Church History Tour- Days 7-9

Day 7-July 19th:

Kirkland, OH

We took a tour of the Kirkland temple.  The Community of Christ owns the temple.  

McKinley was tired and ready for a nap so it probably wasn't the best time to take a tour but we were on a time crunch.  I didn't get to enjoy the tour very much because of McKinley throwing fits but it was neat to see inside the first temple built by the saints.  

After the temple we took a tour of downtown Kirkland.  We saw the Newel K. Whitney store.

Above the store.  I think they said that most of the flooring in this room was original which means we were most likely walking exactly where the prophet Joseph Smith had walked about 200 years ago.

School of the Prophets room.  This is where Emma would have to clean up all the tobacco the men would spit on the floor!  Gross!  This is when the Word of Wisdom came into play. 

Newel K. Whitney's home.  They were very wealthy and very generous people.

John Johnson Inn

Today they use it more of a visitor center/family history center.

We were able to find an ancestor of mine that lived just outside of Kirtland in Hiram.  They actually lived really close to John Johnson's house where Joseph Smith was staying when he got tared and feathered.

Nathan and I were joking around wondering if some of my ancestors were part of the mob that tared and feathered the prophet.  At that time some of my ancestors were really anti Mormon.  With them living so close to where it happened it makes me wonder...

I did ask my dad if he knew but he says he didn't know and actually wondered the same thing.  However, he did say that some of our ancestors were members of the church at that time so he doubts they would have done it.

Day 8- July 20th:

Great Wolf Lodge

We decided to break up our trip a little bit and check out the Great Wolf Lodge.  It was nice to get a break from the RV for a couple nights.

The kids room-the 3 middles slept in here.

Wolf ears!

Howling wolves!

Storytime

Getting ready to go to the water slides.

I didn't take any pictures at the water park but we had a great time!  They had some really fun rides.

On our last night there they kept closing the slides down because of thunder storms.  So annoying!  We stood in line for almost 30 minutes to ride the family ride (5-6 can go on the raft together).  We got to the front of the line and I heard thunder and thought, "Great!  Just my luck.  They are going to close the ride down."  The worker got our raft ready and I told the kids to hurry up otherwise we might not be able to go.  As soon as we were all in the raft we heard thunder again.  I told the worker to just let us go.  Even though she probably wasn't supposed to she let us go! YAY!!!  Dyer turned to me and said, "Don't worry mom, I said a prayer so we'll be fine!"  We were the last ones to go down.  As soon as we got to the bottom they had already closed the rides down.

Day 9- July 21st:

We left the Great  Wolf Lodge and headed for Nauvoo, IL.  We got there late afternoon/early evening.  Once we set up camp we went down to the town to see if there was anything going on.  Luckily they had a pageant going on that night.

We actually ran into some old friends we knew back in Maryland.