Pine Valley Mountain

The Infamous Tree! It's kind of hard to read, but this says S.F and then Stanley Fuller and 1922. This tree is the whole reason for the Pine Valley trip. So my family (all extended Fullers) are obcessed with my grandparents, and with good reason. They were perfect. My grandpa Fuller (who was born in 1901.) had a ranch up on top of Pine Valley Mountain that he took his cattle up too. He carved his name in this tree obviously, but because this spot was such a special place for him (He loved it up there!) well, it's a special spot for us too. Three years ago, a bunch of cousins and a couple of Uncles rode up to the top of Pine ValleyMountain to find this tree. This is not a easy thing to do, or to find. The hike itself is 7 miles each way, and you go up to 10,000 feet. I myself made it the first 4 miles and then crapped out and rode a horse the rest of the way. That in itself was a special treat. So Braden gets me on the horse, and then just says, she's rope trained, I'll just walk in front of you, and Mac will follow behind. So we go another mile or so and we get to this embankment of snow, it's about 7 feet across and covers the entire trail and it's about 2 feet deep. Well, I just let my horse eat snow, and Braden is standing to the side, and Mac is behind me, and we are trying to decide if we should try to walk way below the deep snow, or if we should go above it, when my sweet horse all the sudden does this GIGANTIC lunge, and knocks Braden down in the snow, and just takes off. It jumped the snow. It was not cool. My sweet horse named Brandy, basically ran down the rest of the entire mountain while I white -knuckled it. I was talking to Heebs today, and he was saying he turned to Carissa and said, oh here come all the horses, but no, it was just my sweet one, RUNNING on pure rock downhill. Heebs was like Erin, where is everyone, and where are you going? I was like, I lost them a long time ago, and I'm going where ever this horse wants to!! Then I just ran past them. There was a lot of stuff I liked about this trip. The main being the family connection. There were a lot of peeps there that I didn't know very well, that I got to know a lot better, like Dean & Patty, who were amazing!! I got to know Becky a lot better and came away thinking she was totally cool. Uncle Mac and I were alone together for like an hour and just got to talk. That was pretty sweet.I loved being there by the tree. John made a comment to some of us, and said, where is the spirit world? We were like...Um, here on earth? He was like, right, so don't you think that it would stand to reason that if this is the spirit world, then spirits are around us, and don't you think that Grandma and Grandpa would be here since we are honoring them? Everyone wrote in the notebook, their thoughts and feelings about how we felt while we were there, and Carissa just sat down and wrote the most amazing poem. She's got talent. On Friday night when we had the "meetin" we first got down to business about the packing and stuff in the morning, but then it turned spiritual, and John talked to us about familes, and about Elijah, and then Elisha and how in our family we are all welded links, and do any of us want to become the link that becomes undone, after we've had so much done already for us? Then then Uncles talked and told stories and a little bit about Grandpa and how grateful they were for him, and how they were raised.I have to tell this, but I almost don't want to. While we were saying a closing prayer, the thought popped into my head that we should sing Families can be together forever. I immediately dismissed it, because we were done with the meeting and it was during the middle of the prayer. The thought came back again, but stronger that as a family we should sing familes can be together forever. I kept trying to dismiss it, but it just kept getting stronger and stronger. The spirit was so strong, that by the time the prayer ended I was bawling my head off, and I could barely talk. I stood up, and asked everyone if we could please sing that song, because someone else wanted us to sing it. I couldn't stop crying enough to even sing. Afterwards it was awesome because a couple of people came up to me and they were crying and they gave me a hug and said they felt it too. Heebs asked me to tell some people about it today (Sun) and I started crying again because I'm a big baby, and even as I write this, it's made me cry again. sweet.

One funny thing was that we passed Dean (Cousin) coming down with two horses and a donkey to get more of the packing, and his mule was tied up in his lead rope, and kind of hopping on 3 legs, and we were like Dean, hey your donkey is tangled up, so Dean gets off his horse and is on the ground bending over it, and when I, the ever smart-mouth say to Dean, Hey Dean, I like your @SS. He starts laughing his head off, and then says, the best part is his name is Weiner. Man, you should of heard the jokes that flew then, Me, Ang, and Jean were making Weiner jokes (We're gonna tell everyone that we passed Dean but his Weiner was tangled etc etc. Dean saying look how good he was with his weiner) The weiner jokes flew on both sides until we couldn't hear Dean anymore.