Heavenly

We moved to Castle Valley in June 1976. Rather than hiring a moving company to pack and transport all the belongings we owned, our move to Castle Valley was accomplished by taking truckloads of our stuff to our new home. Since we didn't have a place built yet to put our things on the farm, we stored the majority of our what we owned in a warehouse down in Moab. One of the most memorable trips was when we loaded our old Chevrolet pickup and a large moving truck loaned to us from the Harmons with our belongings and other preparations for the farm, leaving enough room in the back of the moving truck for a few of us kids and the animals we purchased and planned to pick up on our way down to the valley. Since all the family would not fit in the front of the trucks, the younger children crawled into the back of the moving truck and found places to relax during the trip. We stopped along the way at various farms to get Marmi (a Sanaan goat), Nicky (a French Alpine goat), Petunia our pig, and a crate of chickens. The journey progressed fine until just outside Green River, Utah. The old pickup truck had engine trouble and refused to go any further. Stranded on the side of the road, we arranged to have the truck towed to a garage inside Green River. The mechanic examined the engine and explained that it had "thrown a rod." Like I really knew what that meant at the time. As a result, we needed to stay the night in a motel and pull the pickup behind the moving truck the next day to reach our destination. After arriving late in the day, we parked the truck toward the rear of the property and used it as a shelter initially. We erected tents around a fire pit, and our new home looked vaguely like a pioneer wagon train. We gratefully slept under the stars at night--a literal milky way of galaxies. The starry night sky was remarkable. With no city lights of any consequence, the Milky Way displayed across the entire sky--billions of stars. We spent many nights studying and marveling at the countless stars and awe-inspiring heavenly bodies. That's how it all started for us in the beginning, but the miracles continued throughout the years while we were there.