October travels

October has been a month of travel for Bragg Family South (me more than most!).  At the beginning of the month, we drove to Fayetteville, Arkansas, for a long weekend at the Arkansas Archeological Society's annual meeting.  The picture above is of the kids about ready to dig into a breakfast at the War Eagle grist mill a few miles from Fayetteville.  Hope and the kids returned to Monticello on Sunday; I did not--they dropped me off at the Little Rock airport.  I had a business meeting the next week in Salt Lake City, Utah.  After a long and previously unplanned overnight stay in lower Michigan en route, I arrived for a week in Utah's biggest city.  Below is one of the more decorative structures at the Salt Palace, the enormous convention center that hosted the meetings I attended:

Below is one of the high rises in Salt Lake City; I took the picture not for this particular building, but rather to try to give the sense of the beauty of this city nestled between the Wasatch Range of the Rocky Mountains to the east and the Great Salt Lake to the northwest:

Salt Lake City is also home to the worldwide operations of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, or the Mormons, as they are better known.  Below is a picture of the ornate temple in downtown Salt Lake City:

Mormons are also really big into genealogy, and have a massive and high tech facility located next to Temple Square that is open to the public.  I spent the better part of three mornings looking up some family history, but also some background on a number of the historic persons I've been working on for my Forest Service work.  For those interested, I've posted some of the Bragg family history documents on our Flickr photostream:   https://www.flickr.com/photos/28202537@N02/  Below, I've posted a couple pictures I took out the window of the plane, the first of the snow-capped mountains in eastern Utah (or Colorado):

And this neat pattern of large-scale pivot irrigation on the southern plains (of Texas, I believe):

I think some of the larger circles are at least a mile in diameter!  The week after I returned, I hopped onto another plan, but this time Beth accompanied me for her first flight ever:

Think she was excited?  This personal trip was courtesy of Nancy, my brother Bob's girlfriend, who asked me to give a forester's evaluation of some family property in the Wisconsin Dells area.  Below, my brother Bob used a GPS unit to help locate the property corners:

The properties we looked at didn't have great timber value, but were heavily wooded and very pretty, especially with the fall colors being at peak:

Part of the properties climbed up the side of a high bluff just outside of Wisconsin Dells, leading to very pretty scenic views under the gorgeous weather we had most of the weekend:

Now, fret not, dear readers; I did not subject my dainty lil' Beth to the briers, ticks, and steep hills (well, not too much)...No, she was too busy getting spoiled, first by my sister Laurie, who took her for an overnight visit the first part of the weekend:

Laurie and Beth made invitations for Thanksgiving, above, and then Beth helped her Uncle Mark Valasky walk the dogs:

As you can see, Beth loves walking dogs; Laurie and Mark's newly bought home is in the background of this picture:

Beth got to go on this trip because it was her birthday, and we thought this would be a nice gift for her...  This past weekend, Hope's parents came down from Michigan for a visit.  With the nice weather we had, Kenny, Hope's dad Rich, and I dusted off our canoe and headed to our favorite local river to canoe, the Saline:

The Saline River winds gently through the extensive forests of southern Arkansas.  The river was pretty low, so we were able to stop along a lot of gravel bars and found loads of petrified wood:

The day turned into a long paddling adventure, but the weather was gorgeous, fall colors are just starting in, and I think we all enjoyed the trip (especially when we managed to get off of the river just before sunset!).