William Robert Jack Reunion

This weekend Mike and I joined Grandpa and Grandma Jack up in Colorado for the big Jack reunion – I’ve never been to this level of reunion before – it’s for the William Robert Jack family. Robert was my great-grandfather's father - I knew my great-grandpa Jack too. Robert's father, James Jack, was born and raised in Alabama prior to the Civil War (in 1831), where his father, Allen Jack, owned slaves that worked on the family plantation. (Allen Jack’s father, Jeremiah Jack, fought in the Revolutionary War.) James, the 8th son of the family, married the daughter of a puritan, and so didn’t have anything to do with slavery as a matter of principal. In fact, when the Civil War started and his seven older brothers joined up with the Confederacy (most of them as officers,) he joined the Union army with his brothers-in-law. Since he had brothers on the Confederate side, the Union decided not to put him on the shooting lines and they made him a spy. So he adopted the alias “Jack Mayberry” and spied out the Confederate positions and troop movements. Once, as he was swimming back across the river to the Union side with his oldest son Robert (whose reunion this was) on his back to keep the documents high and dry, he was shot in the back, which left him crippled for life. He and his wife and kids joined the Mormon Church after the Civil War, which made him less popular than he already was, and had to emigrate to Manassa, Colorado where the Saints were settling at that time (by then Utah was full.) So, that’s where the family reunion was – near Manassa, Colorado.

Mike was my only traveling companion – our families declined to accompany us (I don’t blame them given the long drive and short stay.) We left early-ish on Thursday morning (July 17) and drove 550 miles, through the Navajo Reservation, Farmington, New Mexico, then through the Apache Reservation at Dulce, up to Chama, Colorado, and then up the Conejos Canyon, along the Conejos River. You would never guess it, but the locals pronounce Conejos as “Kiness” – I didn’t understand them at first and they never did understand me when I’d pronounce the word as in Spanish. Mike and I found the site of the reunion, the Rocky Mountain Lodge, without problem – I’d found it on Google Earth and then programmed the latitude and longitude into my GPS. We arrived just before dark, and so had time to pitch our tent next to our parents’ camp trailer. That evening we had dinner with Grandpa and Grandma and then went and chatted with some new-found relatives around the campfire. I had a chance to meet great-great-aunt Sadie, who is 97-years-old and is the youngest daughter of William Robert Jack, the youngest sister of my great-grandfather. It’s amazing to me – her father saw the Civil War! He was a young man (18-years-old) when he was a Mormon pioneer, migrating from Alabama after the Civil War to settle there in Colorado at the orders of Brigham Young. Talk about spanning the generations! More amazing still, Aunt Sadie walked around camp like she was no more than 60 – what a go-er. I tried to chat with her a bit around the campfire, but she’s kind of hard of hearing (even more so than I am), couldn’t hear exactly what I was saying, and so gave me answers to her best guesses of what I’d asked. So it was a bit discouraging. Even so, it was great to hear some stories that she told.

On Friday morning (July 18) there were no group activities scheduled, so the four of us (Grandpa, Grandma, Mike, and me) loaded up in the car and went down into the San Luis valley itself to visit the old family homesites. We drove to Mannasa first – that’s the center of the Jack’s life in Colorado, founded in part by the Jacks themselves – it’s an old Mormon town, laid out in big square blocks. We started at the cemetery and visited the graves of James Jack (the Civil War veteran and first generation Mormon) and his wife Georgia Ann, the graves of William Robert (James’ son) and his wife Almira, who were the parents of my great-grandfather “Will” and Sadie (who was at this very reunion,) and Ellie, the oldest child of James Jack who died the first winter in Colorado (when she was only 20 years old) – her grave marker states that she was the first white woman to be buried in Colorado. From the cemetery we went up to Jack Street and took our picture with the street sign (see photo above.) From Manassa we drove over hill and dale looking for Los Cerritos – which was the site of an old fort where the Mormon pioneers spent their first winter in tents before founding the town of Manassa the next spring – we finally found it on my GPS (there was nothing left but a couple of houses and the little hills themselves.) Then we went up north a few miles to Safford, where great-great-grandma Almira Jack (Robert’s wife) had had her home. We found the home – it’s ancient and abandoned now, with broken windows and roof-high weeds – I guess time marches on and spares no one or nothing. Then we went out east of Safford across the Conejos (Kiness) River to the “Jack Bend,” another old town-site where the Jacks lived way back when – there’s just a couple of home there, not owned by the Jacks anymore. Then we went up to Alamosa – we wanted to see the Victoria Hotel (where Robert and Almira worked for a while) but it had been torn down not too long ago, we were told. Then we came back to camp via Bountiful, where my Grandpa Jack was born – it’s between Safford and Manassa out on the highway. That evening we had a group activity and played Bingo – there were an assortment of prizes from bags of Oreos for the kids, dishtowels for the in-laws, and copies of old family photos for those interested – your Grandpa Jack won two old photos and I got one.

On Saturday morning (July 19) we got up and took a drive up the Conejos Canyon to the old mining town of Platoro (I’m guessing that they mined gold and silver there.) This trek was significant because my great-great-grandfather Robert Jack both worked on building the road and later spent time working the “Little Annie” mine somewhere in the hills above Platoro. We found the road to be pretty rough, only marginally better than it would have been originally, and the town is all summer cabins now – there’s no real town to speak of. But it was a pretty drive and worth our time. That afternoon a small group gathered to exchange genealogy information, but it turned out that your Grandpa Jack knew more about the Jack history than anyone else present, so we didn’t get any new information. I did, however, get some more photos and family histories from Grandpa. That night we had a big potluck dinner and talent show – the food was good and the talent show was typical.

Then on Sunday morning (July 20) Mike and I got up, struck camp, and spent ten and a half hours driving home. For the last 75 miles, from Kanab to Hurricane, we were in blinding driving rain and had to really slow down for fear of running off the road. Anyway, I’m home again, and it’s bedtime!

Yankee Doodle

On Tuesday evening (July 15) straight after work, Robert took us out hiking/canyoneering/rappelling. You know that I love to do that stuff, but I was really worried this particular day because our summer monsoon rains were in full swing (at least, at St. George levels.) Before this past week it’s been hot and clear all month – in the 100-109F range. Then this week it started cooling down (into the upper 90’s) and rained each day. This made Robert want to go up to the canyons and see how they were with water in them. I was worried about flash-flooding – I have at least two cousins that I know of who were killed in flashfloods, along with their Boy Scout troops, in the canyons in Zion. Anyway, we didn’t want to "just say no” so we agreed to go at least as far as the edge of the canyon and then see if it was raining or not. There were six of us: Robert and Kelton, Les and Me, Seth, and Kyle. (Kyle’s dad had given him a lecture about flashflooding in slot canyons.) So we drove up to Leeds, then through Silver Reef, and up past the turn off to Oak Grove, to a nifty little slot that Robert had been shown by his brother Larry. The boys called it "Yankee Doodle" but I don't know if that's really its name or not. Anyway, when we got there the skies were largely clear – it was cloudy to the south – but it was certainly not raining at the moment. So we put on our harnesses, grabbed a couple of ropes, and hit the trail. The first rappel was dry, then we had a bit of bouldering, and then we hit the water. We had a couple of rappels into waist deep pools, but after unhooking from the rope we had to swim across a pool of water that was over our heads. The water was actually pretty warm, I guess because it was still pretty fresh (Robert had taken Kate through the same canyon a week before and it had been bone-dry.) I’ve got to say that I found that my bouldering was much smoother than in the past – I can tell that my upper body strength has increased considerably since I started lifting weights three mornings a week back in May. The climb back up out of the canyon was a bit spooky – we scaled this cliff, breaking out the ropes only twice. All told it was a 70-minute climb down through the slot canyon and then a 40-minute climb back out. Of course, there was an hour-long drive in and out, so we got home after 9:00 that night. But we did get home all safe and sound; the rain stayed away and in fact the temperatures were perfect – warm enough to enjoy the water but cool enough to enjoy the hike. I’d rate the hike somewhere around the level of Keyhole.

A Week in Paradise

After church on Sunday, June 29th, we loaded up Robert’s pickup with our bags that we had packed the day before, and we hit the road for Kingman. Our traveling group consisted of Robert, Kody, Katie, Leslie, and me. The three from our family just had four bags: three duffels, each weighing the regulation 32#, which contained our tent, sleeping pads, sheets, fleece blankets (it was too hot for sleeping bags), and clothes for down in the canyon; our fourth bag contained our clean clothes for our two nights in the hotel in Kingman. Oh, and we also had a camelback each, for our water, hiking snacks, and other incidental stuff that we might want before the mule train arrived at camp. We made the trip to Kingman in the standard four hours and checked in to our hotel without any problems.

We got up at 3:45AM on Monday morning, grabbed a fast shower, got dressed, iced up our camelbacks, loaded our bags into Robert’s pickup and then followed our host, Dave, to the trailhead on the Havasupai reservation (about 120 miles from Kingman.) Dave is a local businessman who dabbles in many things, including land development and farming, and has been successful enough that he travels a lot and often invites family, friends, and friends of friends, whoever wants to come along, to come along with him (at our own expense, of course.) The first 60 miles out to the reservation was on Route 66, passing through Truxston, which I swear was featured in the Pixar movie “Cars.” We got to the trailhead at 7:00AM and stacked our duffels in a big pile with the rest of our group – there were around 130 of us all together – from which the mule train was going to load them up after we’d departed. After lathering ourselves with sunscreen we hit the trail; Kody took off like a shot, with Robert and Katie right behind, and Les and I took a more conservative pace (although we outpaced most of the rest of the party.) The trail starts off with some really steep switchbacks that take you down about 1000 feet over the first 1.5 miles into the canyon, and then you start walking down a more gradual slope through this long windy canyon, with alternating sandy and gravel floors. Since it was all downhill I wore my knee braces and used my hiking sticks and actually made the whole ten miles without too much arthritis knee pain. At Dave’s recommendation we stopped about halfway down the trail and changed into dry socks and put some moleskin on the spots developing blisters (Dave recommended duct tape;) I was getting blisters on the same spot where I’d given myself blisters walking across Coronado Island in San Diego a month ago. At 6-miles we hit the start of the river and trees and the walk became pretty pleasant and shady. At 8-miles we hit the Havasupai Indian village; it had (in order): dusty streets, a little store, an LDS church, a few houses, a tourist office, a helicopter ride office, a helicopter landing pad, a Post Office, a bigger store, a café, a school, a Protestant Church, and a lodge. We bought some cold drinks at the main store and looked for lunch at the café, but it was only 10:00AM and they were only serving breakfast, so we headed on down to the campground.

At the campground, 2 miles down from the village, you first hit the hitching posts where the mules drop off your bags, a cluster of port-a-potties, and then a string of campsites about a mile long. The campground was sprinkled with picnic benches and had one spigot of fresh water coming right out of the sandstone cliff (sandstone is a very good water filter.) When Les and I arrived, Katie, Robert, and Kody had already picked a fine camping spot near a shady tree. So we piled our bags on our picnic table, changed into our swim suits, and headed back up the trail about ¼ mile and visited the Havasu Falls. If you’ve seen a photo of the waterfalls in Havasupai, it was probably of Havasu Falls. It falls about 100 feet into a pool of blue-green-turquoise water – apparently the color comes from the lime in the water. What’s really neat is that the high content of lime in the water causes it to stick to all of the tree roots and rocks that it passes over, forming these beautiful organic limestone dams, which create a whole series of pools and little waterfalls cascading down the hills after each waterfall. After cooling ourselves off in the water for a couple of hours, we could see the dust from the muletrain going by (yes, I sang the Frankie Laine song the whole week), so we headed back to the campground to retrieve our bags, pitch our tents, and set up camp. That evening Dave served a wonderful dinner of pork chops, corn, green salad, and rolls with either lemonade or Tang to drink. He had this brilliant system where he’d cooked the meat in advance, then sealed it in these vacuum packs that he froze and then just had to boil to reheat, and the meat came out tasting like it was fresh off the grill. There was an attempt at a fireside/sing-along that evening, but there were very few willing participants so we just headed off to our tents to call it a night. I’ve got to say, it was very hot and sweaty in our tent and it took a very long time to fall asleep laying there on the hard ground. Finally, at what time I don’t know, it cooled down a bit and we slept the rest of the night away.

On Tuesday morning we got up with the sun (which doesn’t come very early down in the canyon) and helped prepare breakfast – they were cooking pancakes, bacon, eggs, and hashbrowns and I just had to help flip the hotcakes (it's a compulsion of mine.) After breakfast the bulk of the group headed downstream about a mile to Mooney Falls. The trail was very easy, just winding through the campground until you get to this 200-foot cliff, where the trail got really fun – we got to climb down through a couple of tunnels and then scramble down the cliff face hanging on to chains and toe holds and ancient rickey wooden ladders. Our climbing experience here in Zion and Snow Canyon made this a breeze for us, but some folks really struggled with the challenge. Down at the bottom we played in the pools below Mooney Falls, which falls the whole 200 feet, with the turquoise water and cascading pools like up at Havasu Falls. Here there was a rope swing that most everyone had to try out (not me.) Some of our better swimmers (including Katie and Les) swam out to the waterfall and climbed up the rocks beside it and jumped about ten feet into the water. We headed back to camp in time for lunch – they served cold sandwich meat on flour tortillas – it was yummy. After lunch we headed about ½ mile upstream to Navajo Falls, which I thought was the most beautiful of all. Navajo is only about 75 feet tall, but it was very wide and instead of one thin stream it fell over a series of drops, looking very much like a bride’s veil. Best of all, this fall had a lot of nooks, crannies, and grottos around its edges, making it very fun to explore. And of course, Les and Katie had to climb up about 10 feet and jump in to the water. After exploring the face of the falls, Robert led us up the backside of the falls, using this little side waterfall as our ladder – it wasn’t slippery as you’d expect due to the lime in the water making all surfaces very grippy – we went all the way up to the top of the falls and soaked for a while in the pools up there. (The attached photo is of one of the grottos and pools up above Navajo Falls.) That evening we had grilled chicken breasts, green beans with almonds, green salad, and rolls for dinner. After dinner a group of us got together and played cards and “Catch Phrase” until it was too dark to see.

On Wednesday we decided to forgo the long hike down to Beaver Falls, which are five miles downstream from camp and aren’t that spectacular – after all, who needs a ten mile hike the day before we were scheduled to make our ten mile hike out of the canyon? So we spent the morning at Mooney Falls again – the climb down into the canyon really makes that little trip fun. After chili-cheese dogs for lunch, we headed back up to Navajo Falls, where Leslie and Katie decided to challenge themselves and jump in from an even higher rock – probably 20 feet high or so. Then we decided to climb the waterfall-ladder again, and went up even higher than the day before. Back at camp we found that the number of injured from our party had risen to three – people who had seriously hurt themselves jumping into the pools and hitting rocks – they were going to have to helicopter out the next day – both Katie and Leslie had grazed themselves on rocks while jumping into the pools, but were still fit for hiking. For dinner that night we carbo-loaded with a lovely spaghetti dinner, after which we amused ourselves playing cards until it was too dark to see.

On Thursday morning we had our standard pancakes, eggs, bacon, and hashbrowns for breakfast before we struck camp and packed up everything into our duffels for the mules to carry out. Then we killed a few hours in the water at Havasu Falls – we didn’t want to hike out in the heat of the day. A little after noon we changed into our dry hiking clothes and headed back up the trail the two miles to the village – that little jaunt was really hot and miserable. So we shaded up at the little café there in the village and had lunch and copious amounts of Gatorade. When it got to be 2:00PM we bought some frozen Gatorades for the trail, iced up our camelbacks, and hit the road. We were just going up to the end of the river, another two miles upstream from the village, to stay cool until it got later in the day so we’d have shade while hiking through the canyons, but suddenly an unexpected cloud came up and so we just kept on going. It turned out that we were shaded by those blessed clouds all the way out until we hit the final switchbacks on the final mile or two – it was really pleasant. The last drag up the hill was brutal in the full sunshine, but we managed to make it, draining the last water from our camelbacks and killing our now melted Gatorades. In the end, we were some of the first to make it out of the canyon, at 6:30PM, but about two hours behind Robert and Kody, who had the pickup all loaded with our bags and ready to go. At the parking lot Dave, our host, had one of his sons waiting with frosty/slushy orange juice, which felt really good on our dry parched throats. From there it was a quick two hours’ drive back to the hotel in Kingman – we were all too tired to want dinner so we just showered and called it a day.

On Friday, the 4th of July, we got up, showered, loaded the pickup and headed home. It’s just four hours on the roads between Kingman and St. George. At home we found Annie and Dobie safe and sound – so we can count this as another successful family trip. Here at home we unpacked and put away the camping gear. We grilled hamburgers to celebrate the 4th of July and watched the movie “Independence Day” (with Will Smith.) We drove uptown that night to watch the fireworks at 10:00PM – they were as spectacular as usual. And that completed our week in paradise. I've posted our photos on-line - let me know if you want me to send you an invitation to view them.