We still had one day before we would take my husband and son to the Salt Lake City airport and my daughter and I would continue on to California. It was raining anyway, so we thought we’d spend the day in Salt Lake City at Temple Square.

It’s a beautiful section of the city with amazing architecture and artwork, and Mormon missionaries at every turn, to help you find what you’re looking for. But the most remarkable part of our visit here, was the genealogy research we did — free of charge and with help from the Mormon nuns — at the Family Search Center.

All four of us found a spot in front of computers in the Family Search Center. The nuns helped us get started and we used all of their software and memberships to sites like ancestry.com. We researched both sides of our family and found ancestors back into Ireland and England, as well as many copies of the census as far back as 1880.

Here are some tips for using the fantastic Family Search resources when you’re visiting Temple Square:

Start at FamilySearch.org to plan your visit and followup before going to Temple Square.

Gather as much family information — maiden and married names, dates and places of birth — as you can prior to your visit, so you can make the most of your research at Temple Square.

Park at the public parking lot on the corner of North Temple and West Temple. It cost about $6 to park all day.

Ask a missionary/volunteer where to start. If you’re a newbie, they’ll probably send you to the Joseph Smith Memorial Building to get more individual guidance from the volunteers. If you’ve done this before, you can probably head right to the Family History Library, where there are several stories of artifacts to discover.

Purchase a copy card and print your discoveries to take home with you.

Continue your research close to home! Family Search centers throughout the globe are set up with free clinics to help you on your journey through genealogy.

Enjoy your adventures in genealogy! Be careful – it’s addicting!

Trip West 2010 Series:
Badlands
1880’s Town -Murdo, SD
Black Hills, South Dakota
Yellowstone National Park
Family Search in Temple Square, Salt Lake City

After the Black Hills, we journeyed toward Yellowstone National Park, as all good “Westward Ho” RV families do. We stayed in the Fishing Bridge campground for two nights and generally spent most of our days driving to all the Yellowstone highlights.

We saw Old Faithful and the geysers, boiling mud pits and Mammoth Hot Springs,

Tower Falls,

and lots of wildlife! Buffalo dotted the landscape like cows, and we also saw elk, mule deer and bear. This buffalo scratched his neck on the entrance to the petrified tree.

Although Yellowstone was supposed to be our key destination, we ran into a few stumbling blocks.

Here are a few tips to help you navigate Yellowstone.

1. If you want to do the Chuckwagon at Roosevelt Lodge, try to visit Yellowstone after mid-June. It started two days after we left.

2. We weren’t able to swim in the boiling river either, because of spring runoff and rains that made the river too high. This might be a better late-summer activity.

3. If you’re driving an RV, don’t expect to do the drive-through loop at the top of Mammoth Hot Springs – you’ll have to park and walk.

4. Fishing Bridge campground, in the “RV’s with generators” section, at least, did not allow campfires and you couldn’t leave the grill out any longer than it took to cool (bears). The RV’s were parked very close together as well, so it really didn’t feel like camping at all. Check into the amenities at all the Yellowstone campgrounds before you make a reservation.

Trip West 2010 Series:
Badlands
1880’s Town -Murdo, SD
Black Hills, South Dakota
Yellowstone National Park

For the next few days, we spent time in the Black Hills of South Dakota. I wasn’t expecting there to be so much to do in the Black Hills – it’s pretty commercial now, with lots of ways to spend money, besides Mount Rushmore and Crazy Horse. It was a fun few days, though.

My son is a rockhound, and we knew we’d want to visit a gold mine while we were in the area, so we took the 1880’s train roundtrip from Hill City to Keystone. The train was expensive – about $75 for the four of us – but it was an interesting route and it saved us from having to drive our motorhome up and down the mountain again.

The Big Thunder Gold Mine in Keystone offered an interesting tour, with a fun gold panning demonstration and activity afterward. We spent quite a while at their gold panning troughs along the river, before taking a walking tour of Keystone.

Probably our favorite stop in the Black Hills, though, was Custer State Park, which has a large herd of buffalo, antelope, prairie dogs and donkeys.

The rangers don’t allow feeding of any wildlife, but do allow you to feed the donkeys, since they are non-native descendants of the first settler’s donkeys. They were eager eaters of our apples

We also went “real life” panning for gold in one of the Custer State Park streams. Didn’t find any, though.

Trip West 2010 Series:
Badlands
1880’s Town -Murdo, SD
Black Hills, South Dakota

Our family embarked on a trip West last summer in a 24-foot motorhome. In all, we covered 7,000 miles in 22 days and over the next several weeks, I’ll share our adventure with you!

Our first stop was the original 1880’s town in Murdo – on I-90 right in the middle of South Dakota. Created from moving more than 30 authentic buildings to this Interstate stop, the 1880’s Town gives an excellent glimpse into the lives of a typical settler on the frontier.

In addition to the buildings, there’s also a museum with artifacts from famous Western movies, like Dances with Wolves.

My kids’ favorite part, though, was the opportunity to dress up in period garb. At just $5 per person, there wasn’t any question we’d be renting the costumes. We did, however, have to deal with the fact that for the remainder of the trip, my son pointed an imaginary pistol at someone every time we took his photograph.

Entry fees: adults-$10, teens-$7, children-$5. Coupons here.

Trip West 2010 Series:
Badlands
1880’s Town -Murdo, SD

This month’s Positively Speaking column focuses on positive family communication, and tips for how to make it happen during summer vacation. I’ll write about our family adventure out West in the coming weeks, but today I’ll just share a couple of Badlands photos. To read my tips for positive family communication on your travels, please visit 5 Minutes for Mom.

Would you like Pass the Torch updates? Just sign up for them via email or feed. I will never spam you or give out your address.

You can also follow me on Twitter.

Trip West 2010 Series:
Badlands
1880’s Town -Murdo, SD