SW US Trip with Marion C. and Sue Hope

Prolog, Or Why We Did It

Some time ago when one of my Hope cousins, Marion Cone Hope, was contemplating retirement, we planned a "pilgrimage" to the South West as soon as he bit the bullet and actually quit working. This was a family research trip of sorts because we have family "connections" in Arizona and Utah. Our great aunt, Edna Earle Hope, married Herbert E. Gregory, a geologist on the faculty at Yale, in 1908. He apparently worked for the US Geological Survey in the South West during summer vacations. Aunt Edna frequently accompanied him on these trips and kept diaries, some of which were reputed to be in the archives at the Museum of Northern Arizona. Uncle Herbert named an arch, The Hope Arch, and a spire, Edna's Needle, in her honor. We wanted to find and photograph these two geological features believed to be near Chinle Arizona. Additionally, Uncle Herbert had a Mesa and a Natural Bridge named in his honor but the natural bridge has been inundated by, and the Mesa is now an Island in, Lake Powell. We originally hoped to find these two features also but discovered that there is no way to approach them except via boat. The natural bridge is some 60 miles by water from the nearest lake access point so we gave up on this concept. However, we also wanted to see if we could locate the originals of Aunt Edna's diaries. We had obtained copies of two of these from another source earlier and found them fascinating. The source indicated that the copies he had had come from the Museum of Northern Arizona. We hoped we would be able to see the originals of these two and, maybe, find more. Since Marion Cone and Sue had never been to the SW US, we planned to take the better part of a month and see some of the interesting places along the way as well as the national parks and beautiful scenery in the red rock region of New Mexico, Arizona and Utah. Soooooo . . . the trip begins.


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