(This post was written by the handsomest man in all the land aka Jonathan Urie, the man of Steele.)
We left our tall house in Philadelphia after scoring an amazing parking spot right in front of our door. Street parking in the area we were staying in is nuts, so believe me when I say that was a small miracle. It sure made loading the car up a whole lot easier.
At any rate, after packing up, we drove our way up to Palmyra, New York. Along the way, we stopped at a McDonald’s, where once again we gave thanks that everyone eats the food there.
It is still a little early in the season for leaf peeping, but we still got a small glimpse of what it must be like when the leaves are in full color
Now, at this point, you may be wondering two things: (1) Where is Palmyra, New York?! and (2) Why are you going there?!
For those of you that don’t know, we are members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (sometimes, people call us Mormons) and several of the important historical events of our church happened in Palmyra. Joseph Smith was the first prophet of our church and his family was living in Palmyra when he received his first vision of our Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ. He also received the golden plates at a nearby hill called Cumorah Hill and after translating them, published the resulting manuscript into the Book of Mormon.
So, there’s are several sites we wanted to see and two-ish days is just about right to see them all!
For today, we decided to go to the Grandin Building, which is where the Book of Mormon was first printed.
We arrived in Palmyra proper at 3:50 PM. This was fortuitous, because the last tour of the Grandin Building was at 4:00 PM and the whole thing closes at 5:00 PM. But we got there in time and had a lovely tour.
There were two sister missionaries who guided us on the tour of the sales counter, the printing press and the book binding room, as well as several art pieces that we see all the time in church manuals 🙂
The kids especially enjoyed the part where they got to fold a sample “signature” of the printed pages.
After the tour, we went to a local Walgreens and picked up some bare necessities (bread, Pirates Booty, microwavable pot pies, and cookies), then headed to our “Bed House” as Isaac calls hotels.
We had an improvised feast of all the afore-mentioned items in one of our rooms (our two rooms are right next door to each other- Hallelujah!), while Jill and I swapped going to the Palmyra temple right around the corner.
For members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, temples are the most holy of all our buildings. They aren’t open to the public after they’ve been dedicated and you have to be at least 12 in order to go in as a member of the church.
At any rate, temples are usually built where there are lots of members of the church, but Palmyra is a bit of an exception to that general rule. It’s a tiny town, but because there’s so many significant things that happened here, the church built a temple back in 2000. It’s unique among temples because it has big picture windows that allow you to see the Sacred Grove. Normally temples have frosted or stained glass and you can’t see into them.
Our temple times overlapped with each other by about 30 minutes. And so I just walked the 1/2 mile from our hotel to the temple. As I walked, I caught some absolutely amazing pictures of the sunset.
It was lovely to be in the temple. The Celestial room (which is supposed to put you in mind of what Heaven is like) is a tiny room by comparison to other larger temples, but we loved it all the same. You can’t go wrong going to the temple!
When Jill got back to the hotel, the kids informed her that they had had a big fight in our absence. Shouting, hurt feelings, screaming three-year-olds, etc. But by the time Jill got back, they had sorted it all out and had calmed themselves down. They are such amazing kids.
And it was a great day.
