Utah canyonlands

Remember the saying "A happy husband makes a happy wife". So we are off to a dry country. Central Utah at 8000 feet we settled in Loa, and I worked in a clinic in Bicknell. It was Dry and Beautiful country.

There were 5 Mormon churches in the county, and no other! All activities were in the churches or the schools. The schools had all Mormon teachers. Special activities were brought down from Salt Lake City, and some were quite good. All Mormon of course. There are Mormons and the rest of the people were Jack Mormons. To describe them, good people, did not believe as the Momons did but didn't disagree with them.

Orientation was with a Mormon doctor who was also a elder. I kept seeing these young girls who came in to see the doctor and were dressed with cute little one piece chemise with lace around the neck and the panties and I almost asked, "Is this a new style"? But the next patient was an elderly male who had on the same silk, minus the lace. Oh!!! this is the undergarment that protects them from sin....... Yes, I had read a little.....

My first impression of computers was not a good impression. It was 7 foot tall and 3-4 foot wide !! Can you believe I am THAT old! I had to type in a s.o.a.p. format the patients records, send them to the Univerisity at Utah, and to the doctors office in Richfield. All that was in place of a preceptor coming to the site. For years I wanted nothing to do with computers. There were a lot of kinks to work out in 1979.

One of the young women who came to the clinic was so proud that her grandmother was one of Bringham Young's 89 wives!

A sheep herders wife, took us 60 miles out across the mountain to the sheep herders site. There in an old school bus converted to a sheepherders residence, she fixed dinner on a little stove and baked sour dough biscuits. They were the best. An experience to remember.

On the weekend, I did not have to be 'on call' unless I was home. Somehow, we packed early in an old orange volkswagon and were out on the desert or in the canyonlands. It was 50 miles east to a doctor and 100 miles or more, any other direction. I always took a medical bag with me but never had to use it. We were closest to Capital Reef Nat'l Park. Be sure to check it out if you ever have a chance! We took food and water with us, as there were few if anyplaces with either.

What to do on the desert, besides looking at the great formations, hunt rocks. Yes, we still had some of that in our blood . We found a ridge of petrified oyster shells, and dinosaurs bones, and a massive hill of selinite crystals and of course petrified wood, here and there. And have you ever seen a sink hole? Yes just a big hole with no bottom and no guards around it. I had read a book by a man who hiked all over Utah and he talked about laying down to sleep by one at night and woke up beside a sink hole. I just saw one in the daytime and that was enough to make me watch where I walked!!