Visiting LDS Historical Sites in Upstate New York: with lots of pictures!

Continuing the story of our 6000-mile trip last summer...

After we visited Boston, it was time to start heading home.  We left on Tuesday morning, leaving our 3rd son behind to take an airline flight home.  He had had his shoulder surgery 7 weeks before and the surgeon wanted him to start physical therapy before waiting any longer.  Also, his mission call was waiting for him at home!

After about 6 hours of driving, our first stop was in upstate New York in the area where the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was founded.  First we visited the site of the actual founding of the church, the Peter Whitmer home in Fayette, New York.  It's a pretty small log cabin and we were fortunate to come at a time when there weren't many visitors so we could go inside.  The guides told us that when there are big tour buses, they can't take people in, but just seat them outside and talk about it.  I am so grateful for the weather we enjoyed on this trip.  We saw lots of rain but it rarely interfered with the sites we wanted to see and it usually happened when we were driving.  My son might argue otherwise since the baseball game they wanted to see got rained out...

The outside of the Peter Whitmer home:  they have tried to make it as historically accurate and original as possible.

Inside the Peter Whitmer home

Our next stop was the sites in Palmyra which is about 40 minutes away from Fayette.  We drove past the Palmyra temple (see this beautiful picture) and I would have loved to go in but our time was short so we couldn't. 

Palmyra temple peeking out from the trees.

We did go to the Joseph Smith family home and the Sacred Grove.  Read more about it here.  Of all the sites we saw in New York, I enjoyed seeing these sites the most.  We had previously visited in 1996 but since that time, much has changed.  Previously the home was separated from the Sacred Grove by a fairly busy road.  But the church purchased the road from the county and relocated the road elsewhere so that the sites could be all together on one large plot of land.  It's a quiet and beautiful setting and the church has done a good job of restoring the sites as historically accurate as possible.

The first Smith family home in Palmyra--a very humble cabin.

This is the attic of that cabin where the angel Moroni appeared to the young Joseph Smith telling him about the great work he had to do.

This is the second Smith family home in Palmyra.  It was a much larger, nicer cabin but the Smiths were forced out of it for a variety of reasons and lost all their equity in the home.  It was a sad story and I don't remember all the details.

Inside the second Smith family home

This is the barn they had.  It stood for a long time and then someone accidentally tore it down but they restored it.

I loved all the historically authentic details they included on the property.  Sadly I can't remember what this was used for--this is what happens when you don't do the posts shortly after the event!

The Sacred Grove is a very reverent place to visit and I believe this is where Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ appeared to the boy Joseph Smith.  We were able to have it to ourselves for the most part.

This is a very wet part of the world.  The church used to remove the dead trees and did other things to "clean" it up.  But the Grove was starting to die and a forester told them it was because of their cleaning it up.  So they now leave it alone as much as possible to try to preserve it.

 

 As we were about to leave, my husband ran into someone he knew back in high school, some 30 years ago.  He enjoyed catching up with him (and sharing regrets about not being nicer to the seminary teacher!) and then we hurried off to visit the Hill Cumorah before the site closed.

The next morning, we took off for Niagara.  We have visited the Niagara Falls a few times in our married life (maybe twice?) but we have never ridden the Maid of the Mist boats that take you up close and personal.  So we decided to do that this time.  We lucked out and got there right before a giant tour bus so we didn't have to wait too long. My kids loved it and several of them got completely soaked.

When you're too close, the spray makes it hard to see much.  But you can really feel and hear the power of the water.

Most of us got pretty wet!

Afterwards, we had to leave right away because we had to get to Portage, Indiana, that night so we could meet our youngest daughter's kidney donor the following morning (read about it here.)

Halfway across Ohio, our son called us from home because he was opening his LDS mission call.  We shared the experience through the wonders of cell phones and Skype.  He got called to go to the Ukraine, speaking Russian, leaving in October!  We were all very excited for him.