Manti

Our camping trip was to a state park just outside of Manti, UT.  We spent the rest of the day on Tuesday in Ephraim and Manti, staying until the pageant was over at about 11:15, and driving home that night.  (And poor Ben had to get up early to catch a flight the next morning!)

First we looked for more family grave stones at the cemetery in Ephraim and found a few, but not nearly as many as there were in Mayfield.  Then we had a picnic lunch at a park in Manti before going over to the Manti City Pool.  The pool was so great - it had enough fun things to do that the kids were entertained for a couple of hours but it wasn't so big that we were worried about losing them.

Next was dinner at the National Guard Armory.  During the Manti pageant, the local LDS youth groups put on a barbecue turkey fundraiser dinner and a ranger at the park told us it was the best dinner available that night, so we gave it a try.  Luke's favorite part was the brownie.

We still had plenty of time before the pageant so we hit up a malt shop in Ephraim that had been there since 1950.  The atmosphere was very cool and the shakes and malts were great too.

There were some shows going on to entertain attendees before the pageant started, since seating opens up 3 hours before showtime.  We saw piano performances by Paul Cardall and Jason Lyle Black, and we walked around a bit and played some games and ate some snacks.  Eliza was the only kid interested in taking pictures with the cast members who were mulling around, so she and I did that for a little while too.

The girl behind Eliza's right shoulder was the human sacrifice during the scene depicting the wickedness of the people.

Eliza snuggling up with King Noah.

I think he was one of the guys making the human sacrifice.
I don't know, but his makeup looked fantastic.

The Mormon Miracle Pageant was very well done.  It told stories of the restoration and early history of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, juxtaposed against scenes from the Book of Mormon.  There were hundreds of actors involved and the way they used the space was impressive.  My favorite parts were the fire around the altar during the human sacrifice and the way they had the Angel Moroni appear on the tower of the Manti Temple.  Very cool.  The show felt long to me but it managed to keep the kids' attention pretty well, except for Luke, who fell asleep about halfway through.

Then, once the show was over, and everyone had had a chance to use the bathroom, and we walked the 3 blocks back to the car, and all the kids changed into their pajamas, we drove home.  We had a fun-filled couple of days in the Manti area and we would love to go back some time.