Steel Days and River Rambles

So this will probably be a shorter one.  I haven't posted for awhile and will probably continue to be spotty because my laptop appears to be at least partially dead now.  I figure I better wait until back-to-school sales come up before getting a new one.  This would have been much more of a hardship for me in the past, but will decent internet access available to me on my phone still, I'm mostly surviving at this point.  Still, it has annoyingly made it much more difficult for me to blog.  Right now, I'm taking advantage of a church Family History Library computer while I wait to see if anyone shows up to learn about indexing (though it's looking kind of unlikely anyone will show on that score!).

So here's a quick update on what I've been doing the past week or so.  Last Saturday I got the chance to go tubing down the Provo River with my ward.  That was actually much more fun than I thought it might be.  It was relaxing at times, but also provided me a pretty good workout at other times.  For the first half of the river, I went down on my own.  This was where the workout came in.  It definitely took a fair amount of skill and exertion to keep the tube in the middle of the river and prevent it from drifting into various hazards along the sides.  Though I was not one the first one to go into the river, I ended up being quite far ahead of everyone else pretty quickly because I was riding a nice current in the middle of the river.

For the record, this is a section of the Provo River way east of where we tubed, but I didn't have my phone on this trip for obvious reasons!

After being first for awhile, I decided that I wasn't fond of having to discover obstacles and such all on my own, so I got over to one bank and caught hold of a branch to wait for awhile.  This allowed me the benefit of having a number of people in front of me, but also unfortunately caused me to ping-pong between one bank and the other for while as I kept overcorrecting my course.  I almost lost my tube after falling out at one point and barely managed to prevent it from flipping over my head and forcing me underwater.

Battle wounds that still aren't
 fully healed even now.

Being on my own had its perks, but when we got out to go around a few bridges, I decided to give floating in a group a shot, so I latched onto a group of about 15 tubes.  This part was much more relaxing overall, but was rather less thrilling.  I basically didn't do any paddling in the group, just holding on to two other tubes instead.  Having a big mass going down together made the trip slower, but it was pleasant to get to talk to people and enjoy their company.

Overall, I really did have a great time.  It was a fun new experience for me.  If I do it again, which I'd like to someday, I think I would like to try going down in a small group of just a few tubes to enjoy some of the benefits of both types of floating I did this time.  The drawbacks of the trip were a sunburn on one of my knees where I must not have put on enough lotion and pretty significant skin rubbed off of the insides of both my arms from paddling frantically.  Both arms are still healing even now, but my left arm is worse because the damage is in my elbow-pit and keeps getting re-irritated.

After tubing, I came home and walked to the Steel Days car show not far from my house.  It was interesting to see the various vehicles there.  My favorite were the old ones, like several Model T's and such.  I just wish there had been some that were less heavily restored and more original.  Most of them looked pretty much entirely rebuilt!  Still, it was fun to get to see everything.

My Steel Days celebration continued yesterday as I went to the Garden Tour associated with it.  This was nowhere near as good as the Virginia Garden Week tours I'm accustomed to, but it was pleasant in it's way, plus this one was free!  Some of the gardens weren't especially impressive, and you didn't get to go inside any of the homes on this tour, but there were several places that were really quite lovely.  A few of them I have even admired ad I passed them before, so it was nice to get to enjoy them in their full glory.

One of the best parts of the tour was just getting to meet people.  The homeowners were pretty much all there to explain things and I learned some fun things.  One of the couples was preparing to serve a mission to SVU as institute coordinators, so it was fun to talk to them about Virginia and what they would be doing there.  Many of the other homeowners were also extremely nice, and it was fun to meet them and hear about their lives and what they had done with their yard.  I also had pleasant conversations with some of the other guests.  It was a nice way to feel like a part of the community.

Turtle in a pond at one of the homes

Most informative to me was getting to talk to one of the homeowners who happened to be a chairman for the local historical society and his wife runs the town's DUP museum.  I discovered this because I have made it my habit to ask everyone who has been a long-time resident of American Fork about the derelict mansion I talked about in an earlier post.  I almost didn't ask this brother, because I was hesitant to take up more of his time, but I'm so glad that I ended up asking him because he did know a good bit about it.

The house is apparently called the Chipman Mansion.  It was built on the site where there had originally been a log cabin near an important mill for the area.  The Chipmans became an important business family in American Fork and were involved in a number of large ventures like Bank of American Fork.  After they became wealthy, the Chipman Mansion was built by one of the clan.  Eventually, one of the descendants developed it into a reception center, which is where all the nice landscaping came from, but eventually got into financial difficulties, which led to the home being sold cheap to the current owners.  Those folks are apparently also in bad shape now, and will likely lose the place soon as well.  This brother also mentioned that there is a couple who specializes in restoring old houses that are interested in buying the property, so hopefully soon the place will be restored to its former glory.

After the Garden Tour, I briefly walked through the carnival in Robinson Park.  Carnivals always strike me as fairly tacky, but this one had it's element of fun.  There were a lot of people there, and it was fun to see all the lights and bustle.  I was amazed at how many rides and food booths they had managed to pack into this really quite small park!Last night Steel Days finished up with a concert and fireworks.  I didn't go to the concert, but my roommates and I were able to see some of the fireworks decently from our house.  While I didn't do much with the Steel Days celebrations, which were going on throughout the week, it was fun to be involved in a few things.  I'm already looking forward to next year!