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Does anyone have a copy of the article that ran in the Salt Lake papers regarding the Smart's trip to NY about a month before the alleged abduction? I think it had some interview comments from a friend of Ed's who he hadn't seen in over 10yrs, and some interview comments from 2 of Liz's cousin, one was a 20yr old, who roomed with Liz while there and said that Liz wasn't that shy..Does anyone remember why or what this trip was about? The reason I ask is due to many comments I've read on other boards regarding this trip. Does anyone know anything about this NY trip?

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Bella,

I looked for the article you mention and can't find it. Will try more later. From what I've learned, I wonder if Ed had made it a working vacation. In other words, if he had met with someone there that was involved with his mortgage business.

Smart Cousins Recall Summers With Elizabeth
BY LINDA FANTIN
THE SALT LAKE TRIBUNE

The first thing you should know about Elizabeth Smart is she never wanted all this attention. It's just not her style to stand out.
She's not into boys or makeup. She dresses modestly, especially for a teenager. And at family get-togethers, when the other kids are running wild, Elizabeth is in the periphery, playing big sister.
"If she's not with a sibling, she's with the person that is the hardest to have patience with at the moment," said her eldest cousin, 21-year-old Sierra. "She's good at making sure you're not alone."
What her cousins would not give to return the favor.
A month ago, Elizabeth was kidnapped from her Salt Lake City home, sparking a nationwide search.

In many ways, however, the 14-year-old at the center of the news media frenzy barely resembles the one her cousins desperately miss.
The popular images of Elizabeth are air-brushed and one-dimensional: that of a proper girl in a velvet dress playing the harp, for instance. But relatives also remember the tomboy who used to eat dirt and once set the Smart family record for catching the largest frog.
In the days since Elizabeth's disappearance, her cousins have spent a lot of time recalling those carefree days of summers past -- of tubing on the lake and secret conversations in upside-down canoes. They think about Elizabeth's quiet demeanor and how it disappears during lights out. And occasionally they slip and refer to her in the past tense.
"She was so quiet and so reserved that when some funny thing happened it was that much more funny," Sierra said.

Like last summer, during a family vacation to New York. Elizabeth jumped in the hotel swimming pool and the chlorine turned her suit from purple to pink. Tori, 13, still laughs when she thinks about it. She and Elizabeth roomed together on the trip and grew closer.
"It was fun in New York at night because she could really talk. She could talk a lot when she was comfortable," Tori said.
And Elizabeth is clearly comfortable around her cousins. They used to love to play dress up in Grandma Smart's basement. "The vegetable gowns," costumes from some church bazaar, were always a hit.
"I remember she was the carrot and she had these huge glasses and a wig," Elise, 18, said. "She was just totally making fun of it."

Some of the girls' fondest memories are of summers spent in Montana near West Yellowstone where every other year the extended family gathers at a cabin owned by Tori's grandparents. The big bedrooms have built-in bunk beds. The kids call them "boys dorm" and "girls dorm."
The girls stay up late, talking and painting each other's nails, the clink of the nail polish bottle inevitably waking the adults sleeping downstairs. Once, the girls recalled, the wake-up call was a little more obvious.
There they all were in their rag curls and bobby pins when an intruder burst into the room.
"All the sudden we hear this noise and this bat flies into our room and we all start screaming," Tori said. "We ran into the boys dorm and we like jumped on their beds. 'There's a bat! There's a bat!' "
"We had the hair, we had the nails, we did mud masks, we screamed about bats," Elise recalled. "It really was a girl party."
But make no mistake, Elizabeth is no Miss Priss. She loves horses and never passes up a chance to go riding even if it means waking her cousins before dawn. As her uncle, Tom Smart, said: "She plays the harp like an angel and rides a horse like a cowboy."

Catching frogs by the bucketful and feeding them water skeeters developed into a summertime ritual, as did making mud pies and mud jello. The latter is a Smart family recipe that requires the green gooey muck that collects under the docks. Retrieving it is not without some risk.

Elise recalled the time she and Elizabeth pulled their arms from the water to find them covered in leeches. Elizabeth was the calm one, her cousins said.
Elizabeth's ability to keep her wits in a crisis is one reason the family believes she is still alive -- that and the thought of summers without her is so inconceivable.
"This year is the year we were supposed to do it again," Elizabeth's aunt Angela said of the extended family's trip to Montana. "We talked about it and we decided that we just need to wait to schedule it for when Elizabeth comes home."

**

Bella,
Is this the article you mention?