Big Day - Day 73

You know what a Big Day means??? Big Post.

Biggest yet in fact. Tomorrow could be a slow day, so you may want to save some for then. Let me break this down for you:

• Section 1 is the "Richest Hole in the World" Bingham Copper Mine.
• Section 2 is about my scenic drive to Bear Lake.
• Section 3 is about my boring drive through Wyoming and a stop at the Fossil Butte National Monument.
• Section 4 is about my dinner at a little family restaurant in Green River, WY.
• Section 5 is about the brief morning research I did on the Murphy genealogy at the Family Tree Center in Salt Lake

The biggest complaint that I hear from the few people who read it is that "I write too much, and after a while, they just scan the rest. So for this big post, I decided to lay it out in sections, so you can skip to the ones that interest you...You're welcome!

Section 1: The "Richest Hole in the World"

After Section 5 and the genealogy, I skedaddled south west to the Bingham Canyon Mine, dubbed the "Richest Hole in the World". It is a huge copper mine that pretty much took a mountain, lopped it off and then dug so much that it produced a reverse image as a whole in the ground. It's no grand canyon, but it is amazing in its enormity. This feeling is increased as you stroll around the visitor center and scan some of the displays.

As a pure tourist destination, there were plenty of people around to talk up and help with pictures, for which the return the favor. Mostly Ute families out for a day trip to show the kids. This is the first place I really ran into road-tripping families now that school is out, and it was good to have a new breed of trippers out there to interact with. With this limited sample, I put them above the AARP crowd, but below the bikers. Bikers have better stories to tell, and retirees just want to talk about themselves (and their aches).

Section 2: My scenic drive to Bear Lake.

After the big hole, I took a scenic drive north of Ogden, UT to Bear Lake. This was a great drive. The terrain was ever changing as it wound through Logan Trail. There were many imposing high grounds and river views. Like all great scenic drives, it also had many "Oh my!" panoramas.

A 7 mile side trek to little Tony Grove Lake was well worth it for the Lake climax, as well as the steep dangerous grades of the winding route en-route. I would have liked to have been in the passenger seat for this drive to be able to look all around at the changing scenery.

Bear Lake itself had a peaceful blue green island feel to it. Aloha.

Section 3: My boring drive through Wyoming and a stop at the Fossil Butte National Monument.

After Bear Lake, I crossed into Wyoming for the first time. The aggressive hilly structures of UT gave way to rolling lush deer migration routes. Nice, but a bit boring. I stopped at the Fossil Butte National Monument, took their little drive, but the fossil stuff, while nice, wasn't interesting to me...just information I don't have room for. I then continued through the similar rest to my arrival here at Green River. A paragraph not worth writing.

But along the way, I got to thinking about the many different landscapes I had visited in the busy last few days. Here's what I have determined about if a war broke out between Utah and either Nevada or Wyoming. From my day meeting people in Salt Lake city and the surrounding areas, I was leaning toward them being pansy's ripe for a whipping from either side. The people are so damn nice it is a bit painful, even for a born-again happy chatter like myself. The raucous, gambling Nevadans could trounce these Mormons. And the gun toting, wild west Wyomingites would blast them away in battles at high noon. But I then considered the geographic factors, and I now give the Ute's a bit of optimism in a war like this.

On the west they are defended by the Great Salt Lake. By the time the drunk Nevadans got to Salt Lake City, they would have long finished all their liquor and be sober and have no option but to turn back for more. As for the east, it is bordered by some rugged terrain with much preoccupied high ground. The Big Love crowd could simply start throwing bibles down a thousand feet and pick the Wyomingites off one by one as they entered the pass, and perhaps even convert a few with the whole polygamy thing.

Not that the Utes would ever be able to set out and sack either of the other states. So with their strong defensive position, the Utes are safe, and the three states are at a stalemate.

Just some thoughts that help me pass the miles.

I also thought about the subtitle for this photo. If you have any better suggestions than what I put in the web album, please let me know.



Section 4: My dinner at a little family restaurant in Green River, WY.

I went to a little local place here in Green River, WY that I found on the web as the most recommended dining in the city. Of the 3 listed, this one got 3 stars. The other had only one. The reviewer comment said "most food in the area sucks, and at least this place wasn't bad and the really big chicken fried steak was pretty good." I may not have had many chicken fried steaks, but this one was great, if not the best. Half of the white country sauce on top got slurped up on the fantastic beer battered onion rings, and the other was sopped up with the steak itself. I'd guess 1000 calories in the sauce alone. I skipped the greens after one taste as they were boiled to death. A great meal for $10 plus a 30% tip...hey, I'm a big tipper.


Section 5: Research I did on the Murphy genealogy at the Family Tree Center in Salt Lake.

I left this section for last because I figured it would be the most skipped. It has no pictures and is really, really long. - For those Murphy's who might care about this stuff, I submit the following interesting, unsubstantiated tale and factoidcs about our heritage.

Since there had already been some research done on my mother I decided to see if I could get anything worth writing in this blog. I preordained that I would spend just 2 hours seeking information. If I got nothing by then, I would quit. I did quit after two hours. Yet, I did get some interesting stuff in that short span.

I went in the doors with exactly the following information:

• Grandfather: James Daniel Murphy (JDM), b. 5/27/1904, Highpoint, IL. Father - Robert Bibb Murphy; Mother - Willie? Clodfelter. Married Margot Clark Gentry 8/16/1935. d. 3/24/1985.
  
• Grandmother: Margot Clark Gentry (MCG), b. 10/17/1911, Logan, WV. Father - John Kenna Gentry; Mother - Agnes Steele. Married James Daniel Murphy 8/16/1935. d. 1/15/1992.

I watched the short video about how to do it, and was then ushered to a computer terminal on the first floor for beginners. I never left the terminal. After futzing around from site to site for the first hour or so, I finally went to a web page (http://ancestry.com/) that I could have gotten to from home. You too could do this from home, but here it was free. I think it would be worth it if someone paid to get all the inside info this site has to provide. If this topic is anyone's thing, perhaps start here, and in an hour you can possibly derive all the information that I did.

And I got some good info. Here's some info about the Murphy's. Of my four great-grandparents on my father's side, little information could be obtained about 3 of them. Only JDM's father, Robert Bibb Murphy, had easily accessible ancestry. Perhaps someone had already been linked to him and had submitted it, because when I added him, links popped up all over that added the first 5 generations of his ancestry automatically.

After linking him and his 5 generations of details through to me, I had the most basic of information (name, b., d., and perhaps a city), with about 14 (of 16) of JDM's great great great (GG3) grandparents.

The Murphy name dates back to my GG5, Daniel Murphy, b. 1770, NC, d. 1813, NC. The name passed down from there to: Joseph R. 1794-1862, NC; Robert 1821-1910; Joseph Melvin 1848-1908; Robert Bibb 1873 - ?, JDM, Buz then Bro and Me. As of now, this chain of the Murphy name is at an end. I still got a shot, but I think Bro is done. [For buz only: do the math between the age of the namesake at the time of passing the Surname down.]

The Murphy myth that the name was originally spelled different (Murfee?) goes on; as far back as 5 generations, Murphy was the name. Further investigation past 5 generations is needed for proof of the myth.

After all that information was sucked in, I was able to scan some hand written documents scanned into the database such as military records and censuses. Real easy to do as part of the website and could provide further information as to how to expand the tree.

One other neat trick the site could do was find famous people related to us. I am related to the following people () - in the following way:

• William Wordsworth (poet) - 6th cousin, 7 times removed
• Helen Keller (deaf, dumb and blind kid) - 9th cousin, 1 times removed
• J. P. Morgan (where's my inheritance!)- 7th cousin, 5 times removed
• Geoffry Chaucer distant (20) Great Grandfather - I assume that means we are all descendants of Chaucer?? - GG20 in my terminology
• Mark Twain (if only I had his wit!) - 5th cousin, 5 times removed
• James Garfield (bad dead president) - 5th cousin, 5 times removed
• William Brewster (Mayflower Passenger) - 1st cousin, 13 times removed (I guess this was close to one vein of the Murphy sperm's voyage to America)
• Orville Wright (a better way to travel than the Mayflower, though not as adventurous) - 7th cousin, 3 times removed
• Lucille Ball (our humor) - 9th cousin, 1 times removed
• Desi Arnaz (??? huh?) - 10th cousin, 1 times removed
• Ronald Reagan (not as bad a Garfield) - 9th cousin, 3 times removed
• Linus Pauling (the vitamin c that buz came from) - 6th cousin, 3 times removed
• Katherine Hepburn (reminds me of Grandma Murphy) - 9th cousin, 1 times removed

I plucked the ones I liked from a much bigger list. Not a bad list, though I am sure everyone has a similar type of 6 degrees of separation.

Big math: I noted earlier that this was all based on JDM's father Robert Bibb's lineage, and only 5 generations back. What RBM had were 16 GG2's. And like RBM, I had 3 other GG2's my self. Each of them would have 16 GG2's themselves. In other words, just on my father's father's father's side, I have a compete bracket with the same shape as the NCAA 64 team draft pool. And I was able to fill out the NorthEast bracket of that pool. There are 3 more brackets to fill out, just to cover my father's father's father. Not to mention my father's father's mother or father's, mother's father with a simialr set of brackets each. etc., etc.,. It gets real big, real fast.

More Info: Of the 14 (of 16) names of GG5's that I had uncovered, the following were their SurNames: Murphy, Woodward, Green, Hunt, Stone, Leonard, Long, Hege, Grimes, Frank, Sink, Sprecker, Motsinger and Winkler. All listed were born between 1752 and 1770 and lived somewhere in the US, though 3 of them it did specify as North Carolina residents. NC is a theme throughout all of RBM's lineage...fortunately, I don't have to say I am originally from WV.

Unfortunately, to determine the exact details of all of the lineage from foreign lands a great deal more research would be needed. But just from this weensy sampling, I feel it would be hard, difficult, time consuming, and if none of these, impossible to be able to get to an exact chemical breakdown of my genetics.

Previously, I had said that I was mostly German, a good bit Austrian, and the rest mutt. But now I think the best answer is just to say I am a mutt. I am the melted pot. American, Americana. And nothing else.