For your enjoyment.....

Since the one I participated in about 20 years ago, they have added a "Sweetwater River Crossing" simulation to the fun.

Also look for the Stake Presidency's "Kickoff Video". Its a classic.

https://www.facebook.com/walkbesideme2016/

Why don't the reenactors actually wear authentic clothing? I'm no expert, but if I had arrived poor from Europe I'd be wearing what I brought, not some summer weight cowboy duds.

Yeah, I'm looking for *anything* to denigrate trek.

And they should have green wood carts that break down.

Do they plan to add starvation and cannibalism simulations?

My great-great grandfather started to "Zion" with his mom, dad, and 2 siblings in 1848 when the family joined the church in England. Waiting for the ship for the states in Liverpool, his father died. They went to the US without him. Shortly after arriving, his sister died of cholera in St. Louis. Then his younger brother.
Only he and his mom left. They hit the mormon trail from there. Both made it to Utah alive, but his mom didn't fare well, and died in Parowan 3 years later after being ill nearly the entire time they were in Utah.

This "call to gather in Zion" cost the lives of so many people. For a made-up, bullshit religion. The number of lives on the heads of Smith and Young are almost too many to count.

If these people want to really experience what the "pioneers" did, they should do it in period clothes, with period hardware, and without doctors or medicine. Of course, they won't...and even though they don't they STILL have people die on the treks, adding to the body count of Smith & Young & Company.

Sigh.

Here's g-g-grandpa's story (although a sanitized mormon version of it):

http://www.ldsinfobase.net/rh/history/histories/william_lefevre.html

Dang. I never got to do trek. We only did things like stake/regional beach parties, day on Catalina Island, Youth Conference on the Queen Mary, Mormon Night at Disneyland, Dance festival in the Rose Bowl and boring stuff like that.

NormRae, you sound like the mormon friends of mine in So0Cal during the '70's, when being LDS sounded kinda fun!

Yep. Early 70s. We did have some fun times. Do I wish I hadn't been raised mormon? Absolutely, I'd rather not have had my head totally fucked up with their misogyny and steady diet of guilt and fear. But it could have been much much worse. I could have had all that and had to have been raised as today's LDS youth are--ALL guilt and fear and NO fun.

NormaRae, I did the dance festival at the Rose Bowl in 1976. Too late for you? Or did we perhaps accidentally bump into each other oh so long ago? ;0

I was at the Rose Bowl too.

I did the first one they did there in 73. Was getting married in summer of 76.

If they want to be authentic, they should recreated the Mountain Meadows Massacre.

Also, the part where Brigham Young exterminated tens of thousands of local Native Americans during his reign. They shouldn't leave out the part where he gave Native women and children flour laced with glass.

Wouldn't it be awesome if what's left of the local tribe showed up at the end of the trek and handed guns to the pilgrims, then said, "This is the part where you kill us and take our land!"

What if you show up in a blue shirt, black pants, and Spock ears?

...for ye shall surely die:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5sQ4cylk-mE

Why don't the damn Mormons just get real--and human--and do something worthwhile??

Call me a Hedonist or an Epicurean, but I do not believe that suffering is worthwhile or noble. "God" does not reward those who suffer.

If the Mormons joined with Habitat for Humanity and spent the time building a house, now that would be hard labor in the heat with something to show for it.

Instead of re-enacting death and pain, they could re-inact the actual "building" of Zion.

Such a worthless cult.

They should re-inact the Rocky mountain fever part (give everyone mosquito malaria) and see how fun it is to poo in a hole.

They could re-inact the first Weber Canyon expedition of 1846 and send all their animals rolling down the rapids to Ogden, yikes!

Maybe the Donner Reed reenactment would be enlightening for California saints? (Actually heard a group of no-mos doing this one a year or so ago)

Or in Cache Valley when they ran out of food in January and sent one man packing up and over the Sardine in 8 foot drifts of snow on foot carrying a 50 lbs sack of flour that was suppose to last till spring, somehow?

Or Tooele when all the wheat seeds gotten eaten by grasshoppers and they nearly starved, and some ran out of clothes and were running around naked.

These some of the unpublished stories running around that LDS inc. doesn't like to talk about.