Drive Continued...

Day Four: 

Our Hotel was 5 minutes from the University of Notre Dame so we drove through their campus on our way out of Indiana

 Ohio!

 Visited the Kirtland Ohio Temple

 We sat in some major traffic as we entered Pennsylvania. Dont worry, we were stopped when I took this picture

 I am proud to say that I successfully drove through New York....not New York City itself but upstate New York was just as stressful

 Bridge on the way to Niagara Falls

 We got to Niagara Falls just as the sun was going down. The falls were beautiful, I love that you can look across and see Canada on the other side.

 We went and ate dinner at the Hard Rock Cafe (the only sanitary looking restaurant nearby:) then walked back to see the falls in the dark. It is really cool how they light them up at night, the pictures don't do it justice.

 If I touched the Canada wall on the other side through the bars does that count as visiting another country? We wished we would have had time to go through but it was getting late and we still had a few hours of driving to get to our next hotel for the night. Next time we hope to go to the Canada side, we hear its much prettier over there and more to see and do.

Day Five: Visited Palmyra New York!

Hill Cumorah-I'm excited! We are going back here for the Hill Cumorah Pageant this weekend!  

 

Book of Mormon Printing Press

Palmyra New York Temple

 Smith Family Farm. A couple from Mike's hometown is serving as missionaries here, they were nice enough to take us around to show us some sites and even sent us with a lunch for the road. 

The Sacred Grove

 This is one of the trees that is believed (based on the year of the tree) to have been in the grove in 1820 when Joseph Smith came to the grove. We saw a few other "witness trees" like this one.

"It was on the morning of a beautiful, clear day, early in the spring of eighteen hundred and twenty. It was the first time in my life that I had made such an attempt, for amidst all my anxieties I had never as yet made the attempt to pray vocally." See Joseph Smith History

 We were welcomed into Massachusetts by this beautiful blue sign...

 and this beautiful drive! The trees grow like weeds out here!

 Our first meal at home- Marie Calendars invited us for dinner

 Our pod arrived a few days later! It looked about the same, only the boxes on the bottom are more squished. I am happy to say that nothing broke!

We were able to find some some young guys in our ward that are here for the summer selling pest control to come help us unpack it in the evening (Which I was very grateful for living on the 3rd floor!) Between getting dropped off and waiting for them to come help unload we got pounded with rain...in the picture Mike is trying to cover the vents with a tarp, he must have been successful because even our mattress on the very top didn't get wet! 

Yesterday we unpacked the last boxes, which included unpacking and assembling our 250lb couch we ordered online...for not seeing (or sitting on) it in person we are pretty happy with it. It was a stretch to order a couch online...so I'm glad it worked out well!