Family Reunion! Part 6

I'd initially planned the timing of this family reunion carefully to coincide with some of our favorite Pioneer Day festivities, none of which happened.  I finally resigned myself to having the odd experience of hosting out-of-town families in Utah on Pioneer Day with absolutely nothing exciting going on, but then I decided to give the Heber Creeper one more call.  I'd ruled out a run-of-the-mill train ride, but asked what they had going on for Pioneer Day.  It turned out that shortly before I called, they decided to do their traditional Pioneer Day train ride, since they found out that the city of Charleston, on the banks of Deer Creek Reservoir, would be putting on their fireworks show after all.  This train ride included a fried chicken dinner, bluegrass entertainment, a gunfight, a train ride to the back side of Deer Creek to watch the fireworks, and a ride back to the depot, and it was very reasonably priced.  It turned out so much better than I could have even hoped for.

After hanging out at the train yard and eating our (admittedly, mediocre) dinner and watching a sheriff take down a couple of bandits (one of whom was holding a rubber chicken, ironically), we boarded the train.  Groups were kept separate on the train cars for social distancing purposes, so since we had such a big group we were in an entire care by ourselves, with just one additional single rider: an older man named Kent.  "Thank You" from Moana  started and that was all it took.  We started singing along, our teenage hosts started singing along, and the party just got more and more hyped from there.  We were scream-singing at the top of our lungs, clapping, dancing, and having so much fun that I felt like I was back at a stake youth dance.  It was a blast.  I felt sorry for the single-rider stuck with our rowdy group, but it only took a few songs before he was standing up, singing and dancing with everyone else.

By the end of the train ride, we'd established ourselves as the party car so much that a delegation from our car was asked to visit a couple of other train cars in an attempt to bump up the fun factor for other groups.  Also, I'm pretty sure that the car-to-car fiddling troupe was not received as enthusiastically by any other car - and they seemed more than happy to satisfy us with some "Devil Went Down to Georgia."

The grands (minus Sydney)

Dinner in the trainyard

Gotta catch those lilly-livered not-for-nothins.

Don't worry, it was all pretend.  Now let's take a picture together.

Beautiful Sunset in Beautiful Heber Valley

Andy was doing The Carlton.

I'm not sure what I was doing...

It was a late night, at the end of a busy week.

Some of the kids were pretty worn out.

Whit adjusted his mask to suit the current need.

The teenagers exchanged Instagram names, and wanted a picture together,
and we all love that Kent jumped in there too!

We slept in a little bit in the morning after being out so late, but Ben and Andy were still willing to drive to Lehi so everyone could enjoy some Lehi Bakery Doughnuts before the end of the reunion.  So yummy!

We got everything packed up and were out of the house before 11:00, then everyone hung out at my house for a little while.  We used leftover reunion food for lunch, the kids smashed the last of our extra geodes from Memorial Day, and then Cat and I drove with Megan and her family to Salt Lake so they could have a balcony visit with Oma.

Andy and Suz and their families headed out in the afternoon/evening.  Megan's family had planned to leave on a red-eye Saturday night but their flights were changed to leave Sunday afternoon instead so we made the best of the time we had left: dinner at Waffle Love and entertainment at Comedy Sportz in Provo.

We were a little early for Comedy Sportz, which worked out great -
it was really nice to just enjoy the Provo City Center Temple and take a few pictures.

Like the night before on the train, these guys got really into
the pre-show music, singing and dancing at the top of our group's designated touch zone.

And.... one more chat on Sunday morning before it was time for
Megan's family to drive to the airport.  Hooray for conversations and card games.