." Right on. It's cool that they wrote an article about her presentation!

Tonight we had the second presentation in conjunction with our exhibit opening, but it wasn't nearly as good as Dr. Rugh's. Our speaker tonight was Dr. Richard Longstreth from George Washington University. His talk was really long and a little boring.

There was another earthquake today! But nobody felt it. Supposedly it occurred at 12:40 this morning, but it was only a 4.5, so it didn't wake anybody up. Maybe the New Madrid fault line is collapsing! I once watched a thing on the Weather Channel called "It Could Happen Tomorrow," and they talked about what would happen if a really big earthquake happened along the New Madrid fault, and basically Memphis would fall into the Mississippi River and everyone would die. That would be bad. Hmmmm. Tonight I was surprised when I went outside and saw that the moon was dark red! It does say in the D&C that before the Second Coming "the earth shall tremble and reel to and fro as a drunken man; and the sun shall hide his face, and shall refuse to give light; and the moon shall be bathed in blood . . ." (88:87). And in Matthew it talks about "earthquakes in divers places."

Anyway, the weather was really, really, really nice here today. It was the perfect spring day and it smelled really good outside. Catherine, Laurie, and I went and had dinner at my new favorite place to eat in Charleston: Dogs 'n' Suds--a funny drive-in. I had the best hamburger ever, and I loved that they serve their root beer in frosty mugs. It reminded me of the drive-in in Natchez that all of the rangers (and Mom and I) love.

Speaking of Natchez, it was today a year ago that Mom and I embarked on our adventurous journey from Utah to Mississippi! We made it to Gallup, New Mexico that first day, but we had quite a time getting there considering that we got caught in a blizzard in Cortez, Colorado! Little did we know that the next day Stryder would break down along Route 66 in Moriarty, New Mexico! But luckily that was a blessing in disguise because it kept us from driving across Texas in the middle of a tornado outbreak. It's crazy to think that it was a year ago that we left, and that I've basically been gone for a whole year with just a few trips home. A lot has certainly happened in that year!!