More form our summer vacation it wasn't all church

Here are a few pictures we took at Niagara Falls. This is an impressive site, we're glad we went. We took a tour bus to all the sites and our tour guide was the best. She grew up here and knew all the people and places to visit. You could tell she loved this place by the way she talked about it.

The Boat ride was fabulous, you can feel the power of the falls. We took a lot of pics on the boat but the camera lens got wet so they are a bit blurry.

Oh, and yes we got a little WET!!!

On this deck you could walk up to the falls and almost touch them. This is the American falls and hurricane deck is just that, you feel like your in a hurricane. The wind is so powerful you have to lean into it just to walk to the railing and of course you get DRENCHED!!

This was a wonderful trip, and a wonderful way to spend our 25 wedding anniversary, can't believe we've been married that long seems like just yesterday we started this adventure together.

More from our summer vacation

We also visited Carthage while we were at Nauvoo. It was a little different than Nauvoo made us a bit sad at what happened there. I think for us as we traveled along the way there were places that we celebrated the history of the church and there were those that were a bit surreal. You come away with the feeling of "how could people treat others that way?". This was one of those places.

Off to Kirtland Ohio we went. We met some old friends there, Pres.and Sister Butterfield. He was Byron's Bishop when he went on his mission and good friends with Byron's parents. Which by the way came with us on this trip, we needed someone to split the cost of gas and car rental, ha ha. This is the Kirtland Temple. We was able to get a tour of it. It was intresting how it was layed out, not like any of the temples today. There is a large chapel area with pulputs on both ends of the chapel and were curtains rolled up that could be unrolled to divide the chapel into smaller rooms for classes. Upstairs were more offices and classrooms. It is a beautiful building to bad the LDS church doesn't own it, the spirit wasn't there.

This home was the home of John Johnson, a member of the church in Kirtland. Joseph Smith stayed here and received many revelations. It was also used as a meeting house for the saints of the area. Not far from here was where William Earl had a good size farm and we wondered if he was present to hear and meet the prophet.

Next it off to Palmyra where we had a spiritual overload. this is the Temple there and when your inside you can sit and overlook the Sacred Grove. What a great experience it was to visit the place where it all began. we visited the Smith home, then went into the Sacred Grove, what a peaceful place that is, we could have stayed there all day. Palmyra is a pretty town with rolling hills all around and green, they said they were in a drought but you couldn't tell it was so green.

About 5 miles or so from the Smith home is Hill Cumorah. It is a large hill and from the top you can see for miles in each direction. The hill is covered in trees except for an area which is cleared for the pagent. I wish I knew how to place more pictures on my blog to show you all the places we visited, it was a very spiritual trip and one we wont forget for a long time. We will be going back again, this time with the name of our ancestors to get any info we can about them.

Our Summer Adventures

For our summer vacation Jill and Byron went touring the church sites form Winter Quarters all the way to Palmyra, WOW what a road trip. we drove 5000 miles when we were done. This white house was Joseph and Emma's home in Nauvoo. It overlooked the Mississippi river.

We had a neat experience in the printing office. The mail wasn't delivered like we now have so what they did was print in the newspaper who had mail in the post office to be picked up. In reading a newspaper of the time we found that our Grandfather William Earl had mail to be picked up.


For Byron this vacation became a quest to find all the information about his ancestors that he could. It was amazing all the info the church had, they had a building that contained records on everyone who lived in Nauvoo. We found out where William Earl lived and farmed, they had records of Perkins who lived there,we need to see if we are related. We could have spent a week or more there but we only spent 3 days.

The sunsets were beautiful every night there and made for great pictures. This one is a statue of Joseph and Hyrum as they were leaving Nauvoo for the last time. It sits on a hill overlooking Nauvoo next to the Temple, it is a beautiful setting.


The Temple is Beautiful inside and out. There is a special spirit in this Temple. William Earl went to this Temple just before leaving Nauvoo and heading to Salt Lake. There is a sense of peace in Nauvoo now unlike when William lived there. What a wonderful place Nauvoo is, we would love to go back and spend more time going through the buildings and records and reliving the time when our ancestors walked the streets of Nauvoo.