Our Roadtrip to Pinetop, Snowflake & Payson

Javier had to work March 5th & 6th in Snowflake, so all 5 of us went up to stay in Pinetop (it's only 40 minutes away) for 3 nights. We also stayed in Payson on the 4th night to make the drive home on Sunday less straining on everyone, but this post is not about Payson...it's about Snowflake!

We had a fabulous time in all 3 cities, Pinetop and Snowflake were absolutely freezing with temps in the 40's and icey wind gusts making it feel at least 10 degrees colder. It rained early Friday morning in Pinetop and Sunrise Ski resort reported 1 foot of snow from that little storm! Even though these temps are pretty cold, we really welcomed them since temps in Phoenix had reached record highs (90 degrees in March is too much!).

Here's a hint about what we saw in Snowflake:

and...

That's right, it's the Snowflake Temple. Friday morning I dropped off and picked up Javier from his meeting in Snowflake. While we were there, we drove to the Snowflake Temple and the local Stake building. The Snowflake temple is gorgeous, it sits upon the tallest hill in the city and you can see it from anywhere in Snowflake. We couldn't go inside-even the visitors center was closed. I'm not really sure why it was closed on Friday, but if I had to guess I would say it was due to the temperature and the wind blowing so incredibly hard that the wrought iron gate surrounding the temple was shaking vigorously and you could hear the loud clanking from inside our van.

Anyway, I took a few pictures of this awesome building...Front View of the Temple

This is etched above the enterence.

Side view

Gorgeous Golden Statue

They have a new community of houses surrounding the Temple and some of those houses are gigantic and right next to the Temple, like this house down the hill. What you see to the left of the temple is all 1 house! What a great neighborhood!

Then we drove to the biggest Ward/Stake building we have ever seen! This building sits right on the main highway which runs through the city...check out it's hugeness:

Sorry about the glare, but isn't this building huge?! It appears to be 2 stories!

I love the country feeling it sends out!

These amazing statues are situated on the front-right side of the Stake building and they represent the LDS settlers who first arrived in Snowflake (and surrounding areas)...Brother Flake and Elder Snow.

I snapped a photo of the plaque in front of these statues that explains the history of how Snowflake was founded and by whom. Perhaps you can zoom in to read it, I found it pretty interesting...

We had a grand time on our trip and we feel so happy that we could experience our first viewing of the Snowflake Temple together as a family. Our kids thought the buildings and hills were awesome, but it will take a little more time for them to fully understand how magnificent the Temples really are. We feel so blessed that they will have these memories to tap into when they do come to realize what it all means.

What a Happy Weekend!

What did you do?