NY/Canada Trip: Part 3: Palmyra

The night we arrived in Palmyra was a little wet, so we headed out for dinner instead and watched Toy Story 3 until the rain subsided. Setting up tents in the rain is not my favorite time to set up tents so we were glad it was pretty well over by the time the movie was out. B and the adults LOVED the movie; it was so fun! It was a little much for the two little ones and little J needed quite a bit of coaxing to stay in the theater.

Here we are at the Smith Farm outside of Palmyra. Big J's sister and her husband were able to join us for this leg of the trip. Yay! It was a nice day in Palmyra, though a little busier than usual, I suspect from all the pageant goers. The Smith farm is on a lovely spot of land and it was interesting to go get a little more personal with the location and learn some information about the farm.

This is inside the Smith home, which seemed a decent size. Good thing since there were 11 people residing in it much of the time. Lucy loved herbs so we got a pic with what her drying herbs may have looked like.

In the sacred grove. The woods are very still, other than my rambunctious children. I did get them to be still and listen to the quiet still for a few moments. According to everyone who likes berries, which means all but me, the grove has some very scrumptious blackberry and raspberry bushes.

Atop Hill Cumorah. From here we could look out a ways and most prominent is the set up of the pageant stage down the steep hill.

The printing press where the first 5,000 copies of the Book of Mormon were run and sold. It's quite a process to get that many pages run back in the day!!

This bookstore/print shop is right on Main Street in Palmyra.

We also went and checked out the Eerie Canal. This is a pic our brother-in-law took of us standing on the bridge above the lock.
So super cool that we got to see the lock work!! Two boats were headed downstream and we watched the water drain out of the lock and the doors open to allow the boats passage downriver. This lock is over 100 years old!

Saying goodbye's to Aunt and Uncle and Grandma and Grandpa. And the fairgrounds. Even if we went again we don't know if we'd camp here. Between no privacy and noisy neighbors it was not our favorite camp spot. In fact, I'm pretty sure it would rank dead last. Oh well, it was cheap.
The Palmyra Temple. After we said goodbye's to family we drove up to the temple and hung out on the grass and read books for a while of peace and quiet downtime. We walked around the temple and enjoyed the beautiful gardens. Temple grounds are always so well kept and beautiful.

After a bit of downtime we drove for a ways before reaching the Peter Whitmer farm, which is where the LDS church was officially organized. We had our picnic lunch outside and then went into the visitor's center--which doubles as a meeting house, and the Whitmer log cabin home. There was entirely too much talking in the tour for our kids to listen longer than a couple minutes.