Made it Home

Riverton, Utah High 52 Low 28

When we left Hurricane this morning it was 54 degrees. We were a little concerned because the wind was blowing very hard, but when the sun got up a little, the wind quit. We had a pretty uneventful drive, with the exception of a little rain by Cedar City.

We have more cactus blossom pictures  to post that I wasn't able to last night. Also we got some photos through the Virgin River Gorge, and the Utah sign at the border

This was in Nevada almost to Las Vegas.

As we got higher in elevation, the thermometer kept dropping. As we got near to Utah County, it was time for lunch, and we decided to stop at one of our favorite restaurants, The Family Tree in Santiquin, Utah. It is located at 77 West Main off I 15 exit 244. It is a home style restaurant, and most meals are served with fresh scones. One of them today was 24 inches long. One of them is a meal by itself.

The Restaurant was once on an episode of Ghost searches on the Travel Channel. It is supposed to be one of the most haunted places in Utah. The following is from the Travel Channel's website.

 

History

Leslie’s Family Tree consists of two buildings that sit side by side. The building to the east which houses the restaurant is the younger of the two buildings. It was constructed by Wayne and Nan Smith in 1974. It acted as a sporting goods store and as the town's post office. In 1985 Wayne passed away leaving Nan to run the business solely. Nans dream was to have a restaurant that served home cooked style foods. In 1986 that dream took flight when she opened the Family Tree Restaurant. Today, that restaurant still stands under the name Leslies Family Tree ran by Nan’s daughter Leslie and her daughter Bobbie. It continues to serve homestyle foods and famous freshly made hot scones to the people of Santaquin.
The building to the west is a lot older. Although we could find little of its history we do know that it has been around for more than a hundred years. It has acted as a bomb shelter, an illegal gambling venue and a local bar. The building today acts as the restaurant's kitchen and storage facility.

Investigation

The team was excited about this location. It seemed Leslie’s Family Tree had fallen under our radar. Voted in the top ten haunted places in Utah. The restaurant had slipped past our gaze until the airing of Travel Channels The Dead files which featured the restaurant. The location seemed packed with entities and from Stevens accounts the food wasn’t bad either.
The food was indeed good and with full stomachs we began setup. The group was large so we split of into three teams. Wendy would get her first shot at leading a team. Jared would lead team B and Brad team C. Each team took turns investigating each building and outside. Brads team headed outside while Jared’s team took the diner and Wendys the old bar. After 40 mins each team would rotate.

Results

The night had its ups and downs. Each group had some sort of experience though nothing too out of the ordinary. With all the rumours and stories its a location that surprisingly had very little happen. It is a venue that we are eager to visit again stay tuned for our next visit. As for now the verdict remains undecided on its claims to be haunted.

As we got closer to Salt Lake, the traffic got worse and worse. Mable, my GPS, kept saying traffic ahead, but we were moving along pretty well until I couldn't get off the freeway and the freeway came to a standstill. There was an accident and we were going about 3 miles per hour, and it took us more than 30 minutes to go five miles. I was going to get off at the next exit, but traffic finally started moving and we were able to get to our exit. If you look over the cars on I 15 parking lot, you can see one one the snow covered mountains.


There is fresh snow on most of the mountains and it is a lot cooler here than we are use to. We are wondering why we are home. (Oh yes, to get our taxes done.)

Thanks for visiting.