Swan Day & Wagon Land Adventure

We moved the kids' car seats to the back of the car and gathered up Grandma and Grandpa Faucheux for a drive early on Saturday morning to Salt Creek Waterfowl Management Area for Swan Day. We were told that there were 1200 birds on a few shallow ponds. We saw swans flying beside the car for a while, which was pretty striking. There were swans, Canadian geese, sandhill cranes(Grandma's favorite) and coots. The kids liked looking through the binoculars and walking on the handrails as balancing beams.

Jovie is smelling her hands because we just told her that she stuck them in bird droppings on the railing.

 We took a driving tour of Corinne, which is a little farming community that migrating birds just love. This is the oldest Protestant church in Utah.

Next stop was in Bothwell, near Tremonton, for our personal tour of Eli Anderson's Wagon Land Adventure. Mr. Anderson started collecting horse-drawn vehicles fifty years ago (probably the same time this ladder was leaned against this tree).

 I can't guess how many wagons, buggies, carriages, buckboards, etc. are in his collection. I bet Mr. Anderson doesn't even know. It was really fantastic.

Here's Pop with the kind of wagon that his grandfather drove in WWI. He took supplies to the front lines, and brought back injured soldiers.

There was a Callistoga covered wagon, stage coaches, a horse ambulance, sheepherders wagons, a big collection of axle grease tins, hearses, sleds, firehose trailers, water wagons, florist wagons, a pie delivery cart, pharmacy wagons, a brewery wagon with 20 wooden barrels, a horse-pulled road grader...

It was overwhelming. It was three huge garages stacked almost to the ceiling with vehicles and a lifetime enthusiast and historian telling us the stories. We went out for Mexican food at El Parral in Tremonton after. I'm so glad that we have rural towns and people in our community. There's a richness in this lifestyle and history that we would miss if we didn't have it.