So... since we are "only" living 7,5 hours away from Palmyra, NY, and I've always wanting to go there to see the historic church sites, we decided to go there on a 3-day-weekend.
And we did...
Anthon found out that the first two October weeks are the prettiest there because of the trees turning yellow, orange and red.
And they really did! It was soooo beautiful! I wish we had a nice expensive camera...some day we will... as you have probably noticed...I love taking pictures!
We left home at 5 am on Saturday morning and first drove up to the Niagara Falls (Canada) which are about 1,5 hours away from Rochester.
The weather was perfect!!!! It was warm, no clouds, sun was shining... we couldn't have asked for better weather!!!!
Anthon after sneezing... *just kidding*
When we got to the Visitors' center, I saw that tickets for 4 different things (including a boat trip) was 39 Dollars. I thought that you have to pay 39 Dollars, whether you do all the 4 things or not.
Anthon really wanted to go on the "Maid of the Mist" boat that goes really close to the waterfalls. But I thought that spending 80 Dollars was a little bit too pricy.
Because Anthon had been there with his family several years ago, he called his dad and told him that we were there.
He told him that we were thinking about doing the boat thing, but that I thought it was a little bit too expensive.
So, Anthon's dad Frank wanted to talk to me and told me that we should definitely do it... even if it costs 80 bucks... and that Anthon and I will probably not come back again... and that we should do that...
That was really, really nice of him!
But I was still hesitant!
So we walked to the boat place... and saw that a boat trip was only 15 Dollars... and of course, I wanted to do that for so much less money!
Because the Maid of the Mist goes very close to the waterfalls, they hand out rain jackets to everybody...
The Niagara Falls are soooo beautiful!
It was so much fun going on that boat.. and then after that walking around and enjoying the beautiful weather!
After that, we wanted to go to our hotel in Rochester, about 1,5 hours away...
Since we had to go back to the US, we had to go through the border control.
When we were standing in line, we saw this car with the bumper sticker.. pretty funny!
We were lucky that we could go there... I just got my travel permission. Because my permanent residence application is still pending, I wasn't allowed to re-enter the US. But because we applied for the travel permission, we could go and see the Niagara Falls.
Since I'm a foreignor, we had to go to a border control building and had to wait 1 hour to go back to the US. Every foreignor has to go there... the waiting room was pretty crowded... and I was soooo tired!
Next morning, we went to Palmyra to see the sights.
I had never seen a yogurt with two colors like that.. so I had to take a picture of it..
The first thing we did was going to Sacred Grove. It was a lovely Sunday morning and there were only a few other people in the entire Grove.
So it was really quiet and we could enjoy our time there.
After a while, we sat down on a bench and prayed together as a couple and thanked Heavenly Father for all the many blessings we have received in the past few months.
After that, we read together the 1st vision and talked about life in general. We had a great time there!
Then we walked around the Palmyra New York temple and took some pictures.
We went to a session on Monday morning, where I met a couple that had served on Temple Square- the Fairbanks! What a surprise!
We also went to Hill Cumorah. This is a view from the hill.
We also went to the Visitors' center and took a short tour. It was way different than Temple Square where you take a 30 minute tour and learn tons of facts.
After that, we went to the E.B. Grandin print shop where the first 5000 Books of Mormon were printed.
Clarissa Judkin's old roommate and close friend serves her mission in the Rochester New York mission. The sisters serve switch their station every day.
While we were in the print shop, Anthon remembered that Clarissa's roommate serves her mission in this area... and exactly 3 seconds later she passed us... CRAZY!
Anthon couldn't remember her last name...so he just said" Kristin!"...she turned around and was, of course, very surprised...
That happens a lot on Temple Square...but S. Eagan said that it was her first time in 12 months that she met somebody she knows.
So she continued taking us on a tour... she did a great job!
We learned something about the entire story, about contracts, about the process of printing and binding a book.... very complicated, but very interesting!!!
This is an announcement about the BoM as it was printed in the newspaper about 10 days before the church was formally organized.
We went back to our hotel...and drove back to Springfield next morning...
The drive was not that bad and the scenery was soooo pretty!
