June Vacation pt. 3 Church History continues...
We spent all of Sunday driving from St. Louis to Kirtland, OH. After the flats of Iowa, Illinois starts showing rolling hills and more trees and by the time you are in Ohio it is all rolling hills and trees - you can hardly tell where the towns are sometimes because there is so much greenery between you and the buildings. The Northeast was having a heat wave so we knew we were in for some heat. And it was hot. Thank goodness for air conditioning. We were outside as little as possible over the next few days.
Monday June 17 was our full day in Kirtland. We started at the John Johnson farm and learned some of the history of that.
We next toured the Kirtland temple, now owned and operated by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (recently purchased from the Community of Christ). Following that we took a break for smoothies for lunch.
We finished with a short tour of Kirtland - which was cut short because a tour group was coming in and had reserved the site. We finished at the newly opened Joseph and Emma Smith home, next door to the Kirtland Temple. In there we were in a tour with a couple other ladies and one of them had made the clothing that was on display in the home - she showed us some of the things she made. It was a fun little tidbit.
Something that stood out to me in Kirtland was just how many revelations Joseph Smith received there as well as how often the Savior appeared in person to Joseph and/or other Saints there. It was truly a time when the heavens were open and knowledge was pouring forth upon the earth.
One of our dinners we spent at an Italian restaurant called Nonna T's. Nonna is in the back making all the food - she came out to greet the diners while we were still there. It was delicious food and the service was lovely.
I'd promised Faith we'd see some Amish people....but we didn't! I know how we missed them. Hannah and Brynne and I saw many wagons on the road when we were there five years ago. So that was a little bit of a bummer.
We left on Wednesday for Palmyra and made a stop at Lake Erie so see one of the Great Lakes. We learned that it is about 50 miles across. The largest, Lake Superior, is 150 miles across. For perspective, if we traveled by bridge across it, it would be like driving from our house in Grants Pass, up through to the north of Eugene/Coburg....all by bridge. Wouldn't that be crazy? Those are some dang big lakes! The water of Lake Erie was warm and swimmable. Kind of a fun side stop. Then we pressed on for Palmyra.
Our day in Palmyra was hot but we saw everything we wanted. When we arrived we had a few hours before things closed so we did a tour of the E.B. Grandin print shop. We learned so much about how books were printed in the 1800s and gained an appreciation for the access we have to printed words.
We retired to our hotel for the night to get a fresh start on Wednesday.
Wednesday we did the Joseph Smith home/Sacred Grove first thing to beat the heat as much as possible and to beat the tour buses (we were successful).
Then, learning from our experience in Kirtland, instead of lunch we drove straight out to the Peter Whitmer home - one of my favorites. Some really precious miracles happened there and I love being reminded of them. The Lord's hand was truly in the work.
Can I just pause here and say that it's weird that Kenna is taller than me in these photos. I keep thinking I should be the tallest girl and then I'm not.
As we left the tour buses were just pulling in, so that was a smart move. We drove to Canandaigua to have smoothie bowls and then cooled off at the movie theater with Inside Out 2. Lovely. We went back to Palmyra for dinner, and of course had to get ice cream at the grill and chill - where the kiddie scoops are enormous. And that concluded our Church history portion of the trip!
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