THE VOTES ARE IN!

It appears it was a 3 to 2 vote to go to Disneyland!

I am only here to ask more questions, something Abe will have to deal with.  You have to ask a lot of questions before you can get the right answers.

Food.

Separate meals? Together?

Location Poll

Ok here is a quick Google Form with the suggested locations.  Lets get this figured out.

Abe

Ked's Comprehensive List of Places and the Wonders They Possess

So, Abe said list all the places we were thinking and he'd make a poll. So, here I've taken my list and also made some notes of why these places might be interesting and the rough driving time to each.
I agree with Ben that we need something to do. I've tried to include places where we could have fun, explore, and that are more in our driving range.

• Cathedral Gorge  (1 hour 34 min)
• We know this is cool. Also, I was told that there are similar canyons close by that are not actually in the state park. We could do whatever we wanted. Cool beans.

• Bull Valley Gorge (2 hours 30 min)
• A long slot canyon. Could be fun, but it is long. 

•  Bryce Canyon (Less than 2 hours)
• National Park, but lots of cool things to see, hiking trails, etc. Can't run wild, though.

• The Mine @ Milford (1 hour 20 min)
• Cool tunnels, excellent exploration. Not a great camping area (although Glen and I did camp in the opening of it) And it's legal.

• Notch Peak (3 hoursish)
• One of the tallest vertical faces in the United States and it's near Delta. Great hike, view. Look it up to see.

• Mammoth Cave area (Less than an hour)
• I'm on the trail of a cave nearby known to only a few people, supposedly large and unexplored. Below I've included some notes taken from a book about the cave. I also recently made contact with someone who's been there and it's still there. He's simply covered the entrance...his email to me is also below.

"Our Cave" Taken from a book of memoirs by Alva Matheson. I've included some interesting snippets.

"Zella, my wife, and I decided to spend a couple of days on the mountain. I had told her about Mammoth Cave and she wanted to see it. I had only been there once, seventeen years earlier, but in my minds eye I knew the road. What I didn't know was that there were two branches of the road about one-hundred yards apart. I took the first on which got me confused. I was so sure I was right that I would not give up hunting. Leaving Zella and LaKay, our baby, at the car I began hunting through the trees. I had about given up and was headed back to the car when my heel broke through soft dirt."  He goes on to detail how they entered and whatnot.

"We passed other intersecting branches and at one place the tunnel opened into a room which I believe to be seventy-five feet across."

"As we reversed our steps the other way and slightly down hill we began to find odd formations where the liquid rock had dripped from the ceiling and had built into odd piles of funny shapes and sizes. As we neared the end of the tunnel Leon began crawling into another small hole. I tried to persuade him to come back but my pleas were of no avail. I listened to his excited Oh's and Ah's and his exclamations for a few minutes and then decided to see for myself. As I entered the reason for his exclamations was easy to see. Before me was a fairyland of the most fascinating little statues resembling elves, fairies, and goblins. Little animated characters of all kinds that one could imagine, ranging in height from one inch to eighteen inches all built up of pine nut size drops of molten lava dripping drop by drop from the ceiling and as the drops had left the ceiling they had gradually built a stalactite formation as as a cooling breeze cooled the outside the hot lava inside had dripped on through lengthening the stalactite and leaving the inside hollow resulting in paper thin tubes from the size of a match stick to eighteen inches in length and an inch in diameter. Most of the large ones, however, were so delicate that they had not been ale to support their own weight and had fallen to the floor. There is an area of several hundred square feet of this formation. The ceiling in this room is a gradual oval and is from nothing to about six feet in height."

Recent email to me from the writer's son:  "Regarding the caves, there are many, but not worth the effort, except for Our Cave, but it is not open at this time, I covered the opening over to protect it.  It is several miles long and unexplored. I may return later this year."  

We could find it. I'm sure he simply covered the entrance with trees or rocks. We have some details as to the general location.

Man Camp Revisited

I just read some of that last post. I totally meant ramble alert, but I was in a hurry. It was quite random too.

Ok, Man Camp.  Here's my proposal:  We each suggest what we want in the camp and maybe each suggest three spots. Then we vote or reduce possibilities by simple deduction of what we want, what's feasible, time, weather, money for gas or entry, etc. Any thoughts or other ways we should do it?

Another thing for us to consider: who can drive?  I wouldn't mind, but the vehicle is in the shop and I honestly have no idea when it will get out. Transmission problems--the joy. 

Too large for a comment

I am leaving town for the weekend and probably won't be getting online much, so I offer some thoughts now. Not very good ones, because I haven't given it a great deal of thought. RANDOM ALERT!!

I think in some respects the plan is a good one. I wonder if the City of Enoch had a similar judge system. It was a community full of religion that succeeded fully in getting everyone translated. What a unique society.

But every society is so completely different. Is there one common goal of society for all societies? Celestial? The same society here will exist there? From a religious standpoint we would say the City of Enoch was ideal. Non-religious people wouldn't say that nor would they believe in a perfect city that was translated. They would envision something different.

We might ask: how would it be for us in another society completely dominated by another religion. We have faced that to some extent. I was in  95% Buddhist country. 4% Muslim and the rest something else. How did that government do with other religions? Decent. But not a hundred years ago.

In some respects in might depend on how close the dominant religion was  to what we term as the true religion. While Buddhism is very different, the basic beliefs are good and entail good living principles. The only problem is getting people to live it. The Thai country would be better off if everyone lived their religion. 

In the D&C (I forget the section) it says that government should protect the exercise of conscience.  What does that mean? Do current governments protect that? Would a completely religious government allow non-believers that protection? In the BoM case, I believe they did.

The High Priest being the Chief Judge? I interviewed a judge in Provo. He probably is a high priest. Wonderful man. I'm not sure I ever felt the spirit so much when interviewing someone or interviewing a secondary source about the primary source. He has strong religious principles and it makes him, in my opinion, one of the best judges possible. He has the Gift of the Holy Ghost and he prays to now what to do. Would you rather have someone using only physical evidence to judge you? Or would you like someone who can ask a higher source to get a better idea.  He told me he meets people all the time that thank him for putting them in jail. He probably made some inspired correct decisions for those people. Other decisions may be inspired for the good of society.  I always thought in the mission field that the Lord puts you in the place where you are needed to help others, but where you can be helped the most too. Dual purpose. Probably that way for judgments. Put the criminal where it will help them best and help society best. Tough to decide, for sure, so I'd rather have heaven's help.

So, in that judge's case I'd say having a judge that is religious works well. That isn't quite what you were asking, but I think it is a benefit to our society. Should all of them be religious? Good question.

Sometimes as people we think things should be static or black and white. That person is ugly or evil. We shift between dichotomies where none should exist or we think some things should be static and non-changing.  While God is unchangeable, he does play ball differently according to what's happening. He commanded Nephi to kill, etc.  The Constitution was not meant to be the final word on government. It was meant to grow as the county grew. Fascinating. What if different types of government are good at different times? Kind of a weird idea I just thought up. In BoM times the judge system and religion intermixed was the best option for them. The City of Enoch had whatever they had. We have ours. We are probably placed in governmental situations that test our faith and agency and will help us somehow. Even bad governments may have a role to play (like bad empires against wicked ancient Israel) The British Empire could be seen as bad because they killed and conquered many people, but because of them Christianity spread far and makes missionary work so much easier. Not so black and white.

So, what if different governments are better for different times? A society that completely adopts an ideology at one point needs different things than a system that adopts 20 ideologies. Just a quick-thought thought.

What should we adopt today? Total religious judge system would provoke uproar, so maybe good LDS people who decide to be judges and do the best they can?  ?

Obviously we live in a day where there are bazillions of ideologies and religions. Totally different than when ancient Israel was with the Egyptians or moved into the desert. Or different than BoM times. We probably need a government that is different. The D&C says the Constitution was given by the Lord. Why didn't he create a Priest/judge system again? Something else needed to protect and test all of his children I guess.

Anyway, total stream of conscious thought junk going on above me. Sorry. Hope some of it is thought provoking and not simply thought vomiting.   KED OUT

Government, cont.

I've got a Gospel Doctrine lesson on Nephite Government (Alma the Younger, King Mosiah, Reign of the Judges, etc.) this next Sunday, and since our last discussion (d)evolved into a discussion about government, I'm curious if any of you have thoughts on the Judges system that I might pilfer for my lesson.

What aspects of Mosiah's plan do you think are good ideas?  What parts wouldn't work?  What about appointing the High Priest to be the first Chief Judge?  Can a government built so solidly on religious principles be accepting of the non- or counter-religious people?

What aspects of the Judges system should we adopt?  Which wouldn't work today?

Man Camp Location

So, Abe and I were discussing man camp locations. Since it is about a month a away I thought we could talk about it again (and I go in phases of writing on the Herd blog and this last while has been one of them).

Abe and I discussed some places over by Escalante. They have slot canyons, arches, etc. Could be a good place to go explore.  OOH. Google Bull Valley Gorge. This is a great place I've wanted to hike since I drove over it. Neato Burrito.

Another option I thought of is Cathedral Gorge State Park. It's not as cool as roughing it somewhere, but imagine exploring the little canyons and crevices at night. Pretty exciting I'd like to think.

These are just some of my thoughts this morning. We could visit some ghost towns or camp in the bottom of the mine out by Milford or....Cedar Mountain....or whatever.

Name the sites you want. Sorry to fill your inboxes.