"traveled 17 miles"
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They are now starting to enter the Rockies. They have come to the Wind River, and they must have thought that had finally reached Heaven. If you have never been to the Wind River range in the Rocky Mountains, you have missed some beautiful country. It stretches as a range about 100 or miles northwest to southeast through the west central state of Wyoming. They come to a grave marked Matilda Crowly B. who was buried there one year prior ...
7 July 1846. It seems to have affected them all in a somber way. They are very near a site that will become a very humble place in 1856......Martin's Cove and it is where the Mormon emigrants nine years from this time in 1847 will be caught and trapped for the winter in a terrible snowstorm. Dozens will die and will be buried in graves themselves.
I liked George A. Smith's entry for today:
" Wed. 23rd Some cloudy but quite warm [ ] Started at seven a.m. and passed just at our left the head board of a grave marked Matilda Crowly B. July 16th 1830 D July 7th 1846 [ ] In one mile and a half crossed a run five feet wide called Cottonwood Creek [ ] passed just on our right a short low isolated wall of calcareous sandstone [ ] opposite this point the left range is entirely a [blank space] for some distance affording an extended view of the country beyond which appears dry treeless and quite level by its outline against the sky. The bottom is quite level to the base of the right ridge and densely covered with thrifty absinthe. Passed a low range of granite on our right and just beyond it turned to the river again [ ] Noon halt at the issuing of the river between two sloping granite walls fast abrading [ ] grass good [ ] road heavy from sand and gravel although pretty good [ ] distance eight miles and one half [ ] started at about half past one and took a detour to the [text missing] and rose a slight ascent to the upper or second bottom [ ] rolled on over a sandy and gravely road till half past five when we struck the river again and passed on a little further and camped in a circle on the river bank at a quarter to six pm [ ] distance eight and one half miles [ ] grass good [ ] one small Emigration Co camped about half a mile below above us and another about a mile and a half [ ] being the second that left the river Platte before we did [ ] nothing new in the river scenery except that its ranges are more broken [ ] a fine view of the Wind river and a chain of the Rocky mountains from our camp"
