Snow Goose Festival

We had a day off for President's Day and everyone agreed that we should spend it at the Snow Goose Festival in Delta. Unfortunately, the actual festival wasn't until the following weekend, but the geese don't go by the calendar. We left early, and even though there was a skiff of snow during the night, the roads were clear. It's almost two hours to Delta so we arrived around 10:30, which was just about the right time for the kids to start asking about lunch. We drove directly out to the reservoir, but there were only half a dozen snow geese sitting way out on the ice. It was pretty underwhelming.

Luckily, we also wanted to see the new Topaz Museum that opened a few years ago. We went back into town and found it on Main Street. It was really cool to visit, especially since Mark and Dax have been learning about the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II for Knowledge Bowl. We were surprised at how emotional the museum was, telling stories of Americans who were imprisoned for the crime of being an ethnic minority. The boys really seemed to understand the unfairness of that portion of American History.

We were amazed at how large Topaz Camp was.

This museum was a great stop.

We asked the lady running the museum if she knew where we could find the snow geese, and since it's Delta, she called her son, DeLoy, who drives the UPS truck. He'd just passed over 3,000 birds at cousin Delvin's farm, so she drew us a map and sent us on our way. We found the snow geese and took some great pictures there at Delvin's. Then we settled in and Mom made sandwiches. As we munched on carrots and peanut butter and jelly, the geese decided to take off. It is an amazing site seeing thousands of snow-white, screeching waterfowl escaping into the clouds. We barely got the sandwiches down and the cameras up before they wheeled around and came back to land on the next farm over.

This is our friend, Farty, the snow goose.
We named him Farty because the others made him sit by himself.

Mom was excited to be so close to the geese.

There are so many of them!! 

It is really amazing when they fly. 

They swoop up like a huge cloud.

Then they fly overhead for a minute. 

And finally settle back down.

After enjoying the geese, we drove out to the actual site of the Topaz Internment Camp. We stopped at a small memorial and then drove through the camp. There isn't much to see but wide open desert, a few lone bricks, and some crumbling foundations. Still, Mark declared it the best part of the day, and that's saying something when birds are involved! On the drive home we spotted three bald eagles on the west side of Utah Lake, and we still made it home by 4 o'clock.

One of the bald eagles we spotted.

The barbed wire Topaz sign is cool.

We loved driving through and talking about this part of history.

We also spotted this herd of Pronghorn along the way home.