Sometimes I am asked questions about our mission. I will answer
some of them here in case anyone else wonders.
Our tours last about 35-40 minutes.
We go in 5 different rooms with different videos and other things in
each room. We are only in the first room
for a few minutes. It is small and if we
have a big group, we invite the kids to sit on the carpet in front. This can mean kids of all ages.
In one room we dress up someone who volunteers (or just show
them if no one volunteers) in the equipment a Battalion soldier in 1846 would
wear. This includes the ammo pouch, the
bayonet strap, the belt to hold those in place, a hat (old fashioned
sunscreen), a 3 pint wooden canteen, a food pouch that held beef jerky, beans
and hardtack (hard tack lasts 50 YEARS), a pack with a bedroll, scriptures, a
journal (there are 80 journals from members of the Battalion), and a 1816
flintlock musket that weighs about 10 pounds and was notoriously
inaccurate. They really were told to
wait to shoot until they could see the whites of their enemy’s eyes. Once the Mormon Battalion of 500 volunteer
soldiers marched over 150 miles in 12 days to Fort Leavenworth, they received
that equipment, but the army didn’t have enough uniforms. They gave each of the men a $42 clothing
allowance up front and they were able to wear their own clothes. That was a miracle since the men were able to
send the money back to their families in Council Bluffs, Iowa, to help with
their move west. The money they made as
soldiers also helped a great deal. About
80 women and children accompanied the Battalion.
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| Random picture I found of all the gear |
We end up in a room representing the first courthouse in San Diego, which the Battalion built using fired bricks. Previously, buildings here were built using adobe brick, but the Battalion taught the Californios how to make fired brick, and even dug 20 wells for them and lined them with the fired bricks. After the tour, we have a room with some interesting artifacts, including the actual cannon that the Battalion had. There is also an old-timey looking camera to take a picture of your group, and then we go out to gold pan. There are also hands-on displays of how bricks are made, a water pump, washboards like the laundresses used (the laundresses, who were wives of Battalion members, made 50 cents per soldier per month) and a tower where you can use binoculars to look out over Old Town.
That reminds me, I forgot to add pictures of Jeff and Genna gold panning last
week!
Our director and his wife are also full-time
missionaries. Elder and Sister Barnes
were called on a two year mission and started last January. It turns out they used to live in Kansas
City, MO, and knew David Barker’s dad.
David’s dad got Elder Barnes a job at the airlines many years ago. Small world.
For our fun adventure of the week, we went on a 3 hour whale
watching tour. There are 3 kinds of
whales migrating this time of year, but we only saw one kind. We saw two sets of gray whales, a cow and a
calf in each set. They travel very
slowly, less than 5 miles an hour, from Mexico to Alaska, as the cow feeds the
calf and tries to keep it safe. By seeing them, I mean we saw the water from their blowholes and the tops of their
backs. But that was cool. One set had a bunch of dolphins swimming all
around them. That was cool, too.
This morning we had friends from Midway and Roseville come
through the Battalion at different times.
Craig was able to take them on the tours. A good time had by all! It is such fun to see people we know come
by. Everyone is invited!
