Tabiona and Manila=Crazy Road Trip!!! Part 1

Part 1-Wolf Creek Pass and Tabiona School

Two of my chapters were pretty far out of the way and both in the Uinta Basin area, so I decided to make a road trip out of it and hit both in one trip. I headed down to Chase's parents house in Coalville so I'd be a little further ahead when I got up in the morning. From Coalville, I headed out past Kamas and over a mountain pass called Wolf Creek Pass.





It was absolutely beautiful! It's only open from about April-October, so I was lucky enough to get to go over it. The fall colors were amazing and I couldn't help but have a smile on my face the entire time. The smell of pine trees and fresh mountain air got me so excited to start my day. My destination: Tabiona. Population: 149. As I neared the end of the pass, I entered into a valley that is home to Hanna and Tabiona, Utah.
You can't really see the town but it's litteral just at the end of the rainbow in this picture :) Around the corner. It was a very quaint little ranching valley surrounded by mountains. A little peice of heaven on earth. Tabiona School reminds me a lot of Stilring School, but is half the size. It's K-12 and has about 8-10 kids in each class. Mr. Jenkins is the ag teacher out there and he and his students were very welcoming. They aren't a very active chapter but great kids nonetheless. Their officer team took me out to lunch at the famous Hanna Cafe where we ate the greasy regular cafe food. They even took me off-roading a little bit! On his prep hour, Mr. Jenkins took me up to an elk ranch with the CTE director who was visiting. Mr. Jenkins is doing a lot of work at the lodge and so he wanted to show it to us. BEAUTIFUL. It's a 4,000 acre elk ranch up on the mountain and the lodge looks straight from what you'd see at a fancy ski resort in Vail, Colorado. When my visit in Tabiona was done, I sadly headed on the road towards Roosevelt and Vernal. (I met up with a friend from EFY in Vernal and chatted a while before I headed to Manila)

Beautiful Morgan

The Morgan FFA Chapter is amazing. The end. Their advisor, Ms. Megan Haslam was a lot of fun to work with as well. Each class was so willing to have fun and participate and I switched my workshop up a bit to make it more personal. I felt very, very happy about this visit. We had pizza with whatever members wanted to at lunch and I was able to chat with some of them one on one. Chase, Blake and I spent the night before at Chase's parents house in Coalville. Chase had a visit in Heber, Blake at North Summit in Coalville, and I was at Morgan so we carpooled down. (Well, Blake met Chase and I there) I drove Chase's grandma's little green car to Morgan and I had to be a little careful because the spedometer didn't work. :) Great visit!

Lehi

Lehi seemed like a pretty quick visit. Blake and I were supposed to split this chapter because there are so many classes, so I only went to half. I think I only taught 3 class periods, then went over to Orem High School and helped Brittney finish up her day there. The Lehi group was a lot of fun though, and they were very participative and willing to have fun. The night before, Brittney, Chase and I stayed the night and Mr. Deimler's home which was fairly close to all of our chapters. All in all, Lehi was great!

Fremont

Fremont High School= HUGE. They have 5 ag teachers and lots and lots of long hallways...Chase and I would have been very lost had we not had our trusty guide, chapter president Aubrey to take us where we needed to go. Mrs. Egelund, or "Joe" as she prefers was so much fun to be with that day. Mr. Demorest, Mrs. Selman and Mr. Ellertson were the other teachers we taught with. This visit was a little rough to be honest. Not because of the kids-they were great. But this visit was 2 days after we got home exhausted from National Convention. Not to mention I was sick with an aweful caugh and who knows what else. All I know is that I didn't feel good at all and during the workshops I would have to step out every now and then to get water. Not fun at all. Chase and I did a total of 23 workshops that day. It was a little tiring to say the least. But, it turned out ok and no one died of tiredness :)

Delta!

Delta was a chapter that I had a lot of fun with! It was kind of thrown on me in the middle of the year because Amberlie was never able to coordinate schedules with them, so we switched a couple chapters around. I had never been to the Delta area before so this was an adventure! I left the Cabella's Co-op quiz in Lehi and headed down to Delta to stay at Brittney's aunt and uncles home. The dark and unfamiliar roads made me a little nervous, and the no cell phone service factor didn't help much, but I got there safely. Brittney's aunt and uncle were such nice people! They opened up there home to me as if it were my own. I was able to participate in family scripture study and prayer with them in the morning and that seemed to set the day off right. Mr. Warnick and his chapter had tons of energy and were an awesome chapter to visit!

Box Elder Visit

Oh the Box Elder kids! Most definitely some of my favorite! I was able to really get close to a lot of the members from this chapter and I will love these kids forever. The visit went as well as it could being one of my first. I'm sure I wasn't as confident and exciting as I was in later visits, but this was only my second visit to a chapter ever so I felt pretty good about it. Mr. Bingham and Mr. Burrell are two of the most down-to-earth, decent men I have ever met and it shows through the way their students talk about them and act around them. I spent most of the day at the high school and then for the last period of the day went with Mr. Burrell to the Junior High to teach his freshman. They were so much fun!!
Over the course of this year I have been able to become friends with some of the members, not just to be nice, but truly friends. John, Becky, Chet, Aneese, Joe, and many more. Chet was an amazing kid and ran for state office, but didn't make it to many people's dissapointment. Aneese is an incoming sophomore who really has her head on her shoulders and is going to make an incredible chapter officer next year! Hanging out with the Box Elder chapter was definitely one of the biggest highlights of my year!

Bear River Visit

Bear River High School and Junior High Schools were a lot of fun! Chase and I teamed up for this visit and visited mostly freshman classes. It was fun for me because the teacher who takes care of all the 9th graders at BR was my old ag teacher at Sky View, Mr. Rhodes. He was really the one who got me involved in the FFA and I really attribute much of my success to him. It was fun to see how excited the freshman aged kids are about new and exciting things such as the FFA. We went to the high school to finish up the day and the kids were a little less enthusiastic about what we had to say. Many of them were already FFA members so they seemed bored with anything we told them. But, we tried to do some fun activities and I think it was an overall success. Since the visit, we've been to a lot of fun activities with the Bear River chapter. Parades, donkey basketball, chapter contests and late nights at Denny's with leg wrestling on the floor to name a few. Go Bears!