New York Here We Come

We had such a great opportunity to go visit Dan's sister Michelle at their home in Fort Drum New York.  We had some frequent flying miles, and had enough to take all the kids.  Kate has been on a plane before, but this was the first plane trip that Kirk could remember, and Ben's and Jence's first plane trip as well.  Ben was so excited to ride on the plane.  He called it a Jet because "jets go faster than planes"!  The highlight of the trip for ben was when the flight attendant brought him pretzel's, and orange juice.  he thought that was really neat!  Here is a picture of the kid's getting on the plane in SLC.  As you can see from the window it was a red eye flight.  We took off around 1:00 am.  I was really worried about how tough this would be on the kids, but we got the best rate on this flight, so we decided to go for it.  The kids were troopers.  I didn't hear a single complaint from them.  They all slept the entire way to Atlanta where we had a lay over.  There  we had doughnuts in the airport, and the kids slept some more the rest of the way to Buffalo New york.  I was so dreading this flight, but I think it went much better than we expected it to.  Jence was amazing he slept the whole way to New york and also a good portion of the way back from New York on the return trip.  I think there was something with the movement of the plane that lulled him to sleep.  We felt very blessed that our flights didn't get canceled or delayed.  It really ended up being a pretty smooth flight considering it was a red eye with four young kids.  

When we got to Buffalo we picked up our Rental Car and Drove to Henrietta which is a town about two hours from Palmyra.  My sister Kristen lived near here for four years while her husband was going through Orthopedic Residency.  I visited her a couple of times before I had kids and it brought back so many memories.  We checked into our Hotel it was a Hampton inn.  We had some hotel points thanks to Dan's travels for work.  We all took a nice long nap since we were exhausted from flying all night.  Then we went and grabbed some dinner at a nearby Wendy's.  Then we checked out the hotel pool.  This was so refreshing after being on a plane the night before.  We all had a good time.  The next day we devoted to seeing as many church history sites as we could.  We slept in a little and had breakfast.  We took off for Palmyra and got to Joseph Smith's farm around 11:00.  This was definitely the most time consuming of all the sites that we visited.  I spent some serious time taking a lot of pictures. 

Here is Benjamin standing in front of the the log home Joseph Smith grew up in.  he also had the vision of the angel Moroni in this home.   

Here we are standing in the kitchen of the Smith Log house.  This is where the family would gather for meals, and read out of the family Bible.

Here the kids are standing in the Smith House which the family moved into later after living in the log home.  Joseph lived in this home after he obtained the Gold Plates.  He hid the plates in various places in this room including underneath the hearth by the fire place. 

Here is Dan and the kids standing in front of the Smith Farm.  The Church really does a great job of maintaining the farm, it's kept pristine.  Really gorgeous and super green.

Here is Kate and me in the sacred grove.  It's a beautiful forest.  It was amazing to think that in this beautiful small forest Joseph saw God the Father and also Jesus Christ.  This vision began the restoration of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saint.s  This church now has now become of global church with missionaries in most of the countries around the world.

 

Here is Kirk sitting in the work shop.  Joseph Smith hid the plates in this building also.  The mobs tore through the building but never found them. 

Here are some pictures of the Kids Standing in front of the Palmyra Temple.  The grounds are beautiful, and the temple spire can be seen from the Smith Farm just down the road.

Then we headed to the Hill Cumorah.  This is where the plates were buried which had the ancient record of the inhabitants of the people from the American Continent.  Here is Dan and the kids standing by the monument.  As you can see it was quite windy, and Kate's hair was blowing in her face.  A few seconds after I took this photo it started to down pour on us.  I was a really bad storm luckily for us all of the outside site seeing was finished, and we headed to Main street Palmyra where the Book of Mormon was published.   

Here the kids are standing inside the binding part of the Grandin Printing Press.  The church bought this building and restored it to look like the way it did back in 1830 when the Book of Mormon was published.  This was really fascinating to see how exhaustive the work of printing and publishing books were.  Most books back in 1830 were paper back, the book of Mormon's were bound with leather.  The process of Binding the books by hand took nine months.  The process of printing the pages with the press took six months.   

Here is a photo of the Press.  This was a brand new state of the art press brought by boat down the Erie canal.  Ironically it was called the Smith Press.  This allowed for twice as many pages to be printed at one time sixteen in stead of eight.  They would place the type set for each individual page, the type would be placed in backwards and upside down.  Then they would ink up the type, and print five thousand of them.  This was a huge job for such a small town printing press.   

 Last we headed off to see Peter Whittmer Farm.  This is the location where Joseph Smith organized the church.  The first church meeting was held inside this tiny log house.  Here I am with Jence with the farm behind us.  It was really out in the middle of no where, I guess I could see how that would have helped reduce the amount of opposition Joseph encountered while establishing the church.  The Whitmer's were really good people to allow Joseph and Emma to come and go as they did.  Also Oliver Cowdry, and Martin Harris, and all the Whitmer sons, and daughters, and their spouses were in this small home.  Mary Whitmer was so over whelmed with the entertaining of so many guests that she was able to have her own witteness of the Book of Mormon.  I think that was neat.  The women who sustained these early church leaders had to have felt so overwhelmed with all the moving about from place to place.  It makes me wonder how I would have dealt with it.  One thing I didn't realize was the the majority of the eight witnesses of the Book of Mormon were from the Whitmer family.   

After we saw the Peter Whitmer home we headed to Fort Drum.  It was about two hours north from Palmyra.  We rolled in a little late, but Michelle still surprised us with a awesome Birthday Mint Brownies for Dan, those are his favorite!  Dan turned thirtysix this year, and it's definately a memorable birthday for him.

The next day we headed to visit a Thousand Islands.  It's about thirty minutes from Fort Drum.  It was a really neat area that has over a thousand small islands on the St. Charles river.  It was a very popular place where all of the millionaires built large summer homes on the islands.  Each island has to provide their own electricity, and water which makes the price of building these homes really high.  There is a reason it's called millianare boat tour.  Our Boat tour took us to Bolt Castle.  It's a really interesting story about George Bolt who owned the Woldorf Astoria hotels.  He set out to build a castle for his wife as a symbol of his love for her.  George Bolt had to have the heart shaped island that was owned by a man who really disliked George Bolt, he refused to sell the Island.  That didn't detour George Bolt, George continued to increase his offer until  He paid $10,000 for the island, which sounds like a pretty good deal for an island but and at the time it was only worth about $500.  You can see that George Bolt really wanted that island.  So they comensed building the castle and it was about 95% finished when his wife Louise Bolt died unexpectedly.  George sent a wire to immediately stop construction on the castle, and he never set foot on the island again.  The Castle fell into disrepair, until the the Bridges Authority of New York, obtained it.  Now they give tours of the castle and all proceeds are put right back into renovations on the castle.  It is really beautiful on the inside as well as the outside.  There are other buildings too, a play castle for the kids which had two bowling lanes, and a huge building where all the workers stayed while they where constructing the castle.   

 Thanks to Michelle for taking us there.  She was so great to take us even though she's been twice already, and her kids were really good troopers.  I have to say that I loved seeing the castle it's amazing really when you think about having to bring all of the construction materials, and equipment in by boat.  Truly a beautiful building with a tragic story. 

This is the power house.  A seperate building to house all of the equipment to generate power to the castle.

That night we made it back home and Michelle cooked a delcious dutch oven lausagnna.  Michelle is a really amazing cook.  Then we had smores over a fire, and visited for alot of the evening. 

Here is a photo of Dan with Jence on the thousand island boat tour.  Yes that is where the salad dressing name comes from.  Pretty cool huh.  It was a beautiful day with gorgeous white clouds in the sky. 

 The next day was Saturday so we hit the Beach on Lake Onterio.  This Beach really was amazing.  It looked like the Ocean.
The kids played all day long on the Beach, and enjoyed swimming.  We were lucky that it was such a nice warm day. 

 Kate is our fish.  She loves swimming in the water.  Jence loved being on the beach and playing on the sand. 

Here is a funny picture of me carrying all of our gear.  It really felt like more than it looked.  I think I was carrying three bags, a chair, and a few life jackets.  This photo gives you a good view of how clean and nice the beach was.  The sand was soft, and the water was pretty warm. 

The next day was Sunday so we got to go to church with Michelle.  It was neat to see their ward.  It was a military Ward so you could tell the members were all really close like family.  I'm glad Michelle's made such great friends, I hope that they will help her through when Roger get's deployed. 

The last day we were staying with Michelle was Monday.  We decided to go out for Breakfast at Tin Pan Galley.  It's a restraunt in Sacketts Harbor.  This is the Harbor where much of the war of 1812 took place.  The little town has been preserved over the last 200 years.  Ship Building was it's main industry.  They built eight ships or Frigates as they call them to get prepared for the war of 1812.  Interestingly they never did end up using them in warfare.  The War ended and the ships were left to just decompose in the weather.  In fact one of them sank to the bottom of the Lake and is still there to this day.  Sacketts Harbor served as a millitary base until the end of WWII.  At that time the Army outgrew the base and was relocated else where.  Today it's a historic draw, and most of the shops and resraunts only remain open during the summer season.  We got a few photo's of the kids by the mueseum. 

 Here is Kate standing on a street in Sacketts Harbor.  This is what the entire town looks like.  It feels like you've been transported back to the colonial era.  I just love New England neighborhoods.  Sackett's Harbor was quiet, quaint, and has a lot of history.

The last day we had to say goodbye to Michelle and Roger and Bryston and Brigham.  This was hard for our kids.  The highlight of the trip was seeing their cousins, and they didn't want to leave.  We headed back to Buffalo airport where we flew in.  On the way we stopped and saw Niagra Falls.  This was one of the kids favorite things we saw on the entire trip.  I would highly reccomend doing the boat tour the maid of the mist.  Be prepared to be soaked.  Luckily Dan had gotten me a really nice camera case for our anniversary.  It protected my camera.  

 

It was a memorable trip, thanks Michelle for letting us stay with you.  It was a trip of a lifetime, we all had the time of our lives!