By George, it was nice ...

...and beautiful. No, not Prince George, not Boy George. But better.... St. George - a city in Utah about a four-hour drive south from Salt Lake City.

... extra-terrestrially beautiful St. George

St. George is beautiful and resembles an extraterrestrial place. Its landforms and red topography remind you of another planet like Mars or Venus. It has red cliffs, red rocks, red soil. Alien and Western (cowboy) movies have been filmed there for years. And it’s where Dearie and I spent three days last week. We drove down Thursday morning. It was a beautiful Spring day; and on the way, we enjoyed the sights of the sprawling grazing fields and cattle with the snow-capped mountains as backdrop, while the dissipated mist filtered the rainbow hues of the morning sun. The air was fresh and clean. It was revitalizing and life-giving.

St. George Temple (foreground)

We were invited to a temple sealing of a family our missionary son - “the Elder” - helped teach and baptize last year on the East Coast.

If the Bible is right about a person who builds his house upon a rock (as opposed to sand), then St. Georgians are very wise people. In fact as we drove through some neighborhoods, that was the impression we got - that all houses were built on solid rock. Rock is omnipresent there. Hahaa.

But despite St. George’s seemingly barren, rocky and desolate identity, it still has the sights and feel of pastoral and rustic small town America. It’s our kind of place! The weather was in the upper sixties and was just right for us. We’ve passed through the city many times before on our way to California, Las Vegas and Arizona, but we never stopped to really appreciate the area and what it offers. So during this visit, we stayed and got to drive around, go shopping, eating and dining and just relaaaaaxed.

...building houses upon the rocks in St. George

Friday afternoon, we strolled through a shopping plaza and spotted a place that sells fried shrimp, BBQ spare ribs, rice, veges and mac salad. Dearie waited outside in the open food court complete with tables and umbrellas while I went in to get our food. The Chinese cashier asked for payment and I reached into one of my pockets, felt a card, pulled it out without checking and handed it to her. She studied the card and kept looking up at me then finally asked, politely: “Vat gaind of kard ees dees?” holding it up for me to see. “Oops, sorry that’s our hotel key!” I said, handing her the visa card. I said to Dearie afterwards that I should have told the cashier to charge our hotel for the food, as long as she was given the hotel key card... LOL!

St. George offers much more than relaxation and dining. It’s also a mecca for 4-wheeling, skydiving, cliff-hanging and other thrill-seeking adventures. But we’re the easy and safe fun kinda people, not the high risk-taker type ...hahaaa...koe ua makukua fo’i (plus we’re old too). We’re like that not only because of the culture in which we were raised where high physical risk-takers are considered malo vale ma aikaevale (foolhardy and airheaded), but also because of the gospel culture where this counsel by one of our Church leaders rings true, wise and timely:

...all of us can find enjoyment in a wide range of wholesome, entertaining, and engaging activities. But we diminish the importance of our bodies and jeopardize our physical well-being by going to unusual and dangerous extremes searching for an ever greater and more exhilarating adrenaline “rush.” We may rationalize that surely nothing is wrong with such seemingly innocent exploits and adventures. However, putting at risk the very instrument God has given us to receive the learning experiences of mortality - merely to pursue a thrill or some supposed fun, to bolster ego, or to gain acceptance - truly minimizes the importance of our physical bodies. ~ Elder David A. Bednar

... in St. George - after the sealing

It was certainly nice and beautiful in St. George.