Trek Day 2

The second day was the hardest. I was tired from the night before and some crazy people decided to wake up early! You just pushed a handcart through mud for three miles, you should be tired! Well, anyway we had french toast for breakfast with some yummy bacon and had a lot of time to pack up because we were the last company to leave.

Thankfully, the trail mostly wasn't muddy at all, but there were some patches. Unfortunately, it was really hot and there was almost no shade over the trail (and to think we had walked in near almost shade when it was overcast the day before!). Thankfully, we moved fast and got lots of breaks. Unfortunately, we moved fast, so we caught up with the other companies ahead of us and the breaks we had were waiting for them to move.

Toward the end of the day, one of the boys pushing the handcart behind us nearly passed out, so we stopped to help. There were only three people pushing that handcart, one a girl. They had just been working too hard, so my ma lent the boy her basketball shorts that she had had under her skirt. We sat down in the shade to wait for the boy, but when it was time to get moving again, one of my brothers couldn't get back up. He had went into shock, so we threw everything out of the handcart, put him in it, and raced to the cars that were up the trail about ten minutes walking. Of course, we ran, so it was more like five. As we ran we passed the stationary orange company that the rest of our company had caught up to, and the slowly moving green company.

They were moving slowly because this was the part where the boys left for the Mormon Battalion, so it was only girls pushing. Not that girls are slow, but three boys, a man, and and two girls running as fast as they can move a lot faster (Me and ma were running behind, we couldn't catch up). We weaved around their handcarts and beat everyone to the cars. My brother was given an IV, and put in a car. Thankfully, he didn't have to go to the hospital. Unfortunately, one of my other brothers passed out and had to sit in a car as well because of the effort to get the first brother to the cars. One of my sisters also had to sit in the car. I was sooo glad that we had time to rest. I felt pretty bad, and another one of my sisters almost had to sit in the cars. Later, one of the adults said that he almost put me in a car because I looked so bad. I'm thankful he didn't try because I might have thrown a hissy fit if I had to abandon my family. It was great just to sit and watch everyone else come in. I felt a lot better after sitting down for about 20 minutes, maybe half an hour. The bad thing was that the trail where only the women pushed the handcarts had absolutely no shade. It was grass all around, so they couldn't even stop to sit in the shade. A lot of people got dehydrated.

We buried our babies here since it was Martin's Cove, and then continued on. We kept Dakota though since our ma's daughter had made it. One other handcart family kept theirs, but that was because they said it didn't die. They loved it a lot.

One of the boys from another handcart helped us since we were so depleted in numbers. After a little while we stopped, and many of us (including me) started grumbling that orange group wasn't moving fast enough and how it needed to stop stopping. Then the leader of our company came up and said that orange company had just said a prayer, and that we should too. So we did, then started off again. By that time I was on automatic, just making myself keep going, that I didn't realize till later that the hot, blazing sun was almost immediately covered by dark clouds, and that by the time we reached the fruit stand two minutes later that the sky was completely dark. We were able to eat watermelon and oranges and get our spirits up for the last leg of the journey.

As we rolled into camp, our family members came to greet us. This experience was later compared to heaven were the saints were reunited to their loved ones. We ate a diner of chicken and rice together and had peach cobbler for dessert. Our family was reunited and safe, and that felt good.

When we had the company meeting we were informed that tomorrow we wouldn't be hiking. We were going to stay in camp since it was supposed to be even hotter the next day. I don't think I've seen teenagers that happy, not even when my high school's power went out so we got a unexpected three day weekend, and didn't have to make the day up. We all feel asleep quickly that night.

Check out Day 1 again. I've added pictures and edited the post! Pictures for day 2 will come later.