Part Three Sentimental Journey

Oh, good! I finally got the photos on the blog in the right order! Do you like the front gate? Really different, huh? Ok, this house is green, not blue, and certainly not like what we lived in. The gravel in front of us used to be beautiful green grass that our mother worked so hard to put in so many years ago. Sheri, Marsha and Kent pose in this one.

We walked down the block toward the lake and realized how close we had lived to it as children. Kent told us a story about the only time he went there and why he never went back again. Ask him sometime. Government housing was torn down a block from our old home and now there is a fun water park and picnic area with tall trees and green grass growing down to the lake, with no beach. The old Moses Lake High School is now the Junior High across the street from the house. We walked down the block to the church. It is twice the size of our memory with additional classrooms and a larger parking lot. Uncle Jake and Aunt Orva's house by the parking lot has been torn down and is part of the parking lot.

It has been a great experience for me, to see the places of the distant past and have them put into reality again. I enjoyed sharing the memories with my husband and the others. I don't know if they enjoyed hearing them!

Sunday morning, we ate the free breakfast in the hotel, checked out and attended church in the building we had been in many times. The chapel felt so small compared to when I was a kid! The inside of the building had changed, just like everything else! We enjoyed all the meetings and tried to find people we knew or were related to and found a couple of them, but it was hard to find people still living that were there 5o years ago. The ward members were "newcomers" and only two or three had any inkling of who we were. That was ok with me.

After church, we drove around to find Midway Elementary School.
Kent and Sheri pose below the Midway Elementary School sign. We attended school here until June, 1959, when I was in fifth grade. It was built when just before I was in the second grade. It was about 4-5 blocks from our home. The SUV is our rental vehicle while on this journey, and the rest of our group stayed in the car while Eileen snapped the photo.

We stopped at an Albertson's Grocery Store and bought several kinds of flowers for our dad's grave at Kent's suggestion, and went back to visit his grave one more time. We laid and sat in the grass and talked about our dad and our lives. Then we said goodbye and drove out of town.
Sheri poses in front of the entering Moses Lake sign. Hope you can see it. Nobody else wanted to get out of the car. Don't blame them. It was a hot day!
Our return trip to Spokane and on to Salt Lake City was peaceful and restful, but we felt really worn out and glad to be home again. Kent and Eileen acted as great guides and hosts and we felt truly loved and pampered! Thank you very much for your great Christmas Gift to us! We really enjoyed it!

Part Two Sentimental Journey

Saturday morning, August 7, 2010, we decided to find a Denny's restaurant for breakfast since we couldn't eat at our "favorite" place. Before we reached Spokane, we found a Denny's, but right next to it appeared a European Breakfast Restaurant, with Germanic architecture. There was no dissension about where to go for breakfast when we saw that place! It was adorable! European decorations and sayings were at the windows and every space on the walls. The menus were even fun to read with a story about each item to choose. We all enjoyed something different like biscuits and gravy, Swedish pancakes, aebleskivers, omelets, German potato pancakes, or eggs Benedict with the most delicious Hollandais sauce ever imagined! We really wanted to stay until lunch or take some with us, but our stomachs were too full to complete the thought, so we left with happy hearts and went on our way.

We spent a few minutes at the Spokane Temple, enjoying the peaceful surroundings and beautiful landscaping. A nice pavilion and baseball field adjoined the temple grounds. It too, belongs to the church.

We stopped in Cheney, Washington, a few miles off of I-90 to visit Enoch Lybbert and his wife, Donna, and daughter, Debbie Kerkes and her granddaughter. They gave us maps of Moses Lake and shared some stories of our Lybbert people. Enoch is the grandson of Enoch Lybbert, one of the sons of CFB and Anthonette Lybbert.

The land surrounding Spokane is close to mountains and is covered with pine trees, but as we drove to Moses Lake, the land flattened out and became rocky and treeless. The arable land appeared green or gold with crops of corn, wheat and potatoes. Upon entering Grant County, we read a sign that claimed more potatoes were grown there than in any other county in the US.

We drove through Moses Lake out to the cemetery, found our father's grave with the new headstone Kent ordered. His grave is close to a corner, across the street from the little house where the caretaker lives, about the third grave from the street and close to a pump house. A huge pine tree makes a shady spot for our dad's resting place.

This first photo is Marsha, Kent and Sheri behind Dad's grave. You can see the pump house to my left and the pine tree to Marsha's right.
Eileen and I took photos of Nelson, Marsha, Darrell and Kent. There is an irrigation pipe running in front of us nearly over the headstone. Sorry, I don't know how to turn this photo around.
Eileen, Kent, Nelson and Marsha contemplate.

The next activity was going to Forrest Lybbert's house on his farm close to the graveyard, and visiting with him and his wife Betty. Forrest is Uncle Jake's son from his first wife, Elma Goodrich. (Uncle Jake married our mother's older sister, Orva Eaton, after his first wife died leaving him five children to raise. Uncle Jake also is the youngest child of CFB and Anthonette Lybbert. Jake's sister, Mary Sophia Elizabeth Lybbert, married William Porter Merrell. They had a daughter named Irene, who married Luther Gale. Luther and Irene had a son named Bruce Gale. Bruce Gale married DeLoy Eaton, the sister of Uncle Jake's second wife. Did you get that? No surprise if you didn't. Anyway, Uncle Jake is our uncle in two ways. another related tidbit is that Nelson Williams' grandmother is Elma Goodrich's sister.) It was Uncle Jake who brought many people from Vernal and other Utah towns to help settle and farm in the area around Moses Lake. The Grand Coulee Dam had been built before World War II and after it was over many people migrated to Washington for the rich, inexpensive farmland now available because of the new water source.

Anyway, Forrest and Betty were so kind to visit with us and take us on a tour around Moses Lake and the town named after it. He showed us everything we could remember plus some we didn't even know about the people and places in Moses Lake's past and present. We saw the sand dunes where hundreds of people enjoy the sun, water and three-or four-wheeling in the dunes. The tour included old downtown and farms, Grandpa Gale's property and May and Hiawatha Valleys, beautiful new homes built in a neighborhood where some streets are named Goodrich and Vernal and many other sites.

After returning Forrest and Betty to their home, we checked into our hotel, ate a great dinner at a Mexican restaurant, and then drove to the part of town where we lived 51 years ago.

Continued in next post.

A Sentimental Journey to Moses Lake, Washington

Kent and Eileen Gale, my brother and his wife, gave Darrell and me and Marsha and Nelson, our sister and her husband a wonderful Christmas gift last year. The gift turned out to be a trip to Moses Lake, where we lived over fifty years ago. We flew to Spokane, Washington and rented an SUV. On our way out of Spokane, we passed the Deaconess Hospital where our father, Bruce Gale passed away in 1953. Kent showed us a fun mall, where we ate lunch at Edo (Japanese)fast food place. We traveled to Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, just a few minutes from Spokane. Eileen had rented a house near the lake, where we dropped off our bags and then walked the few blocks to town. It's a beautiful quaint, tourist town with a large lake that has a huge perimeter because of all the inlets, bays and peninsulas. It was a hot day, but we enjoyed being together and seeing the buildings, lake front and swimmers. Kent rented a boat for the following day and we walked to a great restaurant called Scratch. The gourmet food was absolutely delicious, all made from scratch. Each of us chose a different dish and Kent shared some of his Chinese black rice. It was tasty! We topped our meal off with brownies and ice cream.

When we returned to the house, we found that it felt quite warm and explored it to find the air conditioner and tried to set the thermostat, but it didn't work. The only air conditioner was in one of the two upstairs bedrooms! The bedroom downstairs had windows that wouldn't open for the evening breeze, a double bed and a half bath, with no shower!

The master bedroom upstairs had a fan, a king bed and a walk in bathroom that was spacious and seemed to be newly remodeled with beautiful stone floor and shower walls.

The other bedroom upstairs had the air conditioner, a large flat screen tv, and a king bed, but the bathroom was across the hall.

Eileen graciously chose the downstairs bedroom and I chose the room with the fan, because it had an outlet close to the bed for the CPAP I use every night. I thought Nelson would enjoy the TV. Come to find out the TV had no outlet and the wire cable had no connection to a TV cable service! The next day, when Nelson got in the shower, there was no soap, but he did find the laundry detergent there in the bathroom next to the washer and dryer, so he became the new blue cheer guy!

On Thursday evening, we relaxed in the living room, visiting and enjoying each other's company. We talked of memories of our parents stories about our relatives and ancestors.

Friday morning, everyone except Nelson took a walk for an hour few blocks near the house we rented. We really enjoyed seeing the tallest trees we have ever seen outside of the redwoods, no kidding! The houses and yards were old, small houses all well kept and some were for sale for like $250,000?

We enjoyed eating a delicious breakfast at a cute little, tiny restaurant run by the owner, operator, chef and waitress, all the same person, who said she was quite befuddled because something strange had occurred the previous night, but she wouldn't disclose what it was. Her husband, it seems, usually was there helping her, but not today.

About 11:00 am we drove to the boat rental office and secured the motor boat. Fifteen minutes after the arrangements were completed, we had walked to the pier and were boarding the boat. Kent steered and the rest of us enjoyed the beautiful sights around the blue lake. Pine trees covered the hills surrounding the lake and actually grew right down to the shore. Beautiful mansions and estates and small cabins nestled in the trees. We saw many private docks and boats waiting for a trip on the lake. The sun shone bright in bright blue the sky while puffy white clouds sailed over our heads. The breezes fanned our faces and it was a classic "Lazy Day."

After a great lunch, we found ourselves on a pontoon airplane. Kent and Eileen paid for the excursion, but remained on land. Darrell and Nelson positioned themselves behind the pilot, and Marsha and I sat in the way back, but each of us wore a headset so we could hear the pilot give us his tour of the lake. We took off in the water and curved around the other boats until we had a straight shot and then left the water for the air. It was a glorious sight from the air! For twenty minutes we sailed over the lake and some of the land near it. The pilot pointed out the homes of the rich and famous and taught us some of the history of the plane and the land it flew over. What a fun time!

We were all worn out from the great walks and exhilerating excursions, so we napped. Darrell and Nelson enjoyed reading some books. Eileen and Kent shopped for a fan at Walmart and soap for the bathrooms. Eileen and Marsha also bought some fun fingernail polish at a Del Sol shop. It's clear with sparkles, but turns bright pink in the sunlight.

After a super dinner, we walked to the mall and bought ice cream cones. What a glorious day!

Saturday morning, we walked again, and watched the swim part of a triathlon. We returned home while the first ones out of the water started on the biking part of the race. We wanted to eat breakfast at the same cute little restaurant where we had eaten breakfast the day before, but it was closed. Maybe the woman wouldn't do it by herself two days in a row!

I will add the rest of the trip later.