"cradle of the restoration"

A very funny Gospel Doctrine teacher in Rochester, New York, who looked kinda like the mad scientist on UHF with his white hair sticking up, reminded all of the visitors in the class that Utah was the Lord's SEVENTH choice. "Welcome to the Cradle of the Restoration." Palmyra was fabulous. Pretty much everything we did was on Saturday because we drove up there Friday night after work -

-- Palmyra Temple. All of the windows in the entire building are stained glass of trees, and one of the windows in the foyer looks out over the Sacred Grove. We could hear a thunderstorm during the session, and when we came out of the temple, everything was soaked but the sky was blue and it was a gorgeous, cool, breezy day.
-- Hill Cumorah. We saved our seats for the Pageant - people are there at noon marking their seats so we did it too. The visitor's center has costumes that are no longer used on display. They also have a small Christus (6 or 8 feet tall rather than the 12-foot tall version) and displays about the gold plates and stories from the Book of Mormon. The coolest thing there was original copy of the Book of Mormon. We climbed the hill to see the Angel Moroni statue at the top - holy smokes, that was a straight up climb! It's the weirdest shaped hill.
-- Martin Harris farm. There are no tours of the house or property, which isn't the original anyway. But it was his land, so they have a parking lot for people to stand around on the front lawn.
-- Alvin Smith grave. It's in Palmyra, just a couple of blocks from the printing shop. We went just to see it. Not a lot to do in a cemetery.
-- EB Grandin printing shop. Where the Book of Mormon was published. The missionaries gave explanations of the process for doing so - man, that took a lot of work!
-- Joseph Smith Sr. farm. This had a replica of the log cabin on the original foundation, and the frame house that Alvin and Hyrum built. We toured both. The upstairs of the log cabin was where Moroni appeared and told Joseph about the gold plates. There were 6 or 7 other people in the same little room with him and they all slept right through it. Crazy.
-- the Sacred Grove. Adam and I took my quad with us, and we went in pretty deep to find a quiet spot. Considering it was the height of "tourist season" for the area because of the pageant, that was next to impossible. But we did find somewhere quiet to read the story of the First Vision from the scriptures.
-- the pageant. Jori was like a kid at Christmas with going around taking pictures of all the costumed people before it started. Adam and I got a couple of pictures but she was much worse. Jori decided she's going to save up to apply to be in it in 2 years - Adam and I can't be that specific yet but we want to do that as well. I thought the pageant itself was much too short. One hour is not nearly long enough. We talked about what stories in the Book of Mormon we would use to fill in what we thought were some gaps. The special effects, considering this was done on a stage, were really cool - particularly the storm scenes.
-- Peter Whitmer farm. Sunday, on our way home, we stopped in Fayette to see the farm where the Church was officially organized. That's a little tiny place to cram 60 people - I'll bet they weren't all actually inside. The visitor's center had some interesting displays about the Apostasy and Restoration.

All in all, it was a great experience and I'm glad we did it even though it was a super-fast weekend. I really do want to be in the pageant some day - sooner rather than later. I'm still processing that I was actually there and how everything felt, and it's a little surreal that it happened at all.