St. Louis, Cherryvale, and Home

In St. Louis, we went to the Gateway Arch. It is large. I wish I'd known then how to take panoramas, since I couldn't get the whole thing in one picture without being far away. The older four kids and I went rode up to the top of the arch. There are only small little windows to look out of, but it does have a fun view.





After St. Louis, we drove to Cherryvale, KS, as I have ancestors from there, and Rebecca wanted to go to the cemetary and look at records. The town is small, but the cemetary is large and well-kept and was filled with flowers, probably more than most cemetaries that I've seen.

We all helped to look for gravestones, but while Rebecca was in the town clerk's office the rest of us went to the park. Also of interest is that Cherryvale's sidewalks are all decorated with cherries. Kind of cool.


By this time, our kids (and to some degree Rebecca and I) were getting worn out. We had originally planned to head up to see Independance, MO, Adam-ondi-Ahman, and Winter Quarters, but decided instead to head home. From Cherryvale, we drove to Denver, spent the night, and got home the next day.

Overall, it was a great experience. The kids had a fun time, and we had a good time being with them. It was neat to see new things, and see things in person that we had only read about or seen on TV or in movies. It was fun to see family in their homes and get to experience some of their typical environment.

Virginia and North Carolina

OK, I'm going to finish out our summer trip. After DC, we drove to Williamsburg, VA. In the morning, the kids enjoyed the outdoor pool at the motel.


After that we went to Colonial Williamsburg and walked around. It was very hot, and the kids didn't really want to be there. So we basically walked up one street and down the other. You can pay a lot of money to go inside some of the shops and learn more, but we didn't do that. It probably would have been interesting, but it still would have been hot, and we probably wouldn't have stayed long.

From Williamsburg we drove to Jamestown and took the ferry across the river, which put us in North Carolina, and we drove down to Elizabethtown, where we spent the night.


In the morning, we went to Kitty Hawk along the Outer Banks. There was a large memorial on a hill. We were surprised to find the hill covered with grass, since all the pictures from the time showed sand dunes. We found out that the sand dunes had been grassed over, and also trees planted in the surrounding area, as a protection against erosion of the sand dunes from wind. There is a small visitors center with an accurate, flight-worthy (but never flown) model of the Wright Flyer. There are also markers for where the final, longest flights occurred.

Next we went across the street to the beach. I've always thought of the east coast beaches as not being very interesting. I seem to vaguely remember an east coast beach (not positive where) from when my family took a vacation back east when I was a teenager, and wasn't impressed. When Rebecca and I went to Florida last year, the waves were non-existent. However, this beach trip was fun. I think the waves were slightly smaller than in California, but they were still plenty large enough for jumping in. We flew kites (mostly me) since, hey, it's Kitty Hawk, you have to fly something.

After Kitty Hawk, we drove to Raleigh to see Andrew and Maren and their family. The next day Rebecca, Jessica, Katie, and Matthew drove to see Rebecca's aunt Geraldine that lives in NC, and Andrew took Brent, Josh, and I to his work. It was fun to see some of the artwork Andrew works on. It seems like a fun environment to work in. He showed us the motion capture cameras that they use for creating realistic movements in the video games. And the kids (his and ours) spent most of their time playing Little Big Planet.

Later that afternoon we all went over to Andrew and Maren's friends, the Judds. Andrew and I rode around in the kayaks, and we all went for a ride on their dock, which also doubles as a boat. It was quite hot and humid. We tried playing badminton, and were extremely sweaty after a few minutes.

On Sunday we went to church with them (just Sacrament meeting). They really have a small church. I went to find a bathroom and found that the door on the side of the chapel led outside.

After Sacrament, we drove to Andrews, NC, which is where Rebecca's mom was born. We didn't know where exactly she was born, so we just got to see what the country looked like. It was very pretty, though it was night by the time we got there, so we missed some of the view. These next pictures were taken in front of the hotel in Andrews, NC. The kids are holding stuffed animals that Rebecca's Aunt Geraldine gave them.


The next morning we took the scenic route into Tennessee, as a more direct, but probably less scenic, route was closed. We spent the whole day driving until we got to a hotel that night, just outside of St. Louis.

DC part 3

The last day in DC, we toured the Library of Congress and the Capitol. The Library of Congress gets so many books (pretty much all published books) that they have set up a kids reading room in the basement. We all wanted to stay and read, but we had to leave to get to the Capitol tour (which we still were late for because of long lines to get through security).

In the Capitol, there are a lot of statues of famous people from the various states (generally two from each state). Jessica found the statue of Brigham Young. The other Utah statue is one of Philo Farnsworth, who invented the TV.

We also visited the Senate Gallery, from where you can watch the Senators debating things on the Senate floor. To get in, we had to go to Senator Orrin Hatch's office. I thought this was funny - a sign indicating where wheelchairs could go, but full of posts that would make it difficult to get there. Once we got into the Gallery, there were only two Senators there. One of them was John McCain. They were not debating any particular bill, but I think just making statements to get them onto the congressional record.



This is us in front of the Capitol.

DC part 2

The next day we woke up early to get into DC before sunrise.

This last one was taken from the Lincoln Memorial
This is us in front of the Lincoln Memorial.

This is Jessica and Katie in front of the Supreme Court building. The Supreme Court was the thing Jessica most wanted to see in DC. I think she said it was mostly because she liked the Greek architecture.
Because we got there so early, we got to the Air and Space Museum fairly early. We spent most of the rest of the day there. Rebecca's brother Rick joined us partway through (he's a pilot based in DC, though he lives in Nauvoo).


On the right is the X-1, the plane that Chuck Yeager flew to break the sound barrier. On the left is SpaceShipOne, which won the X-Prize for being the first privately funded ship to carry a passenger into space.
There were a lot of neat things in the Air and Space Museum, such as many satellites that went into orbit, the lunar rover, and an exhibit of pictures of planets and moons in our solar system. There was also a lot on the Wright Brothers, which was fun, as we also went to Kitty Hawk later in the trip. The kids particularly enjoyed an area of the museum with hands-on exhibits on principles of flight, like lift, thrust, and a plane whose surfaces the kids could control.

DC temple and Arlington cemetary

On Sunday, after church in Baltimore, we went to the Washington DC temple and took some pictures.
The next two are candid pictures. Brent and Jessica were just resting on each other, and I thought it was cute. The one after was Rebecca, the girls, and Brent having a laugh (though you can't really see Brent in this one).

The next day we went to the Goddard Space Flight Center Visitors Center, but realized when we got there that it was closed. We had originally planned to go another day, when it was going to be open, but forgot to recheck when our plans changed. It wasn't a problem, because the Rocket Garden (full-size rockets outside) was still accessible, but it was pathetic. Only a couple of rockets, and none of the important ones.

After that, we went to Arlington Cemetery. Here is the tomb of the Unknown Soldier, with remains from soldiers from WWI on.

I did not realize it, but there is another Unknown Soldier tomb, for unknown soldiers who died in the Civil War. This is their monument.
This is just a gravestone that I though was really neat with the draped flag carved into it.

Philadelphia and Ft. McHenry

In Philadelphia, we saw a lot of things. Most of the interesting things are within a couple of blocks of each other. We saw Independence Hall and the Liberty Bell. These pictures were taken in the room where the Declaration of Independence was signed and the Constitution was debated.

Here some of the kids are in front of the Liberty Bell.
We also saw Betsy Ross' house, Benjamin Franklin's printing office, and toured the functioning US Mint. We also learned the value of a good tour guide. We had one person give a very interesting tour of Independence Hall, then went next door, and another person give a very dull tour of the first Congress building.

Statue of Liberty and Pennsylvania

Leaving Ohio, we crossed Pennsylvania. This was a long day driving, with a brief stop in Hershey, PA. I did not notice any smell of chocolate, for the record. By the time we got there and had dinner, the Hershey store was closed, so we settled for buying candy at the gas station.
The next morning we took the ferry out to Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty. Ellis Island had a lot of cool exhibits talking about how immigration has changed over the years, such as gender and nations of origin. It was interesting to give a historical perspective to the current immigration debates. There were exhibits about immigration debates from 100 years ago, when the "problem" immigrants were either from Ireland or Eastern European countries. There were similar concerns back then over the burden the immigrants would be, but there was also information about how the economy grew during that period. Not making judgments, but interesting historical perspective.

The same ferry took us to the Statue of Liberty. We climbed to the top of the base, but not to the crown.

The next day we went to the Mack Truck factory in Macungie, PA. We got to see the whole assembly line and saw how they customized the trucks based on customer requirements. It was mostly manually assembled. The most automation we saw was a machine that would put tires onto rims, and only a single operator. Pretty simple automation, really. Unfortunately, we couldn't take pictures.

At Valley Forge (named after iron forges), we saw General Washington's base (which he rented at his own expense from a resident), as well as troop cabins. In the picture below, the kids are demonstrating how to get a cannonball wound (I already know how to get one! - Brian Regan).

After Nauvoo, we drove to Millersburg, Ohio for some geneology. Along the way, we stopped at Kirtland, Ohio and saw the temple there. We also stopped at Lake Erie in Cleveland.

Ohio was very pretty, particularly when we were off the highway. Millersburg is out in the middle of a lot of farmland. We saw lots of Amish riding their carts around. We spent most of the next morning looking for cemeteries, a couple of which were somewhat hidden and hard to find.