Day #27 Nauvoo

Today was our first day in Nauvoo. We started out on a carriage ride through the countryside on the outskirts of town. We stopped at the Scovil bakery and then saw the kids play Just Plain Anna Amanda. It was cute. Then we walked around the corner to the Family Living Center where the kids learned all about home life in pioneer time... making bread, clothes, rope, barrels, rugs, etc. The kids all thought that was fun and the missionaries are so sweet and accommodating.
We stopped at Pioneer Pastimes and the kids played all the pioneer games. It started pouring rain on us and were glad to be under the canopy.

Day #26 Driving, Carthage

We ate dinner in the visitors center parking lot last night and decided to get a head start on the long drive to Nauvoo, about ten hours or so. We've discovered that when we have long stretches to drive it works well to get a start in the evening and drive til midnight or so. The girls fall asleep by 9-10pm and the boys read quietly with headlamps. We made it all the way to Columbus, Ohio, and left early this morning for Nauvoo. Eric just picks them up from their bed on the couch and straps them in and they go back to sleep for at least an hour or so. Nice!
We slept in a Walmart parking lot last night and there was a Burger King nearby with a drive-thru open 24/7. I heard a few people in the middle of the night shouting their order into the microphone. We should've been more selective where we parked I guess. :)

Today was mostly spent in the car. When we were nearing Nauvoo we stopped for gas. Eric swiped his card but it didn't work so the cashier told him to fill up and then come in and she'd do it. He filled up and went back in to pay but she was busy. He then checked on Adam in the bathroom and came back out to the RV, washed the windows and we left. We were about 15 minutes down the road when he said, "I don't think I paid the lady for our gas". I googled the gas station and he called the lady. She answered and when he told her he didn't think he'd paid she passed the phone to the police officer in the gas station! He said we should come right back or else the state police would find us down the road. Yikes! We offered to pay over the phone and not have to backtrack, since we'd been in the car all day. The lady said she couldn't do it over the phone. Grrr! So we headed back and he went in to pay. The cashier saw his AMEX card and said, "oh I have to enter those manually, our machine doesn't read American Express." Grr! So we could have done it over the phone. Oh well! It all worked out because as we were passing through Carthage we saw a large gathering outside the jail and visitors center. We hadn't realized that it was June 27th, the day the Prophet and Hyrum Smith were murdered in Carthage Jail. The days all run together and we were thinking it was the 26th. We were just in time for the program put on by the young performing missionaries commemorating the 170th anniversary of their deaths. It was really good and I'm glad we happened to be driving by at the right time, thanks to the gas mixup.

I should say... I don't think it was coincidence that we were delayed by the gas thing-- since we were unaware of the commemoration we would have driven right through Carthage an hour earlier and probably wouldn't have seen any crowds yet and wouldn't have stopped.  All things happen for a reason!  :)

Day #25 Kirtland summary

I think I was looking forward to Nauvoo and kinda overlooked the importance of Kirtland. I really loved our visit there! We grabbed this bookmark at the visitors center in Kirtland and it is amazing when you see it on paper all the foundational elements of the Church that occurred here!

Day #25 Morley Farm

After the Johnson farm we headed back to Kirtland and went to the Morley Farm, just outside of town. The home there isn't original and is a private residence now (senior missionaries) but we walked up the trail to an opening in the forest. It was beautiful and we all thought it reminded us of the Sacred Grove in Palmyra. We had a family testimony meeting and reflected on the things we've seen and felt while here in Kirtland. There was a very special feeling there. Later when we talked to the sister missionaries they told us that is near the place where the Father and Son appeared to the Prophet Joseph. No wonder it felt sacred.

We came back down the path and had dinner and played on the lawn near the parking lot. Everything is so green here!! Lush green grass, trees, forests everywhere!

We stopped back by the visitors center and the Sister missionaries printed off a bunch of info on my Mom's family that lived in Kirtland during this time. Very cool!

Day #25 Johnson Farm

We drove out to the Johnson Farm in Hiram, Ohio. It is a beautiful home on a large, operating farm that the church leases to a local farmer. Joseph and Emma Smith lived there for a year. The Johnson's gave up their bedroom to the Smiths and they moved upstairs into their children's bedroom. This is the home where Joseph and Sidney Rigdon had the vision of the Father and Son in receiving D&C 76. About 15 other revelations were received in this home, as recorded in the Doctrine and Covenants.

The front door of the home was a "cross and Bible" door. The top cross and lower part (an open Bible) signified they were Christians and let people know who were traveling and needed lodging that they were welcome to stop for a meal or a place to sleep. I loved seeing all the old rooms and kitchens, many of which were original or very closely restored to the original. This home has been lived in continuously since the Johnsons lived there in the 1830s so it was in great shape and most was original.

Day #25 Amish buggy

Thought this was interesting!

Day #25 Flat tire, Amish country

We camped at Punderson State Park. It was a nice campground about 25 minutes from Kirtland. Caleb braved the mosquitoes in his hammock last night and paid the price. His arms were covered in bites, despite bug spray.

We woke up this morning to find a flat on one of our back inside tires. Grrr! We replaced all four back tires in DC a few weeks ago so this was really frustrating. We called our roadside assistance and they sent out the "Rescue Rangers". They were quite the pair! First they were two hours late so we were getting antsy. They didn't receive word that we had an RV, even though Eric told the dispatch three times to make sure they have a jack big enough to lift a motorhome. So they were unprepared to help us, their jack couldn't lift the RV. We ended up borrowing a bottle jack from another camper and put the spare on. (We need to get one of those when we get home!)
We drove to Newbury Tire in Newbury, Ohio, and those guys were great. They said that the DC tire shop put our old valve stems back on with our new tires, and that's what broke today. Grrr! We had the Newbury guys switch out all four valve stems with heavy duty ones so we hopefully won't have any more tire issues.

The tires took up all morning and early afternoon. Caleb was happy to have a chance to watch the World Cup and the other kids played at the campground playground.

Once we were back on the road we went over to Middlefield, Ohio to the fourth largest Amish community in the world. We saw lots of horse-drawn buggies and wagons driving on the rode with the cars. They also have a type of bicycle with pedals that they stand on, kinda like a big scooter. There was lots of laundry hanging from clotheslines in front of nearly every house in the area. One of them had a pulley system with ropes and the laundry was two stories high up to the top of a barn!

We stopped at a cheese factory and bought cheese, beef sticks and jerky for lunch and let the kids play in the wagon on display.

Day #24 Kirtland, Ohio

We arrived in Kirtland about 3:00 today and went to the temple site. It is owned by the Community of Christ (RLDS) and they gave us a tour of it. It was very interesting having a tour of our church history by a young lady who isn't of our faith. Her parents joined the Community of Christ a few years ago but she said she was still on her journey to find what she believes. We couldn't take pictures of the inside, only outside. The upstairs and downstairs are almost identical rooms, large assembly-type rooms with pulpits and stands at both ends. A lot of the woodwork, especially upstairs was original. It was very beautiful. It was a large tour. I wished we could have sat in there and had a few minutes of quiet to enjoy the special place.

Across the street is a small cemetery with many old, old grave sites. We've been to several cemeteries on this trip and the kids always try to find the oldest date on a head stone.

We then headed over to our visitors center and took a tour of Kirtland with a cute pair of Sister missionaries. We all really liked the Newel K. Whitney store. The kids thought it was fun to see all the things that were for sale. He was a jack-of-all-trades! We ran that store and was the town's postmaster.
Upstairs was really special, where the first School of the Prophets was held. It was a smallish room, not as big as I'd imagined... about the size of an average bedroom nowadays. The Spirit was really strong as the Sisters testified that this was one of the four places that the Father and Son appeared to Joseph Smith and others here in Kirtland. The other three places in Kirtland are the John Johnson Farm, the Isaac Morley Farm, and the Kirtland Temple.

We took a tour of the old saw mill and the ashery nearby. That was fun to see how it all worked! They said the ashery was one of the ways the saints earned money to build the temple. Everyone would bring their ashes to the ashery and they would add water and other material to a big pot, then cook it at extremely high temperatures (like 1000 degrees or something crazy) for several days until it turned into potash, an important fertilizer for crops that was previously only obtained from England. People came from all over to buy their potash. This ashery is the only one left in North America. Very cool!
(I don't think I'd want the job of tending the fires night and day!)

Day #24 Niagara Falls

Niagara Falls was crazy!!! Eric bought us tickets to go to the Cave of the Winds. I didn't know what to expect. We went down an elevator 180 feet and came out in the middle of the falls. We walked along the wooden walkways out to the water. Eric and boys went out on the platform called "Hurricane Deck". They got soaked!! The water was just pouring down right next to them. They played there for ten minutes and had fun. The rain ponchos didn't protect them much from the raging water. ;)
The elevator man told us they tear down the wooden walkways every fall and rebuild them in the spring so we wouldn't have to worry about safety issues. It still is a little scary being surrounded by such powerful water!

There are lots of different waterfalls there, American Falls, Bridal Veil and Horseshoe Falls are some of the names. It was definitely a fun stop and it broke up our six hour drive from Palmyra to Kirtland.

Day #23 Bonus Palmyra

We had planned to leave Palmyra this afternoon, but decided to stay another night. We attended a session at the temple. It was so beautiful. It is a small temple and there were only 7 of us there, but it was really nice. There is a window from the lobby area where you can look out to the Sacred Grove. It's wonderful to think in the very place the restoration began-- there is now a temple!!

The kids hung out in the RV and that cute note & flower from Anne was posted next to the door when we got back from the temple. She is a little piece of heaven on earth!

Since we had time this evening, after dinner we went back over to the Sacred Grove and walked through it at dusk. As it grew darker the fireflies came out in force and we spent the next hour chasing and catching them just at the entrance of the Grove. It was so cool to see the fields all around us sparkling with little lights. I tried to take pics in the dark but they didn't do it justice. It was fun!