Pioneer Day

I knew before we arrived in Utah that Pioneer Day is a pretty big deal here.  I was really looking forward to Ben getting a day off for the Fourth of July, then another day off for Pioneer Day on July 24th, as is customary in Utah, as I understood.  Unfortunately, Ben's boss was either unaware or just didn't care that everyone else took the day off to celebrate Brigham Young's arrival in Utah.  So Ben had to work.  Sad.  But I talked him into meeting us at North Park in Provo for a big festival with reenactment activities and all kinds of other fun stuff.  He obliged, but there was so much to do that we couldn't do it all during a lunch break, even a somewhat long one.  We did as much as we could, though.

First we took a few minutes to admire the antique cars in the "car show" portion of the festival. 

We all enjoyed this 1917 fire engine.

Jack even waited in line for about 45 minutes so that he could have
the chance to sit in the drivers seat and blow the horn.

Eliza enjoyed checking it out too.

After we waited in line we talked to this man, the owner of the fire engine.  He's been restoring it himself for several years, and he's in his 90's. He talked about how much he loved coming to events like this and sharing this piece of history with children as well as adults.  When he heard us using Jack's name, he said, "My name is Jack too.  It's hard to beat a pair of Jacks!"  That was the highlight of the afternoon for me. :-)

While Jack waited in line to get in the fire engine, Cat got her face painted. 

Cat and Eliza also panned for "gold."

When Jack finally got through the fire engine line we checked ou the Native American area. 

Cat made a bracelet

And made a "rock" carving.
 (It was actually plaster of paris that they painted brown.) 

We finished our visit with a ride in a covered wagon.  There were TONS more things we could have done. We didn't even go into the pioneer village, we didn't learn any of the dances that were
being demonstrated, we didn't go into the "jail" or ride the ponies.  But we still had a very fun lunch break on Pioneer Day!

That evening we drove down to Mapleton for their city fireworks show.  We met up with my friend JoDell and her three kids and everyone had a great time.  Cat even brought along the glow-in-the-dark balloons her Pops gave her for her birthday.  Very festive!