Yesterday, while fitting Oscar and Daryl for their tuxedos, we realized we've been spending so much time getting ourselves ready for the wedding, we have mostly ignored our guests' needs.  Surely you all need to begin preparing as well.  So, from this day forward, we will be much more consistent in adding to the site all the info you need (and much that you do not) to get the most out of your time in the County.

We have been inundated by you with questions in the last few weeks about virtually everything wedding and County-related.  So we thought we'd begin by answering some of them here.  Some are good questions, some are not, and some we made up, but they will all be anonymous, so please keep them coming.

Is it true that Torrey is a three hour drive from an airport?
No!  There's an airport in Bicknell, which is only about ten minutes away.  Unfortunately, there are no commercial flights in or out, and really it's just a long strip of cement in a sage field.  For those of you without access to a private plane, you'll have to fly in to Salt Lake which is about a three hour drive.  Luckily the drive is easy, beautiful and essentially traffic-less (once you leave the city behind).

Though most of you probably could get directions from your phone, we will also provide old-fashioned directions, because your phone will work less and less the further you go away from Salt Lake and also we (Ian) don't trust computery things in general.

Before I go someplace new, I like to read as much about that place as I can.  Can you recommend some books about the area?
Alright! Hooray for books!  Besides being a good way to get yourself ready to be here, Torrey is a great place to sit in the shade for hours or days or years and be quiet with a book.  Or just be quiet with the world.  There aren't too many books about Torrey in particular, but there are many great ones about the Colorado Plateau and the Utah desert.  Anyway, here are a few of our favorites:

Desert Solitaire and The Monkey Wrench Gang, both by Edward Abbey.  Ed Abbey is probably the best known writer who deals with this area.  He wrote many wonderful things before he died, but these are his two most famous.  Desert Solitaire is a non-fiction account of Abbey's time working as a ranger at what was then Arches National Monument outside of Moab.  Though it takes place about fifty years ago, it remains extremely relevant.  It is part reflection on the natural world and part rant against the excesses of various pieces of American culture and humanity in general.  It is beautiful, hilarious, and infuriating.  The Monkey Wrench Gang is a fictional (though probably not entirely so) account of a group of "eco-saboteurs" trying to stop the spread of "development" across the Colorado Plataeu.  They attempt to accomplish this mostly through small-scale vandalism of the kind that seems almost quaint today.  This book was a huge influence on groups that would form later like Earth First!.  It is an action-packed and fun read, that is sure to inspire some of you.

Basin & Range, by John McPhee.  This book is about geology.  For those of you who have ever read anything by John McPhee, you know that it is bound to be far more interesting than you would expect.  This book is fascinating and logic-defyingly enjoyable to read.  Technically it has little or nothing to do with the geology of the Torrey area specifically, but rather with everything west of here all the way to the Sierras in California.  But the book is so good you should read it anyway and then pay close attention to the landscape when you're driving down I-15.

House of Rain, by Craig Childs.  Childs has written many books about the Colorado Plateau/Four Corners region, and all are worth reading.  This book is an amazing look into the world of the Anasazi, the native people who were the primary inhabitants of the area until around 1200 a.d. when their civilization went through a series of overlapping and mysterious catastrophes, that caused them to abandon settlements and leave behind a great many ruins, vast panels of petroglyphs, and countless artifacts.  Childs questions many of the traditional beliefs about who these people were, what happened to them and where they ended up.  He is a very talented writer and you don't need to know anything about archaeology to enjoy this book.

Canaries on the Rim, by Chip Ward.  This is a look into the strange and disturbing legacy of the US government's use of the vast spaces of Utah, Nevada and Arizona as a dumping and testing ground for nuclear and chemical weapons and waste.  This is not a fun book.  The effects on the people of these areas has been and continues to be devastating.  Downwinders--folks who have the unfortunate luck of living downwind of nuclear fallout--have struggled for decades with bizarre cancers and medical problems.  Utah and Nevada are still a dumping ground for strange wastes--nuclear, chemical, biological--and people's health is still being compromised (don't worry, you'll all be fine).  Also, Chip Ward lives in Torrey!

Under the Banner of Heaven, by Jon Krakauer.  We were hesitant to recommend this book, lest you all get the wrong idea about our Mormon neighbors.  In the end, it was just too interesting to leave off the list.  Krakauer explores the darkest and strangest sides of LDS church history and present, and this book is frightening but also somewhat misleading.  The people he focuses on are a tiny fraction of the Mormon world as a whole.  Most of them are not lunatics!  But the folks in this book certainly are and it is fascinating and enlightening to hear about them.

OK.  That should keep folks busy for a while.  More to come later, but the sun is coming out and Oscar and Daryl need to get some mud on their tuxes.