Nauvoo and Carthage Jail

Me and Mat went to Nauvoo 20 years ago, so it was drastically different this time!  Remember when President Hinckley announced this temple?  I remember the audible gasp from the congregation at the Conference Center.  That was such a great time!  It's a beautiful temple inside and out.  Me and the girls did some baptisms, I was so grateful to have them there with me!  Mat and the other kids saw some of the sites, then we met at the evening musical program with the young and senior missionaries.  I spent an hour at the Lands and Records office and found that I have more ancestors than I thought that owned land in Nauvoo and the surrounding area.  It's fun to know that, I want to dig deeper into our family history and learn more about the people that came before us.

taken as the sun was setting over the Mississippi River

It was a blessing to run into my cousin, Kathleen, and her family!  Her daughter is one of the performing missionaries.  Unfortunately, she's very ill, so they were there to take her home.  We got to see her in her last performance.  She had to leave her mission 19 days early.  All the performances were so great, the pageant included!

I'm grateful the church has preserved the place our first prophet was martyred.  There is a special spirit there.  For a long time I thought that Joseph, Hyrum, and the others were betrayed by the jailer (who lived on the first floor).  But it didn't happen that way at all.  He was away when the mob of hundreds of raging men came and forced their way in. Knowing they were being held upstairs, they rushed up the stairs while others surrounded the building, guns at the ready.   I'm including a picture of what Lucy Mack Smith wrote on seeing her murdered sons:

Washington DC

It poured rain the entire time we were in Washington D.C.  We were soaked to the bone, despite our umbrellas and rain ponchos.  There were specific monuments we wanted to get to, and tried to be strategic in our planning!  But the National Mall is so big, there's a lot of space between those monuments!

MLK

Lincoln

One of the most decent, ethical presidents we've had (in my humble opinion!)

Vietnam
I went there to find the name of my cousin's birthfather.  She never met him so it was an honor to find his name and get her a picture of it.

James C. Jensen, killed in action May 1972

Washington

Holocaust Memorial Museum

Of all the memorials, this is the one I didn't want to miss, no matter what!  You learn about how Hitler came to power, how he manipulated the system to his benefit and for his agenda.  You learn about how, step by step, the repression of Jews and other "unfit" populations started.  You learn about the promises of work and prosperity he made to the German people.  You learn about and see in pictures the atrocities meted out in concentration camps, the hard labor, starvation, disease and death.  You learn about the allies getting the upper hand, and the Nazi's last push to kill as many people as possible.  You also learn about the resistance, and the people who helped save Jews by providing safe havens for them.  There were thousands of people who worked against the regime despite the risk of death if they were caught.  These are the stories I love to read.  The most recent book I read was "Irena's Children" (written by Tilar Mazzeo) about the Warsaw ghetto.  Such an inspiring story that you should read!  Sir Nicolas Winton is another angel to check out, and of course Elie Wiesel.  He was instrumental in getting this memorial set up.

I couldn't bring myself to take pictures of anything but quotes, it just seemed wrong.  But hopefully I've portrayed well enough what the museum is like.

Washington DC Temple and Visitors Center

The temple sustained some damage after the 2015 earthquake and is being retrofitted and repaired.

Philly PA

We rushed through Philadelphia because we needed to make it to the campground in Maryland before night fall.  We went to the Mint and learned about the process of making our coins, saw the Liberty Bell and some of the historic sites close to that, and then of course, at some Philly Cheesesteaks.  😀

New York City

On the way to NYC, we made a slight detour in Rhode Island so we could go here.  There are lots of locations scattered all over the eastern part of the country, and we were determined to find one.  Remember when it was just down the road from us in Bountiful?  Many happy nights eating froyo with friends and our family at our favorite place!

It was kind of exciting approaching the city.  The energy, the buzz, the excitement of being in a place like that is fun.  It didn't last for very long.  😏

Mat found a campground (and I use the term loosely!) that was just over the water in New Jersey (not far by ferry to lower Manhattan).  As we drove through the neighborhood toward where we would stay for 3 nights, I thought we must be going the wrong way, or he was mistaken about the address.  I could not picture a campground in the middle of skyscrapers and apartments.  We ended up in a campground, all asphalt and gravel, right on the shore of New Jersey.  We had everything we'd had in the other campgrounds, expect trees and grass.  A little different experience, but it was relatively quiet and worked OK.

This was a first for me!  Never thought I'd see anything like it.

After we got there, we decided we had enough time to take the kids to Times Square.  I might have rethought that if I knew how many times we'd be in Times Square for other things.  That place is CRAZY in every sense of the word!

The lights, the chaos, and the people in Times Square = sensory overload. And just a little bit stressful when you're keeping track of 4 kids on top of it.  On the walk back as we headed for our subway stop, I pulled out my phone to take a picture of the Empire State Building.  I had my MetroCard in the same pocket as my phone in my purse.  When I pulled my phone out, the MetroCard fell to the ground.  I got literally two steps into the street when Brooklyn, who was right behind me, asked if it were mine.  Almost before I could react, a "nice" woman shrieked, "NO! THAT'S MY METRO CARD!" and grabbed it off the ground before I could get to it.  When we got to the other side of the street, I opened my purse to look for MY metro card.  Of course, it wasn't there.  I shrieked, "JUST FOR THE RECORD, THAT WAS MY METRO CARD!!"  She was long gone.  She no doubt needed it more than I did.  It was only a $30 mistake.  I was more careful after that.   

The Manhattan skyline with the barely visible Brooklyn Bridge

The next day, we went to Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty.  Mat and I have been before, but I loved helping the kids understand the sacrifice thousands and thousands made to come to this country.

The building on Ellis Island is really cool, you learn about what people had to do to be accepted, including a "six second" medical exam.  People that were sick were either sent to the infirmary to get better or sent back to their countries.  It was fascinating to learn about, to think about how people felt after weeks and weeks on a boat, and seeing Lady Liberty come into view.  It makes me sad to think about those that got sent away, after sacrificing so much, then having their dreams dashed.

That second night, we went to see Anastasia on Broadway.  It was AWESOME!  I love going to musicals, but especially Broadway musicals.  They do such an amazing job!

The next day we went to the 9/11 Memorial and museum.  I didn't take many pictures there, there's a section of the museum they don't allow pictures in.  That's where all the personal effects are.  Shoes, purses, brief cases, ID cards, etc.  They have the timeline, minute by minute, of what happened that day.  From security footage of the hijackers getting through security, the flight patterns the planes took, the length of the flights, to the exact times the planes crashed.  They play the news footage, the bewilderment of people running away, and share the stories from survivors.  The fountains outside sit on the exact footprint of the building, and the water runs down instead of up.  The names of every victim from all the attacks are inscribed around the fountains.

We ended our time in NYC at a play called "The Play That Goes Wrong", which was hilariously funny and we laughed the whole time.  It was well worth seeing, if you ever get a chance!

This was hanging in the entry of an old church just off Times Square.  Well said!

Massachusetts

Boston

We didn't spend much time in Boston, long enough to do the Freedom Trail (it's long ... and it was hot).

Ben Franklin - He's kind of a big deal!

A church of some importance to American history.
I just like how it was framed with the trees.

This is the second coolest picture I took there.

This was the thing that saved the day for me.  After walking at least a hundred miles, and being hot and dehydrated, we walked by this place on the way to the car.  The food here was SO GOOD!  I've had a lot of Thai food in my life, it's my favorite food!  We splurged on the sticky rice with mango because most of the kids don't like it.  So me and Mat ate it!  😂

The next day was Sunday, so we went to church in a Boston ward.  And then we had to find a neighborhood viewing party for the World Cup Final.  Because ... World Cup Final.  And we watched until it was clear who was going to win.  The same thing happened 4 years ago when me and Mat were on our 20th anniversary trip in NYC.  It would be safe to say that Mat's the only real fan in the family.  

Plymouth Rock and Cape Cod

Yep.  It's just a big rock.  And a tourist town with lots of shops.  See?  I saved you some time.

If I'd had any idea how cool Cape Cod was, we'd have skipped the rest of Massachusetts and just spent all our time out there!  It's a National Seashore, so it's just beach with native grasses and flora.  No mansions or development and so cool!  We went clear to the tip of the hook, the kids played in the water, we collected beach rocks, had a picnic.  AWESOME!  There were other people there too, I just wouldn't let any of them be in my pictures.