So let me apologize- I realized I have to reread these before I send them out... Obviously I've realized that before, but as I read the last post that was riddled with errors and painful to read I recommitted to caring about my blogging ethic.

Okay with that being said, here's what we did on the fourth day of our trip. We woke up, had a continental breakfast and said goodbye to Kirtland as we made our way to the airport. We had decided to fly to Chicago and drive the 4 or 5 hours to Nauvoo to shave some time off our trip. Basically we wanted to focus on the church history part of the trip and not be on a full-blown road trip.

Once we got to Chicago it was the mid-afternoon and we were starving again and craving some deep dish pizza. When in Rome right? We also planned to visit the Chicago temple before we set off on our way to Nauvoo.

So on our way to the temple we pulled over at a fire station reasoning that someone had to know a good local pizza place. Nathan ran in and asked and got a good answer- a little place that was just down the street from the temple. We ran over there had pizza and dessert (you know I wasn't joking about those 5 lbs now) and satisfied our deep dish fantasies.

Here's what we did once we got to the Chicago temple:

I forced David to model for me and I got these gems :) I love my husband- haha.

I jumped in at this point since he was done modeling... or so I thought.

What a cheese ball :) And Colleen mentions this, but David is quite the exhibitionist. He changed in almost every temple parking lot we visited. Stripped down to his skivvies and changed, no shame. It was hilarious and entertaining.

And then we drove. Or I should say Nathan drove --what a champ-- for hours and hours all the way to where we stayed across the river from Nauvoo.

Colleen's Day 4 (and 5)

*Warning: now my camera and back up battery were fully charged so get ready for the picture overload that day three was.*

Back at the Red Maple Inn David and I woke up having slept like rocks and headed out for a run. We didn't get too far because of the instant sticky feeling from being outside and because we wanted to be back in time to go to the gym they had in the basement and then get ready for breakfast.

Breakfast was great and after that we felt ready to take on all the Kirtland sites and history. We planned on doing all this in one day like Palmyra. The first site we went to see was actually not in Kirtland itself. It was the John Johnson Farm which is in Hiram, Ohio. Driving there we saw more amish houses with the Monday morning wash hanging outside (I loved it and nerded out about how cute it was! Real people do this, in America! Awesome!)

Once we got there we spotted a tour bus and were a little apprehensive about overcrowding but it turned out to be fine. Here's David looking around the carriage house we waited in to start the tour.

Sister Johnson was awesome. I don't know how she did it all but she fed a million people, especially when the Prophet Joseph stayed with them because people came to see him all the time.

And she had a very interesting taste in decorating. The walls were very bright colors in the different rooms throughout the house. This room is where the Johnsons (parents and one son I think) read the Book of Mormon straight through one night. Then they decided they had to meet the Prophet Joseph because they believed the Book of Mormon.

Sister Johnson had an arm problem, she couldn't lift it barely at all. When they met Joseph she asked for a healing blessing and he healed her arm immediately and she didn't have a problem the rest of her life.

After that the Johnsons invited Joseph to stay with them and told him they would help in any way they could. And they did. They saved for this gorgeous house for over 10 years from what I remember but when Joseph later asked them to sell it and donate the funds to the church a few years later they did, no questions asked. After this day I loved the faithful Kirtland saints for what they gave.

This room is next to the front door of the house. It may have been the room Joseph and Emma were staying in when the mob came and tarred and feathered Joseph. This was also after Joseph and Emma had adopted the Murdock twins after their twins died.  Both twins were sick the night the mob dragged Joseph out. The little boy later died from exposure. I asked the sister missionary why he died from the cold- why didn't they just shut the front door? She said the door may have been broken down which made sense to me.

Side note- isn't that floor insane? A little too Alice in Wonderland for me, but go Sister Johnson for rocking it.

David and I are in the room that was Joseph's office. He received revelation and did bunch of translating with Sidney here. Also Sidney was living in a cabin across from the Johnson farmhouse that the Johnson family built for him. Yeah the Johnsons were saints, no pun intended.

Joseph passed out after the mob beat, tarred and feathered him but he eventually made it back to the house. Emma and probably Sister Johnson spent the night peeling the tar off his skin and cleaning him up. The next morning he preached on those steps we are standing on. Members of the previous night's mob came and heard him preach. It was pretty powerful because a few people from the congregation were baptized because of that sermon.

Sidney was also dragged from his cabin and tied to a horse and dragged on the rough ground hitting his head. He had a concussion and from the written records was never the same after that (personality-wise and testimony-wise). Joseph actually saw Sidney laying on the ground and thought he was dead when Joseph was being dragged away. This is really sad but it goes to show how deep the prophet's testimony was that he could go through that experience and go on knowing that something like this could happen to him again.

I was so excited to see this site. The Kirtland temple. Even though it's owned by the Community of Christ church I still couldn't wait to be in such an amazing place. I fell in love with the Kirtland temple from reading the Work and the Glory series. I really got a taste of what this temple meant to the saints and the countless manifestations of Heavenly Father's power that happened because of this building. This building is one of the most amazing pieces of history of the restoration in my opinion.

I never imagined what the grounds would look like but they were nice, as was the visitor's center (or whatever the CoC people called it).

Since it's not owned by the church it is in need of a few repairs, but overall it was in good condition. The pulpits were amazing and so was the ingenuity of the saints. I didn't realize they built the box pews so you could close the door of the pew and trap the heat in during the winter.

The one unfortunate part of the tour is that it focused on the historical facts and didn't really invite the spirit, but we still felt it anyway. How can you not when you sit in Joseph's office on the top floor or remember what happened at the dedication? You can just feel what this building meant to those people and the future they thought they were building in Kirtland.

The temple had a sense of finality and sadness about it as well. Kirtland wasn't Nauvoo in the scale of those who left it but it still had sacrifice engrained in everything. And the fact that it was presented as a historical artifact instead of a sacred site seemed a little sad to me in light of what took place there. Another member with his smart phone read us Doctrine & Covenants 110 which really put into perspective how sacred this building was.

After the temple tour we headed down the hill to the Kirtland visitor center site. There we had a tour of the Whitney store first, which you see in every church movie about Kirtland.

This tour was pretty crowded but still great. Joseph and Emma also lived in the Whitney store for a while too. The Whitneys were another outstanding family which made this leg of the trip so fun to learn about. The Whitneys were converts that made it all the way to Salt Lake. Newel K. Whitney was the first Bishop and continued to be a Bishop until he died in Salt Lake.

Here's a corn checker board in the store.

This was the back of the store which the Whitney's outfitted to be a kitchen for Joseph and Emma. I thought about how mortifying it must have been for Emma to live on another's generosity, but how gracious she was to accept it. To cook in a kitchen at the back of someone else's store sounds hard to me. But that's Emma for you- always accepting kindness showed to the the prophet's family.

More of the kitchen. Upstairs was the school of the prophets where Joseph received revelations and taught. He received the famous section 89, the Word of Wisdom, after Emma asked about the smoking and spittoons.

Across the street from the store was the Whitney's house and this was a shot of their kitchen. It wasn't huge considering Newel K. Whitney owned a lot of property and land. Basically everything we saw at the Kirtland church site was on Bishop Whitney's land which he gave to the church. (He was good at consecration apparently).

Here's a shot of the Kirtand ashery (straight ahead) and the sawmill (off to the right).

The sawmill was powered by this water wheel that only needs about three inches of water to operate. They rebuilt the sawmill and it's technically fully functional.

The only time the blade of the restored sawmill has actually been used to cut wood was when President Hinckley came to dedicate it. He said "I want to see this thing cut some wood!" in cute President Hinckley style. So they fired it up and cut a log. It hasn't been used since.

Then we walked next door to the ashery. Honestly I didn't know what an ashery was until this tour so now you get to find out as well.

The saints collected and then sold ashes to the ashery which were then strained, and cooked them to be made into things like glass and fine china.

She's explaining the process. The ashrey was a cash cow for the saints that got something like $100 a barrel for the cooked ash. (check out Colleen's blog for more accurate details on the process).

Here's David touching ashery artifiacts... haha.

We hadn't eaten since breakfast (it was at least 5:00 by this point) and Nathan had looked up a triple D restaurant called "Melt Bar and Grilled" nearby so we headed there for dinner.

We all ordered grilled cheese sandwiches of epic proportions. Look at Davids- there's a whole chicken breast right there!

Did I mention I gained 5lbs on this trip? Look at that sandwich and you'll know why. Luckily we exercise consistently or I would have been stuck with that trip weight haha.

After that we went over to our hotel for the night, swam for a bit (David may have dunked Colleen twice) and then we tried to disc golf at a park next to Lake Erie. It ended with Colleen and I in the car after running from swarms of bugs and rain while David and Nathan searched for a stray disc while it was lightning.

Colleen's day 3 post

Sorry about the delay, I'm a procrastinator (David is not which is awesome, I need to learn from him). We really did actually go on an entire trip, not just day 1. So we left off at the top of the hill cumorah.

Then we all hopped in the car and drove to the motel that was on our way. That night we looked up church buildings and times for the next day. I forgot about Father's day in the wake of the trip (sorry Dad and David), but the kids at the ward we went to actually did a great father's day program. We were super impressed; they didn't even need prompter posters.

Then we hit the road again so we could stop off at Niagara Falls on the way to Kirtland.

(Disclaimer: I only brought my Ipod here because the camera was dead. On day 2- great planning I know)

Since I couldn't get a passport in time for the trip, we were planning on staying on the American side... that was the plan anyway. But we found ourselves sitting on a bridge going, "Why does that sign say welcome to Canada on it?" and figuring we would be denied entrance and sent back. 

But nope, the Canadian gatekeeper just checked out our licenses and sent us on our merry way. She did however say it might be hard to get back (great, I was imagining a bureaucratic nightmare with hours of waiting when we tried to go back to the US).

But we reasoned that since we found ourselves on the side with the better view anyways we might as well enjoy it. And we did- we found free parking, got soaked on the bow of Maid of the Mist, felt like Pam and Jim from the office... it was a blast.

When I think of it now I remember Nathan yelling at us on the boat over the roar of the falls "Look through the hood! It shields your eyes and then you can see!" Haha, classic.

After we got off the boat we made the trek back to the car and headed back to the U.S. Other than the crazy street maze to cross the bridge it really wasn't all that hard to get back in. The U.S. gatekeeper just had us pop our trunk, looked at our licenses and said that the lady probably let us into Canada so easily because we look so obviously American. (In what way? How do you look American?).

This is how you look American (or just awkward haha)

Back in New York, we hit this really delicious Italian place that was on Diners, Drive Ins, and Dives for dinner. It was famous for its lasagna but what really wowed us was this yummy chicken dish. It was breaded with cheese and a tomato on top with a great lemony sauce. We left feeling good and ready to settle into our drive towards Kirtland.

This was the only day we didn't book a hotel in advance, we figured we would drive until we were close to Kirtland since we couldn't tour until the next morning anyways. Nathan and Colleen were the amazing driving/navigating team in the front while David and I were in charge of the snacks. Which actually means we napped...snuggled... and ate in the back. Ha, we really contributed- woops! Here's some of David's shenanigans to avoid the hot sun in the back.

My sweater came in handy to shield us from the sun.

We eventually got off the freeway and drove down this scenic highway that was lush and green with large farm houses interspersed along the way. And sometimes there were amish people outside of the houses. We saw a group of youth playing volleyball outside their church building. The girls were on one side and the boys on the other. It was so much fun to see!

We got to Hiram and got laughed at when we asked around for a hotel. No kidding. A police officer and lady he was chatting with laughed at us outright when we asked where a hotel was when we saw them in front of the station in town square (town square!!! water tanks and gazebos and flags and cuteness).

But when they stopped laughing they suggested a few places and we ended up at the cutest inn, The Red Maple Inn. We were reluctant about the pricing but when we asked the lady at the front desk about a room with two beds she offered us two separate rooms for the price of the bigger one with two beds.

This was out in front of the Inn.

We dropped off our stuff and explored around town a bit. We walked around the historical site next to the Inn which felt church history-esque and then walked around town square. David spotted some fireflies which was fun, I'd actually never seen any before.

Then we headed back to enjoy the nice amenities at the inn and the chocolates on our pillows.

I instagramed David's favorite feature of the hotel: the valet. He immediately hung his clothes on there and reiterated his longing for one in our room at home.

Also at the inn I won the bet I made with David that one of the places we stayed at on this trip would have robes (he loves having matching robes as well). 

Look at this view! This is Ohio for you, it was as lush as New York. At this point I was feeling really sorry for the saints for having to end up in Salt Lake.

And I had to add the beaver I saw from our porch running across the lawn. David was taking a shower and I was inordinately excited about seeing this beaver so of course I had to grab the camera. Everything at the Red Maple seemed so cool- the amish women who cooked breakfast, the library, the cookies up for grabs on the front desk, the jacuzzi tubs. It was awesome and a nice break from the non-stop pace of the three previous days.

Here's Colleen's post about our second day (with way better details/pictures).

Here's day 1 of our trip in Palmyra.