After independence broken down into devils gate and it is just huge morbidly and in 20,000 people camped out there and all of those. I thought we needed to be prepared for this. As we question their bridge i wiggled on the wagon seat and it seat and adjusted my cowboy hat. It was time to go mormon. Okay now i said youve got to push her more men on here. You understand . I can do more men, no problem. I can do more. Dont forget please send thank you and yes maam, no, sir. And nick, for the rest of the morning i have brought their repair and your brother nicholas. Older men are usually called elder. It is great. You dont even have to remember the guys name. Just call him elder. What about the women make asked . Sister i said. Net. You just watch. Im going to be the last mormon you ever saw. [laughter] so i went into the sun ranch. Mix out with the meals initiates talking to a mormon alter greater and i went through the museum there and its really amazing. They are like this museum coming out of the ceiling and everything is perfectly arranged and soothing tones. It really makes mormonism attract kids. The thing is pretty brilliant is that crack is posthumous that is in so you die and then you get that and it doesnt matter who you were. Its become controversial when they try to baptize members of other faiths who have a nasty become dead so they can be baptized into the mormons. My theory because there museums are so good image spaces by yuri is walt disney died so mormons posthumously adopted him and that pays 10 mma brought him back. Hes the guy that did all the museums for them because its absolutely perfect. So i went through there and it was good in everything and as i walked up towards the back in thinking about mormonisms brilliant infusion with this dsm, my ears could not believe the words they were hearing. At the wagon, nick was engaged in deep contemplative conversation with a mormon alter greater. Nick was sitting on the wagon seat holding the seat holding alliance with olive oil in his lap and mishap pushed back at a joint angle. I had never seen it quite this earnest and the mormon greeter was obviously impressed. He stood with his foot resting on the wheel hub and propping his chin up with the sand. Well you know, altair, nick said. My brother was able to come along because he had fallen off of a roof and it took him a while to recover so he was available. He wasnt working. You know, i actually believed jesus had me fall off the roof for a reason. I needed to spend eight months on the couch thinking about my life, taking stock of my failures. Then brother rinker came along with this mission across the west. It is a calling and i have to respect that. Have you figured everything out now the elder asked. Older, that is gods work, nick said. Let him figure it out. We are just here on planet earth to do the best we can. Very well said. It is important to be humble. And the least humble person ive ever met in my entire life said pombo, put alter how they worked and been humble for the last year. I was afraid i was losing neck. I had. I had to get us out of there. [laughter] brother nicholas, that is the end of the trail wont wait forever. We best be getting on. God willing. The mormon elders stepped away from the wagon wheel and reached his hand out to shake my peer be careful out there on the trail, son, he said. I will, elder. Thank you and god bless. I took the lines and ran the meals down past the parking lots in pastures full of handcart. When we are out of mormon earshot, nick spoke a period harebrained, dont you think youre reselling to ship a little heavy back there . What is this god bless you . And neck, jesus kicked you off the roof for a reason . Youre the one who told me to do mormon. Beyond the mormon rv park mormon rv park we turned left tuesday with the Sweetwater River through the sun ranch. Nearby three teenage sisters in honest and long skirts exhausted by a long handcart track were sitting together against the log cabin wall of a porta potty resting. Olive oil ran over and jump into their laps. Behind us low cumulus clouds shaded the peaks with the handcart reenactors pushing up towards martins cove and the gray hues on the misty mountains. The scene reminded me of thomas cole, travelers in the swissair hopes. So i have a couple of their section selected, but i dont want to run over and i know you will have questions in thank you for being so patient. Ive only given you a small taste of the book, but it is always fun to read the sections. So if you have questions, there is a phil donahue somewhere whos Walking Around with a mic. Or you can say or question and i will repeat it. [inaudible] he would like to know in the car fell over how we got it back up. The way they got it back up was the most remote area of nebraska, very, very remote spot. These things just happen to me on the stripes. It is always so strange. Reflect a card at 7 00 in the morning. We managed a password to a couple cowboys to tell the rancher down below we have met the night before had he bring a trailer and would bring it to his place and fix it. But these things happen. 7 00 in the morning waiting for the trailer to come and this young kid who just enlisted in the remains and was out for a child with his girlfriend at 7 00 in the morning. It sounds to me they were returning from a drive. The American Flag was on the ground and that really upset him. Dont you know what to do with the flag . So we emptied everything out and said we will put this back up. So it was my brother, myself and nick was here simply strong and this marine kid. We didnt want to push it back upon the wheels. We wanted to rest on the wheels but that is how we got it back a period how long does the trip take . So, we have seen show, misery, which is one of the big jumping off towns during the 19th century on may 15th and we reached oregon on september 5th team. Iowa said it was going to take about four months because i calculated it pretty carefully. We made 79 camps and we can cut a lot of folk pioneer cabin, parked behind the ninth hole of the oregon trail country club in soda springs, idaho and ghost town and things like that. It was marvelous. Anyone else . [inaudible] did the original mules make it . Yes, theres a nice section where i talk about how fit the meals were when we got there. We gave them all kinds of nutritional supplements. They got a lot of gelatine so their hoods would stay in a day and there is always a long rest. We would go a couple days have 40 or 50mile races to get to water it down as their big problem in the extreme west. We had to get from the Big Sandy River choose to bear and those for 40, 45 miles across deserts. Then we found a pasture, somewhere they could rest. The ranchers to make out to oregon state u. Guys are the biggest liars of all time. These fields did not come all the way across. You switch them off so they couldnt believe that was the original team was left with. They did great. You mentioned mending, nebraska where the Pioneer Villages. Did she go through the Pioneer Village . Ive actually gone through it twice. Its kind of a hodgepodge. As you know its falling apart. And they also have eight original paintings by William Henry jackson was the great watercolor is. My husband grew up in a tiny town named whole scene. There is an oregon trail marker. I would like to know how it felt. You probably typified back to saint joe. Was it anticlimactic to get on an airplane and fly over the same area that you just took a covered wagon through . It actually wasnt. What happened as i knew i was going to have severe wagon withdraw. Living off the covered wagon. Theres a lot of equipment to bring back. Theyve rancher out there fella was significant that, far doubt put them in the nice pasture. Ill be back to visit a couple times. And the wagon i still had out still had out there if used a little bit. I had equipment to bring home and i also knew there was a lot of people we met were very significant but i didnt always have time. Poor access with miles to interview them. So id be picked up, loaded my equipment. And stopped and did interviews along the way. It is relatively good because it decreased me, depressurize me from the trip. Id like to be in a covered wagon again. Its a wonderfully to live. People in town with a covered wagon and an American Flag flying from it. People do anything for you. A nice way to live. All those photos and blue skies and fluffy white clouds. Did you ever run into any serious weather . Indiana pioneer. After three weeks on the trail and a sense you may think your brains in indiana, but if you really want to see a storm, come to the plot. This was something i that wasnt prepared for and i didnt research. What is so that theyre to be like . The platte river valley roughly from north platte down all the way to omaha this legendary for very Severe Weather in the spring. May, early june. We absolutely you were in a covered wagon. You will have every storm that comes through. The storm that level of joplin passed over us for hours before it hit joplin. It was so right on and i explain in the vote its a tough moment in the trip, the meals and slide misunderstood, but not harnessed and tied to a wagon. They panic because theyre afraid they cant get away from the wagon because their natural protection instinct is flied. So its really difficult. Two or three thunderstorms we couldnt avoid them we just had a really hard time. Other than not i cant think of a better place to speak at night. It was just wonderful. Dramatic, wendy, lightning bolt. You wouldnt know this living in the house or even driving by in a car. When a lightning bolt hits the prairie, the ground shakes. But the semicircular design of the road does not allow water to get any purchase on a surface so it all falls off. So you are sitting there, kind of like being in summer camp in the tent. It was just great. But the weather was really brutal. Can you tell us what percentage of the land you went through on the trail was public, private and if you encountered any problems crossing that land in the private land. Western nebraska and wyoming, probably 90 of the trails on public lands. Still more than 70 of wyoming is owned by the federal government gave people talk about it ranges. Everything else is lease land for land management. So i would say after western nebraska we went public lancelot or large ranges and we never asked for permission and we never needed a period of time i caught up with the blm agent whos an old friend of mine i met after wed already traveled about 1500 miles to the oregon trail. By the way, we just keep going. Because you have the rightofway. They never change the law. They have the rightofway on the trail. There was one rancher who gave us a hard time and i described in the book that was unfortunate. I said yeah, but its great for the book. If you end up adding [inaudible] did we end up adding to the junkyard along the trail . Do you think im going to answer that question . Yes. Ill tell you, so we are in the most remote stretch of the trail near Sweetwater Station which is a famous old trail. The town itself is three people in that. A rancher and a couple who ran a bookstore. We are coming down this old ranch road which is the old oregon trail and my brother grows rank, what is that . The yellow truck coming towards us. Thats a schwantz truck. [laughter] it turns out the ranchers back to our old bachelor cowboys. This one truck drives up from salt lake. Mr. , mr. , stop. The guy says i think what you want . Get what you want. Sir, do you have the ice cream sandwiches . Well take a few of those gave the packers im only allowed to sell you by the case. So when a covered wagon with no ice on a 100degree day we buy a whole case of ice cream sandwiches. You know, i hate greedy. Make it about six. Olive oil had to. We stopped the team. We gave the team the same sum up the period we still had to have the cases, ice cream sandwiches but it is very moral about it at the wrappers off all of them before i toss them into the desert. Ive had experience with this. Theres another book of mine when i discovered that prairie dogs really like sweet food. And in that case, moon pie. So i justified it. There were not his ice cream sandwiches on the desert because they have plenty of prairie dogs in that area and so that is the only company and an adviser pioneer style that we did that im going to talk about. The cd player at the beginning, did you keep up in any which way . What is the origination of your name . Of his name nicholas . Of your name. All my name, rinker. My father used to say i love my wife very much so we had 11 children and they decided to start naming the kid up at the top where i was after the grand parents. My grandmother was a rinker, which is a swiss dutch name from central pennsylvania. You know, the cd player was so. The bocce ball. And never got turned on. As far as the music i wouldve listened to, my daughter thought for years that may be their dad was kind of gay because i liked bubblegum pop music and stuff like that. Its bad like Willie Nelson and the eagles come up pretty amateur stuff that i listen to. I never listen to it. I brought the cd player along. At the end of the trip we are emptying out the wagon and their stuff at the bottom. Wow, i didnt even know that was there. I heard part of the book is dedicated to you recollect them about your father and your relationship with him. Can you speak about that at all . When were kids who grew up on a horse farm and my dad took us on a covered trade between the Foreign Ministers and central pennsylvania. It was kind of the dream journey of my life. I have to get up in the morning and galloped ahead on a horse and pick out camping spots on all that kind of thing. Its the kind of thing everybody has a treasured memory of childhood and is certainly motivated me a lot to take this trip. What surprised me was all the flashbacks to my father. We had a great great relationship from a loving relationship and then a very tough relationship towards the end of his life because i was the typical rebellious pain in the mac kid. So really shocked me how strong those memories of him more and i managed to weave them into a narrative. I think people will enjoy that part of the book. How authentic was the construction of the wagons you were using . 100 authentic. I should have said to us. Our main wagon with the peter shuffler wagon. He was the biggest wagon maker of the 19th century. The first Great American fortune after John Jacob Astor was the shuffler fortune made making covered wagons and i had a long history in the book. Everything was authentic. It had been in a barn and the only thing we built was the wagon box. The wheels have iron tires . They had iron, not deal. We went over the bumpy rocks on a hot day in the wheels get hot. Little fissures and pieces would break off. Either ms. Off. So we have original iron tires. As a boy i got to see a wagon made by our local blacksmith north of where you were. It was fascinating to me. They put it on the wheel and it became tight. Did the drop in water . The wooden part of the wheel. Thank you. Will take two more questions. The map you had at the start of the year, your talk shows through four years of diversions replaced with a trail changed over time. Yes and no. This is one of the frustrations of doing the reading because then he began like this the focus is full of news that i think people dont know about the trail. It wasnt really a single type across the plain. It was a collection of trails. And so forth. The big kite you saw is actually something called the stuff that cut off which we actually to this i didnt want to go all the way south. In western wyoming, the trail is 150 miles wide. So the saga cut off, the wryly cut off. The pioneers so we took sections of the cut off to get across that part of wyoming. Another part of the root, the trail could be 30 miles across because the mormons tended to cross on the north side for iowa as i put them on the north side of the planet. Most of the rest of the pioneers took the steamboats ascend to st. Louis or kansas city and made their way up to independence. That positions them both side would pan out for five miles every day to get away from the other wagon train. Even here the trail was 30 miles wide with innumerable cutoffs and improvements made over time. There were 40 cutoffs an alternate route along the 2100mile trail. This guy one more. Where did you get the mules . Theres probably a lot of people in the room familiar. I went to porter, missouri where theres an amish community. It is actually one of the most unique because its german baptist. There is a meal trainer there who is pretty legendary, pretty legendary in the horse world for training good meals and having good meals. I talk about in the book would have pioneer experience that we didnt exactly get the best way south they would have. Just have to keep going. We made a lot of mistakes, but the big mistake was we shouldve been up for months before driving the team every day. We got there, what the wagon i bought in kansas and the everything up in five days later we were gone. The first few days that not wow because they were a little wild at first. But we brought the meals a day, should james porter, missouri, north east of saint joe. Thank you. Lets have a hand for rinker buck and the oregon trail. [applause]