Sean and Kirk left early this morning to catch their plane back home. The rest of us headed out but not before Heidi and I went back and took pictures of the Winter Quarters temple. We didn't get any the night before because of the rain storm.
Then, we headed to Hildreth. It was fun to stop in Hildreth on our family vacation. I’ve grown up hearing stories about Hildreth. My grandparents were both raised there and my dad spent a lot of his time there growing up. They visited Hildreth every summer when my grandpa was on leave from the military. My dad took us to Main Street Hildreth where my great grandfather Bebensee worked in Clint’s Tavern and also for the Sheriff Department. My dad would go there and drink sasparilla’s and grape nehi’s. My great grandmother Bebensee was the town librarian. My dad showed the boys the alley he and his brother would run down after hopping out the window of the library and where they almost got caught by Officer Rickles. The jail was on the other side of the alley from the library. I can’t imagine them running very fast down it, it was pretty narrow. We went to the Bebensee home. I vaguely remember going there once when I was younger. I remember the side entrance, the kitchen and the front room. My dad remembers sleeping in the bedrooms upstairs when they would visit and that his grandma always had homemade donuts when they went there. We also went to the Evers home in town. The only thing I remember about it the one time I was there was that it was filled with stacks and stacks of things and I could hardly get around in it. My great grandfather Evers lived to be 104 and my dad said he remebers bottles and bottles of vitamins and he would take handfuls of vitamin C and other vitamins every day. When my great grandfather went to get his license renewed when he was 100, they wouldn’t renew it, even though he had 20/20 vision still and never needed glasses. He worked on the farm outside of town until he was in his nineties. He was pretty much deaf though, I remember having to yell at him when we talked to him. We saw the celar that my dad said was always ful to overflowing with fruit, he loved his grandma’s peaches. It was also where they were supposed to go if there was ever a tornado warning. Hildreth is still such a “Mayberry” type town, no fast food chains, people stopping in the middle of the road to talk to each other and I’m sure everyone there knows everyone else. I was hoping the barber shop my dad got his hair cut at every summer would have still been there, I wanted to take one of my boys to get their hair cut there, but we couldn’t find it. We also went to the cemetery while we were there, I think I was related to over half of the people buried there. Sometimes I think it would be fun to live in a place that was still so simple.
We also went out to my great grandpa's old farm. It was fun to listen to my dad's stories about the things they did there.
more info and pictures to follow
We also stopped in Minden to see where they lived there and where dad went to elementary school. We ate lunch at a diner there in Minden that had really yummy burgers and onion rings.
After leaving there, we went back to Sterling and stayed at the same hotel we stayed at on our way out.
