The fastest way to get from point A to point B

Is not how we got to Chicago. We had a week to kill, so we drove to a lot of different places. Here are some highlights from our trip:

Warning: a LOT of pictures are in this post!

After our glorious time at the shore we drove to Wilkes-Barre, PA for some Fourth of July fun. We read online that if you're going to be in the northeast end of PA then you should hit up their fireworks. It was one of the best firework shows I've ever seen.

The Little One showing off her Fourth of July smile. (The dress she is wearing is one that my sisters and I wore when we were babies.)

Waiting for the fireworks to begin.



The next day we started driving north. We hit up Oakland, PA(formerly known as Harmony, PA) to see the restoration of the Priesthood site. It was really neat. We enjoyed that it wasn't overrun with tourists.



You might think that our next stop would be Palmyra, NY. It's coming. But while researching things to do we read rave reviews about the Corning Glass Museum. So we decided to spend a night in Corning, NY and hit up the museum for two days. We had a great time. Not only were we fascinated with learning about glass, but we had a great time making our own glass things. I'll post pictures in another post of the finished products. Sweetie, Woof-woof, and The Guy blew their glasswork and I pulled and molded mine.





Our next stop was Palmyra, NY. We learned a lot about church history and had a great time.

Sweetie and Woof-woof in front of the Palmyra Temple.

Sweetie in the Smith Frame House. Those bricks he's standing on are the ones that Joseph Smith moved at one point to hide the plates.

Woof-woof was a companion for the day.

For some reason I like to take pictures of the Little One getting her diaper changed in important places. Here she is in the Sacred Grove.

Sweetie and Woof-woof in the Sacred Grove.

Woof-woof and I on the Hill Cumorah. (We watched the Pageant that evening. Hint: go the day before it officially opens, it's the dress rehearsal and there are no crowds. The pageant was pretty impressive. The special effects they did were cool.)

All of us in the Whitmer home.


Next on our trip we started driving West. The drive lends itself to stopping at Niagra Falls. They were big and beautiful. This is us while we were dry. About five minutes later it started pouring and we were soaking wet for the rest of the day.


After our incredibly brief trip to Niagra(we'll have to go back when we have passports with us) we drove to Kirtland, OH. Here we are in the Whitney store(by this point the kids were sick of visiting church history sites).

And now for a brief interruption to the photo chronolog. It was at this point in the trip that we found out that our moving company had messed up and wouldn't be delivering our belongings to Chicago for yet another week. I must admit that we were(are still) grumpy about this. We probably would have changed our trip drastically had we known this. Even a day earlier and we would have still been northeast enough to travel around New England more. But since we were already in Ohio we decided to take an extra day in Cleveland(so The Guy could work with a collegue) and keep traveling to Chicago.

While The Guy was working we visited the Cleveland Natural History Museum. I was pretty excited when we ran into Lucy and had to take a picture of her. Sweetie and Woof-woof still don't get it. Someday Woof-woof will be excited that she has a picture with her.

Sweetie and Woof-woof playing in the Music area in the museum.


Next up: Chicago