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!