We dig Pioche

Adam's Grandma's funeral was held in her hometown of Pioche, NV, which is exactly in the middle of nowhere. On Friday the 5th of November we left town as soon as we could get away and headed for Cedar City.  Cedar City is still 100 miles away from Pioche, but is was the closest town with hotels and services.  Wait, I take that back, Pioche does have a small and very interesting hotel (Adam and I stayed there once just after we were married), but we opted for the Holiday Inn Express instead. :-)  I was super glad that we still had enough points left over from our trip for 2 more nights in a hotel.  Having a hotel on both Friday and Saturday night made the trip more enjoyable as we could spend time with family and not feel rushed with such a long drive time to and from Pioche.

Korinne in our hotel room in Cedar City.  We got there around 9:30 p.m. and went straight to bed. The viewing was the next morning at 9:30 a.m. and the funeral was at 11:00 and we knew it was going to take another 1 1/2 of driving to get there from Cedar City.  We got up early and had breakfast and were in the car by 8:30 a.m. Perfect.

When Adam was a kid every time they would go to Pioche to visit his grandparents his Dad would honk the horn as they crossed the border and start singing the Nevada state song, "Home means Nevada. . ."  Adam couldn't help but do the same thing as we crossed the state line. As you notice from the picture there is a whole lot of nothing in the 100 miles from Cedar City to Pioche.

We arrived in Pioche right on time at 10:00 a.m. only to get to the church and see that no one was there.  What?! What is going on here?  Then Adam looked at me and it hit him, "Oh wait, Nevada is an hour behind. It's only 9:00 here!" D'oh! At no time in the planning of this trip did either one of us consider the time difference between Utah and Nevada. Adam had a cousin who just happened to be staying at the same hotel as we did in Cedar and we remember being confused when her kids were still in their pajamas eating breakfast when we were leaving. Now, of course, it all made sense.  Well, with an hour to kill we decided to see the sites of Pioche.  The first stop was their awesome park.

For only having a population of about 500-600 people the city park, playground and pool were more than a little impressive.

Labor Day is a big deal in Pioche and Adam's family never missed a Labor Day celebration when they were growing up.  Here Adam is looking over the field that held so many childhood memories for him.

They have all sorts of mining competitions during Labor Day and I liked the little mining set up with bleachers so people could watch the competition.

This area has separate 12 areas to play horseshoes.  Apparently the horseshoe competition must be pretty fierce to warrant such a set-up.

Adam's Grandpa worked as the Postmaster in the Pioche Post Office for his entire working life. The only time he didn't work there was during WWII when he was a Postmaster for the Army and was stationed in New York.  Adam's Grandma took over for him during the years he was in the military.

Directly across the street from the Post Office is the house Adam's grandparents lived in for 60 years.  Talk about a long commute to work.  Needless to say Grandpa always came home for lunch.

G.G. had 5 children, 31 Grandchildren and 96 Great-Grandchildren.  The crowd at her graveside service after the funeral was substantial and many had traveled from far and wide to be there

All 10 siblings were in attendance 

Kimberly, Jaclyn, Bethany, Josh, Marci, Micah, Stephen, Adam, Kirsti and Loren

Here they all are together with their parents. 

Goodbye G.G.

Being in the cemetery already we walked over to the Boot Hill section to let our kids see a little bit of history.  Pioche was a big mining town in the 19th century and was notorious for being an absolutely lawless place.  During the boom days it was said that 72 men were killed here before anyone died of natural causes.  Many of those men were buried right here in Boot Hill.

A lot of the wooden markers are no longer legible, but some of the ones that can be read say things like, "Shot during a dispute over a dog" and "Got caught cheating in poker".  One just says he was shot by officers 5 times.

Back at the church the luncheon was in full swing. The church members in Pioche really did a great job feeding the many family members at the funeral.  

As is often the case when the last Grandparent dies the grandchildren start losing touch with each other. Here are 24 of the 31 grandchildren all together one last time.

I had been to Pioche about 4 times before this visit, but it seemed to always be on a holiday so I was never able to go and see the Lincoln County Historical Museum open daily from 10-3.  Knowing that this was probably going to be my last chance to see it I left the luncheon for about 1/2 hour and took Britton with me.  4 Generations of Adam's family lived in Pioche so there are a lot of notable family relics in the museum.

The first member of the family to move to Pioche was Adam's G-G Grandfather who was a country Doctor.

This case had a picture of his GG-Grandfather and some of his medical instruments and other items, like his pocket watch, he used while living in Pioche.

Britton sitting next to the random fake Indian guy on a green couch.

The article hanging in the case is about Adam's G-Uncle who was a pilot in WWII and was killed in the Pacific.

This article talks about how the 2 brothers from Pioche were unexpectedly able to see each other for 10 hours on an island base camp in the Pacific during the war.  One brother was killed shortly thereafter, and the other brother made it home from the war.

Here are the brothers' uniforms hanging in the museum.

This box contains all of the relics found at the crash site of his G-Uncle's plane which was finally located in the mountains of New Guinea 40-50 years after the war ended.

Adam's G- Grandfather, the 2nd generation of the family to live in Pioche, was kind of a "Jack of all trades, master of none" kind of guy. He had all sorts of jobs and did a lot of different things.  He had shoe cobbler stuff in the museum and a lot of his barber instruments.

 Adam's Grandfather, the 3rd generation, worked at the Post Office for about about 45 years and used these original post office boxes to sort the mail.  Pioche is the kind of place that if you just put the person's name and the zip code, it will get delivered.  Addresses aren't really needed so much.

 The museum was also full of funny stuff like this barbed wire collection.

Each different type was labeled with a different family name. It was definitely the first collection of it's kind that we have seen.

After Adam had a chance to visit with family we left Pioche to start the long drive back.  We were glad we planned to stop in Fillmore that night, if we hadn't we would have arrived home VERY late.

We never stay in hotels, but in the past month we have spent 5 nights in a hotel.

Even though it was our 5th night, it was the first time we actually had enough time to swim in the pool.  We even had it all to ourselves.

Being a Sunday morning I specifically made sure our hotel had a free continental breakfast when I booked it.  We were surprised to learn, however, that this hotel's version of a "continental breakfast" meant we had to go to the restaurant in the parking lot of the hotel (the Garden of Eat'n) and order one of 5 things from the special hotel guest menu.  When I book a hotel I always say we have 2 adults and 2 kids in the room since they frown if you try to put more kids in a room but this meant that they only gave us breakfast cards for 4 people. Basically the kids got breakfast and Adam and I survived on the snackies we had in the car.

This restaurant was pretty much the worst we have ever been to.  They made us wait for 35 min before they even came to get our choices and then the food they did bring out was straight from a can or freezer.  It was bad, so bad that when we finally got back in the car Adam just said, "Well, sometimes we have "experiences", and that was one of them." We all burst out laughing. In fact, we kept laughing about it for quite awhile. I can't think of a reason why we would ever stay at a hotel in Fillmore again, but if we do we are definitely scratching this one from the list.

Oh, Garden of Eat'n, you were anything but that.

Adam made it home in time to do his first day of tithing settlements.  He is on schedule to have them done before December even begins. Sweet.