Sunday, August 14, 2011

Mount Vernon

The Washington Monument

One of my favorite sights was Mount Vernon, George Washington's home. The view, grounds, and buildings are amazingly gorgeous! It's defiantly an awesome experience to see all of these sights in person and imagine what it would have been like to be apart of that era.
This is the view from the house looking out over the Potomac River.

George Washington's home

The Jefferson Monument

On Sunday afternoon after church we visited the Washington DC visitors center and Temple grounds.

Capital Dome & the Smithsonians


Up close

Inside, we were able to take a tour of the capitol, very cool.


The architecture is just amazing!

The American History
Museum:



a portion of the Berlin Wall

I had to take a picture of a helicopter for my pilot! This is one from the Vietnam era.
So much to see, so little time...

Church History





Palymra Temple

With some creative planning of my mother's all those 12 and older were able to attend the Temple.




monument on the top of Hill Cumorah

We were also able to see the Hill Cumorah Pageant - so amazing, I highly recommend it!




The Sacred Grove

This path is directly behind the Smith family farm house. This beautiful land is lush with green trees, ferns, plants, ect. It would have been back breaking work to fall the huge trees and make room for farming, those Smith boys were tough!



E.B Grandin Building

This is where the first Book of Mormon was printed. In those days it took hours to set the type for one page, we are so spoiled! Above his shop we were able to see print presses and learn about the printing process in those days. We were also told that without the Erie Canal the press needed to print the Book of Mormon would not have been able to travel to Palmyra, NY.





Palmyra Temple

The Temple, Smith farm, Martin Harris home, ect are all out of the central part of town . It's all open farmland surrounding the church sites, so beautiful!


Buffalo, NY

It was a very sad day saying goodbye to Chris and catching our flight leaving Juneau. Thankfully we didn't have much time to think about it, less than 48 hours later we were off on another adventure! We had 10 days on the east coast packed with touristy activities.

Horseshoe Falls, Niagara Falls USA the left side of the picture with the bridge and sky scrapers is Niagara Falls Canada.

View from the water on the Maid of the Mist, it's absolutely breathtaking!


Old Fort Niagara, originally built by the French in the 1700s, was used in the French and Indian War and the Revolutionary War as well as training during WW I and WWII. The body of water in the photo is Lake Ontario and you can even see Toronto Canada across the lake.

Monday, August 8, 2011

Mendenhall Glacier

We were able to actually ride on one of Chris's tours, he is a great tour guide by the way! We had such a great time being entertained by interesting facts while enjoying a beautiful bird's eye view. The glacier is REALLY cold, I have 3 sweaters/jackets on and I was still freezing! C did really well minus dropping his gloves in the freezing glacier water for mom to fish out. Doesn't the snow and ice look like marshmallow puff with roasted edges?


C is bundled in an undershirt, sweater, hoodie, coat and the life jacket required by the FAA to fly up on the glacier.





These beautiful blue fissures are all over the glacier. There was a river of glacier water that we also had the privilage of drinking from- my hands took about 30 to get the feeling back again.

Glacier Gardens

Now that I'm back in reality I think I might finish our Juneau adventures. On our anniversary (number 9 this year) we took a tour of Glacier Gardens and saw a beautiful blend of botanical gardens and the rain forest. Above is a picture of the famous upside down tree.