Memories: Mazatlan 1984

My parents recently cleaned out the attic of the house in Salt Lake where we spent a lot of our growing-up years. There were all sorts of treasures up there - mixed with a whole lot of junk. One of the things they found was a whole stack of my old journals and letters.

It's been really fun to re-live bits of my earlier life through these journals and letters - and to share these revived memories with my kids. And this find has been really timely since my parents are working on a book (perhaps just for our family) with a compilation of everyone's memories of all the adventures we had growing up.

Anyway, I've decided to hire Ashton to type up some entries from my journals so this stuff can be saved for posterity (and so that he'll have a meaningful way to make some money). And as long as it's getting typed up, I'll go ahead and publish bits and pieces here on my blog so I'll have it all in a handy place.

Mazatlan Trip 1984

For spring break in 1984, my parents took the four oldest kids in my family to Mazatlan. The trip was partially planned as an exploratory trip since we planned to spend the summer there and they wanted to firm up where we'd be staying. It was quite an adventure - especially the train part!

We lived in England when I was 6, 7, and 8 and then we split our time between living in northern Virginia and living in Salt Lake City for a few years. This trip to Mexico was the first time I'd been out of the US other than when we lived in England. I remember that everything seemed really dirty and old, but reading over this, I see that I really wasn't very descriptive or thorough with my journal writing when I was 13. I wish I'd written more about this first trip to a country that was really different from home. I keep urging Ashton to write more in his journal and to write about feelings and to describe things. Maybe that'll come later like it did with me . . .

I'm not sure why I randomly have just these couple of photos for this trip. But it's something!

Straight from my journal:
Sunday: We got in the van at 7am and drove all day. Dad told stories on the CB (we had a microphone thing in the van that Mom and Dad would use to talk to us) and made us sing all the family songs. The little kids were fighting and whining sometimes but it wasn't too bad. We got to St George where grandma was spending the winter and saw some cousins and spent the night at Grandma's. The little kids got to stay with Grandma.

Monday: We headed for Lake Powell. When we got there, we rented a house boat and went out on the lake overnight. It was so beautiful. It was pretty nice not to have to worry about the little kids but I think we'll miss each other.

Tuesday: We stayed on the house boat until 4pm then we headed to Tucson Arizona. We got there at 1am and went straight to the Rustand's guest house on their ranch. We had lots of fun with the Rustands. We swam and we went on the go-cart and Shawni and I had a great time with Kennedy (the Rustand's daughter). We stayed there Wed night too and left at noon on Thursday.

Thursday: After leaving Tucson, we headed for Nogallas where we caught the overnight train to Mazitlan. The train was pretty dirty and we just had 4 twin bunk beds for Mom, Dad, me, Shawni, Josh, Saydi and Jonah so we had to share. Maybe Dad thought they'd be double beds when he made the reservation. I shared with Shawni but it was really crowded and our top bunk had a broken part (the part that was supposed to connect it to the ceiling) so it was bouncing all over the place. I finally gave up trying to sleep on the bunk and tried to sleep on the floor but the floor was super dirty. In the night our water jug leaked so I woke up sleeping in mud. The train wasn't as fun as we thought it would be.

Friday: We got off the train at about 8:30am and took a taxi to our hotel. We're staying at the Hotel Playa and it's a VERY nice hotel by Mexican standards. It's right on the ocean and has a nice pool. It has good food and service but we can't drink the water or eat anything that has been washed in the water like lettuce.

Dad said we could try paragliding on the beach, It looked pretty scary but I did it! Some men helped me get strapped into this harness attached to a parachute then a guy held onto me on the beach while a boat took off with a rope attached to me. Then I went up in the air and it was beautiful. I was supposed to pull this cord when I got the signal that it was time to come down. I was worried about that. But it worked out great!

This is me, slightly terrified

Here's Saydi, getting ready to go up - Shawni's in the yellow shirt, watching.
I'm right above Shawni's head with my mom to the left of me.

Saturday - we spent on the beach and in the pool. Dad left on an airplane to look for a house for us to rent and stay in this summer near a beautiful lake in southern Mexico. He found lots of houses and said that it was a beautiful place.

Sunday - We're going to church. I don't think we'll understand anything. It'll be interesting. Later: It was interesting.

Oh, I forgot, last Sunday we stopped at Zion's Park - It was REALLY beautiful.