Our second trip across America

An account of our family's 1995 trip across the United States to attend Rachael's graduation from Peace College in Raleigh, North Carolina, and to bring her home to Utah. We were in 29 states and one province as part of our 25-day vacation. Joining us on our trip were Michael and Shauna, who had been married just the weekend before, and Grandpa Lange.

Thursday, May 4, 1995
Utah, Colorado

By six o'clock this morning our great ad­venture began—not bad con­sidering we were aiming to leave at four o'clock. The travelers in our car included Grandpa, Mom, and me. The tra­velers in Michael and Shauna's car included Michael, Shauna, Camilla (almost 14 years old), Eliza (12), and Mary (10). Talmage and Anna stayed home to go to school, feed the dog, tend the house, and other­wise behave themselves.

We traveled south on I-15 until Spanish Fork, where we took U.S. highway 6 toward Price and Green River. We joined I-70 just west of Green River and exited at Crescent Junction, where we traveled south to Arches National Park. We drove through part of the park, enjoying the arches and other red-rock formations. Michael and Shauna purchased a pass that allows them free entrance to all national park facilities for a year.

We stopped at a Subway sandwich place in Moab for lunch. We then drove to Mesa Verde National Park in south­western Colorado. We ar­rived late in the day and only had time to look down into the Spruce Tree House and bought tickets for a one-hour guided tour of the Cliff Palace. Mom stayed in the car be­cause she didn't want to climb all the steps and ladders. A peek back into the history and culture of the Anasazi people, who appeared to flourish in this area from about A.D. 600 or 700 until A.D. 1300, was fascinating.

After leaving the park, we drove another 30-some miles to Durango, a lovely resort town in the mountains, and stayed overnight at a Comfort Inn. We bought dinner at a Wendy's and ate in our adjoining motel rooms. The three little girls went in the hot tubs.

Friday, May 5
Colorado, New Mexico

We awoke, greatly refreshed from having started so early yesterday morning. We ate the continental breakfast provided by the motel, packed the cars, and head­ed south toward New Mexico. South­western Colorado is pretty, but we found most of New Mexico dry, color­less, flat, and boring.

We were less than impressed with the sparing way New Mexico uses highway signs. At one point in the northwestern corner of the state could find no marker to tell us which way to go. We stopped at a U.S. Forest Service station, and the lady told us where to find the right road and added us to her tally of how many people couldn't find the highway. She said they were trying to convince the state to put up more signs.

We joined I-25 just north of Albuquerque, New Mexico's largest city, and turned east on I-40 in Albuquerque. We ate lunch at a Kentucky Fried Chicken (and a McDonald's for the little girls). Grand­pa and Eliza walked around the KFC fifteen or twenty times to get their exercise while the rest of us finished eating. We got caught in a traffic jam caused by road construc­tion as we were trying to figure out how to get back on the freeway.

At one point, as we were waiting in a long line of cars trying to turn left onto the freeway, Grandpa, who was riding today in Michael and Shauna's car, climbed right out of the car to tell a man in another car he shouldn't try to crowd in but to take his turn like the rest of us. Michael kept trying to lock the doors from the driver's seat to keep Grandpa in the car, but Grandpa kept unlocking his backseat door and managed to escape. It's a wonder, in today's crazy world, that he didn't get shot or something.

A ways east of Albuquerque we turned south on U.S. highway 285 and followed it all the way to Carlsbad, where we spent the night at a Quality Inn. We ate supper at Wendy's. Camilla, Eliza, and Mary went swimming.

The parts of New Mexico we saw reminded Mom a lot of her experi­ence two years ago in Kansas, and we wondered if New Mexico should be called the Land of Desolation rather than the Land of Enchantment. The one thing that makes traveling tolerable through such areas is our communicating between cars on the CB radios Grandpa borrowed from his friend Wayne Proctor.

Saturday, May 6
New Mexico, Texas

We awoke, packed the cars, ate a complimentary full breakfast in the motel dining room, and left for Carls­bad Caverns National Park, about 20 miles away in the northern end of the Guadalupe Moun­tains. The three-mile hike through the massive underground caves was fascinating, and we de­cided the underside of New Mexico was much more enchanting than the upper side. When we came out of the cave and returned to the parking lot, we found we had left the side door of the minivan open the whole time, but fortunately nothing was missing.

We had already decided yesterday to push through all the way to San Antonio, so we decided against visiting nearby Guadalupe Mountains National Park or going farther south to Del Rio, where we could cross into Mexico.

It was about noon when we left Carlsbad Caverns and headed south and east into Texas. We were much more impressed with the vast openness of the Lone Star State than with parts of New Mexico. We ate lunch at a Pizza Hut in Pecos, then spent most of the day traveling east on I-10 toward San Antonio. We stop­ped in Ozona to get gas and ice cream at a Dairy Queen and drove down a delightful residential street, where massive trees covered the street like a canopy.

We arrived at our Comfort Inn on the east side of San Antonio around 10:00. We didn't eat out, since to­morrow is fast Sunday. Shauna, Camil­la, Eliza, and Mary went swim­ming in the motel swimming pool.

Sunday, May 7
Texas

A pleasant Sabbath day. We held our own church in our motel room—first, a class in which we read and discussed Lehi's dream of the iron rod, likening it to our experience yesterday in the caves; followed by a fast and testimony meeting conducted by me, music led by Shauna, the sacrament administered by Michael and Grandpa, and each person bear­ing testimony. The Spirit was strong­ly present.

Afterward we drove into San Antonio and visited the Alamo and walked along the River Walk. The weekend crowds were heavy, and Michael was not feeling well, so he did not particularly enjoy the Alamo experience.

We stopped at a rest stop to fix sandwiches, but the wind was blow­ing way too hard, so we ate in the cars on our way to Houston. In Houston, after I led us in the rain through an extra loop around the city, we found Spring, the town where Rich and Amy Hogan and their family live. Rich used to work with me in the Missionary Department. We had a delightful evening catching up on old times, the kids getting to know new friends.

Monday, May 8
Texas

We spent a delightful day with the Hogans. This after­noon Michael and Shauna went to visit Gary, one of Michael's former BYU room­mates, who lives somewhere here in the Houston area. Grandpa, Mom, Camilla, Eliza, Mary, and I went to visit the Philipps in Kings­wood, about forty minutes away from where Hogans live. Joe and Mary­beth Philipps and their family used to live across the street from Grandpa in Bountiful.

This evening we had family home evening with the Hogans. For the activity they taught us a new game, "Can you pass a spoon without a mis­take?" After dinner and home evening, Grandpa re­ceived a visit from an old Navy buddy from World War II whom he had not seen in 51 years. They had played phone tag for a while until they finally spoke today for the first time.

Tuesday, May 9
Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Florida

Today was primarily a travel day. We said good-bye to the Hogans, hav­ing had a most enjoyable couple days with them, and left Houston mid-morning, traveling east on I-10 through eastern Texas and across southern Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and into the panhandle of Florida.

As we entered Louisiana, we stopped at a welcome center, where they were offering complimentary drinks of Kool-aid mixed with milk (brought to us, I suppose, by the cows of Louisiana). Eliza had a special code on the bottom of her cup, so she won a prize—a metal Kool-aid canister filled with various little toys.

We had originally planned to visit New Orleans but pretty much decided to skip it, thinking there was really nothing there of real interest to us. New Orleans is something like the Las Vegas of the South. That proved to be a wise decision since they were experi­encing massive flooding from a storm that had just hit there, and many of the roads were closed. New Orleans is five feet below sea level, so the only way they can get rid of all their water is to pump it out.

By the time we reached Alabama, it was raining hard and starting to get dark. The closest we came to actually see­ing the Gulf of Mexico was when we crossed a large bridge over Mobile Bay.

Our original destination for the day was going to have been Mobile, Alabama, but when Michael and Shauna visited Gary yester­day he recommended that we go an addi­tional sixty miles to Pensacola, Florida, because it was a lot prettier there. It also turned out to be a much cheaper place for the motel.

Wednesday, May 10
Florida, Alabama, Georgia

We awoke to a heavy rain falling in Pensacola. On the radio we heard there were tornado watches in the area. Last night we had told the girls we would drive them to the beach, which was about twelve miles from our motel, so they could see the Gulf Coast, but it was raining too hard to bother.

After eating breakfast in our motel rooms, we packed, bought gas, and headed north from Florida into Alabama, where we caught I-65 to Montgomery, the capital of Ala­bama. Some­where south of Mont­go­mery we stopped for lunch at Wendy's. At Montgomery we took I-85 the rest of the way to Atlanta. By early evening we arrived at our Quality Inn in the northeast end of Atlanta.

Thursday, May 11
Georgia

This morning we went to the Atlanta Temple, where most of us (Grandpa, Shauna, Michael, Camilla, Eliza, and I) did baptisms and confirmations from Sister Diane Dieterle's family file names. Brother and Sister Dieterle live in the same ward as our friends, the Stewarts, and work in the temple. Brother Dieterle officiated at the baptismal font while we were there. Mary is still too young to do baptisms for the dead, so Mom waited with her in the auxiliary building located behind the temple. The Atlanta Temple is one of the smaller temples, but like all of them is beautifully land­scaped. We enjoyed being inside the temple. Grandpa took pictures of us in front of the temple afterward.

This afternoon Grandpa, Camilla, Eliza, Mary, and I drove out to Stone Mountain, a state park about fifteen or twenty miles east of Atlanta. Carved on the side of the moun­tain are pictures of three Con­federate heroes: Jefferson Davis, Robert E. Lee, and Stonewall Jackson. We rode a cable car to the top of the moun­tain, where we had a panoramic view of the en­tire area. Mostly we could see trees and the skyline of downtown Atlanta off to the west. After a brief after­noon rainstorm, we hiked down the south side of the mountain and caught the train back to the part of the park where the minivan was wait­ing for us.

This evening we went to the mis­sion home to have dinner and spend the evening visiting with Monte and Ann Stewart and some of their child­ren. The Stewarts used to live in Las Vegas, and we would usually stop to visit them whenever we would travel to southern California. Now Monte is serving as president of the Georgia Atlanta Mission. He and I were missionary com­panions during the time we served together in the mission office in Rio de Janeiro in 1969. We spent a very enjoyable evening with the Stewarts, and it was won­derful to eat an actual home-cooked meal rather than whatever from a fast-food restaurant.

Friday, May 12
Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina

Today we drove the 377 miles from Atlanta to Raleigh. We were on I-85 most of the way until we took I-40 into Raleigh. We passed right through the northern portion of South Carolina without even stopping long enough to set foot on its soil. South Carolina was the state where the Civil War began.

When we pulled into Peace Col­lege this afternoon, Rachael was out on the upper balcony of the Main Building waiting for us. She had ar­ranged for Camilla, Eliza, and Mary to stay overnight with her in her dorm room. The rest of us stayed in Susan and Jay Forsgren's little house a few blocks away from Peace.

Susan used-to-be-Stubbs was originally Rachael's roommate at Peace. As a result of Rachael's influence, she converted to the Church, becoming a Mormon much to the distress of her parents. And then she married a Mormon, the returned missionary who helped teach her the restored gospel.

We ate supper at Hardee's before Grandpa, Mom, Rachael, and I had to get ready for the baccalaureate service in the First Pres­byterian Church in down­town Raleigh, kitty-corner across the street from the state capitol building. The service began at 8:00. The most interesting feature was the baccalaureate address by Ann Laird Jones, the chaplain of Peace College, whom we had an op­por­tunity to meet later in the evening at a reception back at the college. We also met Linda Sparrow, the direc­tor of spiritual life program­ming at Peace. Both Linda and Ann ex­pres­sed warm apprecia­tion for Rachael and her contributions to the school during the past two years.

Saturday, May 13
North Carolina, Virginia

This morning the 123rd com­mence­ment of Peace College was held on the College Green. All of us, including Susan Forsgren, attended to see Rachael receive her associate of arts degree. At the conclusion of the service, the graduates all gathered around the fountain on the Green to sing the Peace alma mater and to throw a rose into the fountain.

After all the shouting and tumult died, Rachael finished mov­ing out of her room, and Grandpa bought all of us lunch in the college dining hall. We then took all of Rachael's stuff back to Susan and Jay's house to figure out how we were going to fit it into our two already fully packed cars. We checked on renting a trailer, a carrier for the top of the car, and shipping. In the end, we decided to try to repack and fit every­­thing in and somehow accomp­lished that feat.

We bid Susan and Jay farewell (they will be moving to Utah this July), said good-bye to Peace College as we drove by one last time, and left Raleigh.

We headed east on U.S. 64, then north on I-95 into Virginia. As we approached Richmond, the capital of Virginia, we took I-295, then I-64 to Wil­liams­burg, where we had reserva­tions at a Comfort Inn. We con­tinue to be amazed, as we have throughout all the South, at all the trees every­where. Part of the drive to Williams­burg was almost like being in a tun­nel, the trees were so thick.

Sunday, May 14
Virginia

We had planned to spend only one night here in Williams­burg, but we decided to spend a second night so we wouldn't have to travel on Sun­day. It rained much of the day, and it was a good rest day for us.

This afternoon we held our own church service again: first a class on the prophetic overview of history pro­vided by Nephi in the Book of Mor­mon, filled in by a lot of American history provided by me, and then a Mother's Day sacrament meeting con­ducted by Michael. Rachael led the music, Grandpa and I admi­nistered the sacrament, and the girls spoke and sang.

Later in the afternoon the rain stopped, and we drove a few miles along the Colonial Parkway—first to Jamestown, the actual site of the first English settlement in North America in 1607, the first capital of Colonial Virginia, and the site of the first representative legislative body in the New World; and second to nearby Yorktown, the place where the final battle of the Revolutionary War was fought and the British army sur­­rendered to the Americans in 1781.

Last night, after having checked into our motel, Michael and I had bought food at a grocery store for our meals today, so we could eat in our motel rooms rather than eating out.

Monday, May 15
Virginia, District of Columbia, Maryland

We arose, had our free continental breakfast, packed the cars, and were on our way again—a few hours north along I-64, I-295, and I-95 to Wash­ington, D.C.

We arrived in Wash­ing­ton around noon and made the mis­take of actually driving into the traffic of downtown Washing­ton, foolishly thinking there might be some place to park. The traffic was slow and frustrating, and we were glad finally to get out of town. We did drive by the Capitol Building, the White House, the Washington Monu­ment, at some distance from the Lincoln and Jefferson memorials, and various other govern­ment build­ings and sites.

In mid afternoon we checked into the Hampshire Motor Inn on New Hamp­shire Avenue in Langely Park, Maryland. The motel offers a dis­counted LDS rate for those who come to attend the temple. Michael and Shauna's car wouldn't start after we had registered at the motel. Fortunately, Shauna is a member of AAA, so she was able to call them, and they sent a truck to tow her car. They were able to get it started again by using jumper cables. After that Grandpa and I went to a nearby K-Mart and bought a set of cables to have for the rest of the trip.

After that bit of excitement, we ate a combined lunch and dinner at the In­ternational House of Pancakes next door to our motel. All throughout the South we kept seeing restaurants called Waffle House, and Shauna wondered what it would be like to eat at one, so this IHOP was maybe as close as we might come. The wait­ress brought the children's menu to Mary (who is ten), Eliza (who is twelve), and Rachael (who is nine­teen going on twenty, but apparent­ly looks something less than that). Camilla (who is thirteen going on fourteen), on the other hand, received the regular menu.

Things seemed to go downhill from there: Grandpa ordered liver and onions, but a considerable time after we had ordered, the waitress returned to say they only had one piece of liver left and asked if he wanted some­thing else. In the end, he stayed with the liver and received his meal free. Still later, the waitress returned to tell Eliza they were out of the spaghetti she had ordered. She ended up having pancakes. The waitress was nice, however.

This evening we drove over to the Washington Temple and went through the visitors' center. The director, Don Christensen, and his wife are long-time friends of Shauna's and spent part of the evening visiting with her and Michael before taking all of us on a tour.

Tuesday, May 16
Maryland, District of Columbia, Pennsylvania

We had planned to do an endow­ment session in the Washington Temple, but we ran out of day too soon. We ate a regular breakfast in the IHOP next to our motel, then tried to find a Metro station to ride into Washington. When we couldn't find the one that was supposedly just down the road, we stopped and asked some­one, and he very kindly got in his car and led us to one (two actually, but the parking lot was full at the first one). We rode three different trains from Prince George Plaza station to the Smithsonian station on the Mall in downtown Washington.

We went to the relatively new museum on the Holocaust, which opened in 1993, and spent several sobering hours learning about the Nazi atrocities to the Jews in the first half of this century during the 1930s and 40s. Our feet were tired, and we de­cided we didn't have time to walk over to the Lincoln Memorial, and we had driven by the Capitol, the White House, the Washington Monu­ment, and numerous other famous things yesterday, so we caught the Metro back to our parked cars. We took only one train heading in the wrong direction and had to backtrack a few stops, but without too much difficulty got back to Prince George Plaza.

Next we got on the I-495 beltway, drove past the temple again, and headed north on I-570 to where we took the U.S. 15 freeway north across the Mason-Dixon line into Penn­syl­vania. We stopped first at a Wendy's in Frederick, Maryland, for our com­bined lunch and dinner.

We reached Gettysburg, in south­ern Pennsylvania, about 6:30 or 7:00 in the evening. The visitors' center had closed, so we walked through the cemetery and stood on the site where President Abraham Lincoln delivered the Gettysburg Address on November 19, 1863:

Four score and seven years ago, our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, con­ceived in liberty, and dedicated to the pro­po­sition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so con­ceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a por­tion of that field as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But in a larger sense we cannot dedicate, we cannot con­secrate, we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember, what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion, that we here highly re­solve that these dead shall not have died in vain, that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of free­dom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

Approaching the cemetery, we had also driven by some of the battle­field, where in the summer of 1863 thousands of Northern and Southern soldiers had fallen during the Civil War. Today, in the twilight of a lovely spring evening, we felt the peace and beauty of this place and drew inspiration from what William J. Bennett described as "the greatest and most famous speech ever de­livered on American soil" (The Book of Virtues, 568).

It was just getting dark as we left Gettysburg and headed east on U.S. 30 through York, across the Susque­han­nah River, to Lancaster, where our Quality Inn motel awaited us. We checked in at 10:00.

Wednesday, May 17
Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York, Connecticut

It was raining again this morning. Shauna, Mom, and I went early to find a laundromat where we could wash clothes before we checked out of our motel. We were in Lancaster County, home to many Amish people, so we spent part of the morning driving around seeing the commercialization of their quaint Pennsyl­vania Dutch culture by non-Amish people. Lancaster County also has more covered bridges than any other county in the country except one (we're not sure where that county is), but we didn't actually find any covered bridges.

We finally got on the Pennsylvania Turnpike (I-76), a toll road, and drove toward Philadelphia. We stop­ped first at Valley Forge, where George Washington and the Conti­nen­tal Army spent the winter of 1776–77 during the Revolutionary War. We went through the visitors' center, went to the Memorial Chapel, and visited the actual house that General Washington used as his headquarters that winter.

I had been at Valley Forge in the summer of 1964 for a national Boy Scout jamboree and celebrated my fifteenth birthday here.

We then drove the rest of the way into Philadelphia, and although the distance was short it took us a couple of hours because the traffic was so heavy. We're not sure why the traf­fic heading into the city was so slow in the late afternoon.

In downtown Philadelphia we visited the Independence National Historic Site. The visitors' center and other build­ings were closed, but we were able to see the outside of Independence Hall, where both the Declaration of Inde­pendence and the Constitution were adopted and signed, the Liberty Bell, and numerous other historic sites from the infancy of our country. Phila­delphia was the capital of the United States during most of the Revolutionary War period and during the first decade under the Constitution (1790–1800) until the new capital in Washing­ton was built.

We left Philadelphia on I-95 and headed northeast toward New York City. It was just starting to get dark as we left Pennsylvania and crossed into New Jersey. Somewhere along the New Jersey turnpike we stopped at a service plaza to eat a late supper and to call Mark Tanner to get exact directions to his house in New Canaan, Con­necticut. He said we were about three hours away from his house still. As we left New Jersey, we crossed the George Wash­ington Bridge, a toll bridge, into New York. After a bit of con­fusion about Mark's directions, we figured out how to head toward Con­necticut. We ar­rived at the Tanners' house about midnight.

Thursday, May 18
Connecticut, New York

This morning we arose and had breakfast at the Tanners' before driving into New York City. We an­ti­cipated expen­sive parking, so all nine of us fit into our minivan, rather than taking both vehicles. We drove the car all the way down the west side of Manhattan Island to near Battery Park, where we parked the car and bought tickets for the ferry ride to the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island. We had a clear view of the Statue of Liberty without leaving the boat and could only imagine the thrill that thousands of Old World im­mi­grants must have felt through the years as they first saw Lady Liberty standing there in the harbor and beckoning, in the words of Emma Lazarus, with her outstretched beacon-hand that glows with world-wide welcome:

Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breath free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me.
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!

We left the ferry at Ellis Island and spent several hours visiting the National Park Service restoration of the facility through which so many thousands of immigrants were pro­cessed into America during the late 1800s and early 1900s.

After we took the ferry back to Manhattan, we rode the subway up­town to visit the Metro­politan Museum of Art. In the six-block walk between our subway stop and the museum, we walked across such famous streets as Park Avenue, Madison Avenue, and Fifth Avenue. We also saw Central Park. After spending the last hour in the museum before it closed, we caught the subway back downtown to find our parked car. We also saw such famous places as Wall Street, the World Trade Center, the Empire State Building, and some of the streets that have either songs ("59th Street Bridge") or movies ("Miracle on 34th Street") named after them.

On our way back to the Tanners' house in Connecticut, our gas gauge reached empty before we could ever find a gas station, and our little distance-till-empty computer reached 0 miles, which made us a bit nervous before we finally found a place to fill up in New Rochelle. We returned to the Tanners' about 8:00 in the evening, before either Mark or Ann returned, but they had ordered Pizza Hut pizza for us to eat. Mark works for PepsiCo, the company that owns Pizza Hut, KFC, and Taco Bell.

Friday, May 19
Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Vermont

Grandpa went on a drive this morning with Ann Tanner to see parts of New Canaan while the rest of us were getting ready and packed. All you can see from where the Tanners live is trees. Their house is nestled right in a forest.

We traveled northeast from New Canaan on state road 15 until we joined I-91 a ways south of Hart­ford, the capital of Connecticut. From Hartford we took I-84 into Massa­chusetts, where we joined the Massa­chusetts Turnpike (I-90) and took it into the Boston area. We exited at Cambridge and toured the area around Harvard and MIT (the Mas­sa­chusetts Institute of Technology) before crossing the Charles River and trying to find the Boston Com­mons. The streets were narrow and often one-way, and we decided driving in Boston may actually be even worse than in Washington, D.C. A pretty heavy rain was falling, and we decided the three-mile walking tour of historic Boston, containing many sites from the cradle of the Revolu­tion, was not all that exciting any­more, especially since we could not find parking.

So, we headed north out of Boston on I-93, which took quite a while since the traffic was so heavy, and headed toward New Hamp­shire.

Today had not been a particularly good travel day, but it deteriorated from there. We had talked on our CBs about taking the exit at Derry, in southern New Hampshire, to get some supper. Our car (which had Mom, Rachael, Camilla, Mary, and I in it) took the exit. The other car (with Grandpa, Michael, Shauna, and Eliza in it) all of a sudden dis­appeared, and those of us in the front car didn't know what had happened to it. I assumed they had some­how missed the exit and had kept going, so I dropped everyone off at the Wendy's to order, and I got back on the freeway and drove to the next exit several miles ahead, all the while calling for Michael and Shauna's car on the CB, and then returned to join the family at the Wendy's.

We ate, then continued on, after saying a prayer that we'd find the other car, and continued on toward the Joseph Smith Birthplace Monu­ment in Vermont. The Prophet Joseph was born here on Dec­ember 23, 1805, and President Joseph F. Smith dedicated the marker on this site in 1905 on the hundredth anni­ver­sary of the Prophet's birth.

It was just before dark as we crossed the Con­nec­ticut River from New Hampshire into Vermont. The birth­place is in a remote and beauti­ful forested setting, and we ar­rived about fif­teen minutes after the visitors' center closed at 8:00. We knocked on the door where the couple lived, and they graciously opened up the visi­tors' center and gave us the tour, all the while hoping that the others would also arrive. The director and his wife are from Shauna's home ward in Bountiful and were disap­pointed that they didn't get to see her. As we were ready to leave, they let us use their tele­phone to call our motel in Rutland, and the motel said the people in the other car had called from Manchester, New Hamp­shire, and were on their way.

The drive to Rutland, through oc­casional little New England villages spread throughout the Green Moun­tains, was very scenic, but it was too dark to see very much. We drove by a number of ski resorts. We arrived in Rutland about 10:30, and the motel clerk said the others had called again from Lebannon, New Hamp­shire, so we knew they were coming. After unpacking the car and settling into our room, I sat in the lobby until the others arrived around mid­night.

And here's what had happened: just after we had agreed to exit at Derry to eat, the battery on their car died. They were completely without power; even the hazard lights wouldn't blink, and the CB died im­mediately, so they weren't able to communicate that they were having car trouble. They sat for quite a while, hoping we would return to find them, but we never did. Finally a nice highway patrol­man rescued them, got someone to come out and tow them into Derry, and they re­placed the battery.

We were all glad to see each other again. Fortunately, they knew where we had arranged a motel for the night. Many days during our travels those in the second car didn't necessarily know where we were heading by the end of the day.

Saturday, May 20
Vermont, New York

Rutland is the city where my grand­parents were laboring at the end of their mission in New England. On what would have been the last day of their mission, had they not extended a couple of months, my grandfather, William B Batt, died in his sleep on the morning of Feb­ruary 4, 1959, leaving Grandma suddenly alone in this distant part of the country.

We awoke, had our continental breakfast, packed the cars again, and were off, heading south on U.S. 7 to Bennington, Vermont. It was a very scenic drive along the western edge of the Green Mountain National Forest.

At Bennington we turned west and headed into New York State, travel­ing on state road 7 through Troy and Schenectady and then on state road 5 as far as Amsterdam. We had en­visioned avoiding the New York State Thruway (I-90) across the state by traveling on parallel routes that would allow us to avoid the toll road, but by Amsterdam realized that that would take too long because of all the little towns we had to travel through, so we got on the Thruway.

We continued past Utica and Syra­cuse, exiting at Newark, where we had reservations for the night at a Quality Inn. We arrived in Newark just before a firemen's parade was about to begin. Grandpa, Camilla, Eliza, Mary, and I watched the parade. We were staying less than a block from the Erie Canal that ran through the town. We were about nine miles from Palmyra.

In our motel there was a wedding celebration and some kind of teach­ers convention going on, and it was very crowded. The wedding celebra­tion was very loud and very obno­xious and also pre­vented the little girls from being able to swim in the indoor pool that they were hoping to use.

Tonight for supper we ordered Pizza Hut pizza and had it delivered to our motel rooms.

Sunday, May 21
New York

Today turned out to be one of the nicest days of the trip. We drove about 25 miles to the Fayette chapel, a lovely New England-style meeting­house built at the site of the Peter Whitmer farm, where the Church was officially organized on April 6, 1830. Fifteen years ago President Spencer W. Kimball had dedicated the meetinghouse and the recon­structed log cabin next to it as a part of the sesquicentennial general con­fe­rence on April 6, 1980.

We attend­ed the whole block of meetings, ending in a sacrament meeting in which the speakers were President and Sister Marlin K. Jensen. Elder Jensen is a member of the Seventy and completes his two-year tenure as president of the New York Rochester Mission at the end of June, when he will be replaced by Lynn Packham, who works with me in the Mission­ary Department. Be­cause this would be the Jensens last visit to Fayette, the ward had ar­ranged a reception afterwards with refreshments, which gave us an op­por­tunity to mingle with members of the ward and talk with the Jensens.

We then took a tour of the visitors' center, located in one wing of the meetinghouse, and the Peter Whitmer cabin. It was nice to stand on the spot where the Church offi­cial­ly began.

Next we drove about twenty miles back to the Hill Cumorah, where the boy Prophet found the Gold Plates as shown in vision by Moroni. We went through the visitors' center and then drove to the top of the hill. We thought about eating our picnic lunch at some tables on the hill, but we were dissuaded by a strong wind that started blowing.

A few miles farther on we visited the Joseph Smith Sr. home—the one completed by Alvin Smith in 1827. The home the Smiths were living in at the time of the First Vision was actually located next door and no longer exists. Across the road and down a little path was the en­trance to the Sacred Grove. It was a beautiful spring day, much like the one des­cribed by Joseph Smith in his history:

So, in accordance with this, my determination to ask of God, I retired to the woods to make the attempt. It was on the morning of a beautiful, clear day, early in the spring of eighteen hundred and twenty. . . .

After I had retired to the place where I had previously designed to go, having looked around me, and finding myself alone, I kneeled down and began to offer up the desires of my heart to God. . . .

I saw a pillar of light exactly over my head, above the brightness of the sun, which descended gradually until it fell upon me. . . .

When the light rested upon me I saw two Personages, whose bright­ness and glory defy all description, standing above me in the air. One of them spake unto me, calling me by name and said, pointing to the other—This is My Beloved Son. Hear Him! (Joseph Smith–History 1:14–17).

I took the Pearl of Great Price into the Grove and read part of the account while we were there. It is sobering to think we were standing somewhere in the vicinity of where God the Father and His Son Jesus Christ appeared in the spring of 1820 to begin ushering in the Dispensation of the Fulness of Times.

After leaving the Sacred Grove, we drove a few miles into Palmyra and saw the famous intersection where separate churches are on each of the corners. We had planned to visit the Grandin Press Building, where the first edition of the Book of Mormon was published in March 1830, but the building was closed for renovation.

We then drove to our motel in Lock­port, which is in the Buffalo-Niagara area.

Monday, May 22
New York, Ontario (Canada), Pennsylvania, Ohio

A long day today. We went first to Niagara Falls and crossed over to the Canadian side, where the views of the famous falls are more spec­ta­cu­lar. It was the first time anyone in the family—except Grandpa, Shauna, and I—had been in Canada. Grand­pa had served his mission in western Canada back in the late 1940s. It was the first time that Camilla, Eliza, and Mary had been outside the United States ever.

It took a while crossing through customs back into the United States, mostly because of the traffic delay. We were grateful Grandpa didn't try getting out of the car, as he did in Albuquerque, and cause some sort of international border incident.

As we left Niagara and Buffalo, we traveled along the edge of Lake Erie on I-90 through the western edge of New York, the north­western edge of Pennsylvania, and into Ohio. Just east of the Cleve­land area, we took the Kirtland exit and stopped at the Church history sites there. Claudia, Rachael, Camilla, Eliza, and I had been here two years ago as we were taking Rachael off to school. It was a first visit for the other travelers in our party.

We visited the Newell K. Whitney home, which is now a visitors' center, and the Newel K. Whitney Store across the street, where Joseph Smith first met the Whitneys when he arrived in Kirtland from New York state on February 1, 1831. Later Joseph and Emma lived in a portion of the store. The store served as head­quarters of the Church for a time in the early 1830s. In an upstairs room, where the School of the Prophets met, the Prophet received a number of revela­tions that are now pub­lished in the Doctrine and Covenants, including the Law of the Church (section 42) and the Word of Wisdom (section 89). A special spirit was present in these hallowed places.

After touring the store, we went up to the visitors' center operated by the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints and took their tour of the Kirtland Temple [a few years after this visit, on April 6, 2001, the Reorganized Church changed its name to the Community of Christ]. The young man who took us through the temple also took us up to the attic level, which we did not get to visit two years ago when we were here. He said that the structural weak­ness of the building pre­vents them from doing that during the sum­mer when the crowds are bigger. In the First Presidency council room, at the west end of the attic level, was where the Prophet had his vision of his brother Alvin in the celestial king­dom (as now recorded in D&C 137).

We were much more impressed with this young man than the guide we had two years ago. The one today referred regularly to both our version of the Doctrine and Covenants as well as the RLDS version as he described the spiritual manifestations that occurred here. And he actually believed the events here happened as the Prophet and the other early Saints described them. Our earlier guide from two years ago, as well as those who talked to us at the RLDS temple in Independence, were clearly trying to distance themselves as much as possible from these sacred events.

After we finished at the temple, we bought ice cream at a little place across the street and then drove about 30 miles to the John Johnson Farm, where the Prophet Joseph and Emma lived during part of the Kirt­land period. One of the rooms up­stairs was designated as the reve­la­tion room. A number of reve­­lations were received here, including the glorious vision of the Father and the Son and the three degrees of glory (now recorded in section 76 of the Doctrine and Covenants). This was indeed hallowed ground.

It was also in this spot where the Prophet Joseph was dragged out of bed one night, tarred and feathered and left for dead in the woods, and then after the Johnsons and others spent the night cleaning him up, he preached a sermon from the front steps of the farm house the next morning on the Sabbath. As a result of this same incident, unfortunately, one of the Murdock twins died that Joseph and Emma had adopted after their own twins died.

As evening approached, we left for Cincinnati, which was still four hours away in the very bottom part of the state. The Bertassos had given us directions on how to find their house in Fort Thomas, Kentucky, just across the river from Cincinnati. We arrived there about 1:00 in the morning.

Tuesday, May 23
Ohio, Kentucky

I knew Mike Bertasso in the mission field in Brazil, and both Mom and I had become acquainted with Mike and Kathy as young mar­rieds at BYU back in the early 1970s. The children of the two families first met each other back in July 1988 at the Bertassos' home in Villa Park, California. Mike is the bishop of their ward. Kathy teaches early morning seminary every day. The Bertassos have seven children: David, who just last week returned from the Germany Berlin Mission; Stephen, who is home on medical leave from his mis­sion in the Domi­nican Republic; Nathan, about 17 or 18; Matthew, 16; Carrie, 14; Diana, 12; and Andrew, age 9.

We spent a nice lazy day at Ber­tassos' house in Fort Thomas, Ken­tucky. We slept in after our late arrival last night. Mike had gone to work before we awoke, but Kathy and the children were home all day be­cause today is election day in Kentucky and the schools were out.

At noon Kathy, Grandpa, Mom and I, Michael and Shauna, and Rachael went to meet Mike Bertasso at his work and went to lunch on a river boat restaurant floating on the edge of a very full Ohio River. We had a pleasant visit, but we were sitting in the sun and Rachael sun­burned her arm. I had the unfor­tu­nate situation of food getting stuck in my esophagus, which seems to hap­pen with increasing frequency these days, and wasn't much for visiting after that.

This afternoon we watched a video of the recent award-winning movie Forrest Gump, starring Tom Hanks. Mike came home while we were watch­ing the video, and his family took him to the airport to catch a flight to Brazil. Some of us wished we were going with him.

This evening Eliza and Camilla went to Mutual with the Bertasso kids.

We decided one of the highlights of our trip has been the days we have spent visiting with our dear friends—such as here with the Ber­tassos or earlier with the Hogans in Houston, the Stewarts in Atlanta, the Forsgrens in Raleigh, and the Tanners in Connecticut. We have surely ap­pre­ciated their generous hos­pitality.

Wednesday, May 24
Kentucky, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois

This morning we said good-bye to the Bertassos and headed west to­ward Nauvoo, located on the Missis­sippi River on the western edge of Illinois. We traveled through bits of Kentucky and Ohio and all the way across Indiana and Illinois. It rained on us this afternoon as we crossed Illinois, and reminiscent of our trip through the Midwest two years ago we saw a lot of flooded farmland.

Michael called PJ Hasleton this morning in Utah to see if he wanted to use a one-way plane ticket Michael and Shauna had for him to fly to Kansas City, where Kathryn Kieffer and her friend Rhonda would pick him up and drive with him to Nauvoo to meet us. He agreed, and they got it all arranged about an hour before PJ had to take off for the air­port. We agreed to meet Kathryn at the Nauvoo visitors' center between 6:00 and 7:00 this evening.

We arrived in Nauvoo about 6:15 and found that the visitors' center closed at 6:00. Kathryn, Rhonda, and PJ had not arrived yet. So we went to the Nauvoo Family Motel, the only place on the trip where we had not made an advance reser­va­tion, and were able to get two rooms—one a family suite and one a regular room. Kathryn arrived shortly after, just as we were unpacking our cars. The six girls (Mary, Eliza, Camilla, Rachael, Rhonda, and Kathryn) stayed in the regular motel room. In the two-bedroom family suite Michael and Shauna took one bed­room, Mom and I took the other bedroom, and Grandpa and PJ shared the hide-a-bed in the living room. Apparently it had an aw­ful mattress.

Thursday, May 25
Illinois

Nauvoo was settled by the exiled Latter-day Saints begin­ning in 1839 as they were fleeing from the unlaw­ful perse­cutions in Missouri. It had become a thriving city, rivaling Chicago as the largest city in Illinois, by the time the Prophet Joseph Smith and his brother Hyrum were mar­tyred five years later in June 1844. By February 1846 the Saints were leaving their homes once again to be­gin the great trek to the Great Basin in the Rocky Mountains, then a part of Mexico, under the leadership of Brigham Young and the rest of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles.

The Prophet Joseph named the Saints' new home Nauvoo, which he said meant "a beautiful location, a place of rest."

Today, thanks to the efforts over several decades by Nauvoo Restora­tion, Inc., and the Church, the city has be­come one of the finest histori­cal restorations of an entire city in the country. And, un­like Colonial Williamsburg in Vir­ginia (which charges $25 a person), it is free.

We spent the day visiting the many sites in Nauvoo, starting first with an orientation and film in the visitors' center. PJ was not feeling well when we got up—nausea and dizziness—so he stayed in our motel and rested. A little later we went back and checked to see how he was doing, and he felt up to accompanying us the rest of the day. A lady at the visitors' center told us his condition may have been a result of his sud­den change to the barometric pressure or humidity, or some such thing we don't under­stand, of this part of the country.

We first visited the Cultural Hall and the Scovil Bakery, where we met Sister Fackrell from our stake in Bountiful, who with her husband is serving as a mis­sionary. At the end of her presentation, she gave each visitor a molasses cookie, such as the Saints may have made in the 1840s. Mom bought some little metal cookie cutters to give as thank-you gifts to people back home who had helped with Michael and Shauna's wedding breakfast.

Next we took the buggy ride tour of Nauvoo. Then we visited the Seventies Hall, one of the earliest missionary training centers in the Church. The guide actually called it the first, but it seems that the School of the Prophets in the upper floor of the Whitney Store in Kirtland could also reasonably qualify as the first MTC.

Next we went to the black­smith shop, where Elder Fack­rell was working. He showed us how they fashioned a horseshoe, and Camilla was the one to receive it because she had the next birthday of all the people in the group. All of us re­ceived a prairie diamond, a horse­shoe nail bent into a round ring shape. It was used by pioneer men to give to their fiancees as a wedding ring.

We went back up to the upper part of the city to find some lunch, and Grandpa treated us all to lunch at Porter's Place, named after the color­ful character from Church history, Orrin Porter Rock­well. Several bought post cards there, and Mom bought some T-shirts.

We continued after lunch with visits to the Browning gun­smith shop and home, then across the street to the post office, the John Taylor home, and the print shop. The Times and Seasons newspaper had been pub­lished here. Next we went to see how bricks were made at the brick kiln and received our souvenir bricks.

We wanted to see the Joseph Smith home, the Mansion House, and the grave sites of Joseph and Hyrum, so we had to go to the RLDS visitors' center to be able to tour these sites. They were historically interesting, but we all noticed the very obvious difference in the spirit between their sites and ours.

By the time we finished these last places, it was 5:00 and all the sites were closing. We went back to our visitors' center, which stays open until 6:00, and looked around a little more. We also toured the garden of women's statues just outside the visitors' center. The various statues, set in a lovely garden, depict the varied seasons and roles in a woman’s life. An appropriate setting since it was here in Nauvoo on March 17, 1842, that the Prophet Joseph Smith turned the key that organized the sisters of the Church into the female Relief Society with Emma Smith as its first president.

Back in the upper part of the city, on the bluff that over­looks the Mis­sis­sippi, we walked through the land­scaped spot where the Nauvoo Temple once stood. The original corner­stones are still visible to give an idea of the size of the 128-foot by 88-foot edifice. An imposing struc­ture built on the summit of a bluff overlooking the lower part of the city and the river, the temple was visible from a distance of twenty miles. Started in the fall of 1840, it was not completed until May 1846, nearly two years after the Prophet Joseph's death and after many of the Saints had started leaving the city. Baptisms for the dead were performed in the basement level of the temple as early as November 1841, long before its completion. The well used to provide the water is still on the site. Even though the temple was not yet com­pleted, it was often filled to capacity beginning in December 1845 by mem­bers coming for their ordi­nances during the months just before the exodus. A fire consumed the building in October 1848, and a tornado later knocked down the walls that were still standing.

That evening Kathryn took Eliza and Mary to play in the Nauvoo State Park. Grandpa wanted to rest his foot that Michael had tried to run over. We ordered pizza for Grandpa, Kathryn, Rhonda, Rachael, Camilla, Eliza, and Mary to eat in our motel. Mom, Michael, Shauna, PJ, and I went to the buffet dinner at the Nauvoo Hotel.

Friday, May 26
Illinois, Iowa, Missouri

This morning we left Nauvoo and traveled about half an hour to Carthage, Illinois, to visit the jail where the Prophet Joseph Smith and his brother Hyrum were martyred on June 27, 1844. A later prophet, John Taylor, who was an eye­witness of the murders, de­clared: "Joseph Smith, the Prophet and Seer of the Lord, has done more, save Jesus only, for the salvation of men in this world, than any other man that ever lived in it" (D&C 135:3).

Joseph and Hyrum "lived for glory; they died for glory; and glory is their eternal reward. From age to age shall their names go down to posterity as gems for the sanctified" (D&C 135:6).

After leaving Carthage, we headed west on U.S. 136, crossed the Missis­sippi River at Keokuk, Iowa, and headed south until we picked up U.S. 36, which we took across northern Missouri until we got to Adam-ondi-Ahman in Daviess County and the Far West temple site in Caldwell County, important sites in Church history during the late 1830s.

Ad­di­tionally, the valley of Adam-ondi-Ahman is where Adam "three years previous to [his] death . . . called Seth, Enos, Cainan, Mahalaleel, Jared, Enoch, and Methuselah, who were all high priests, with the residue of his posterity who were righteous . . . and there bestowed upon them his last blessing.

"And the Lord appeared unto them, and they rose up and blessed Adam, and called him Michael, the prince, the archangel.

"And the Lord administered comfort unto Adam, and said unto him: I have set thee to be at the head; a multitude of nations shall come of thee, and thou art a prince over them forever.

"And Adam stood up in the midst of the congregation; and, not­with­standing he was bowed down with age, being full of the Holy Ghost, predicted whatsoever should befall his posterity unto the latest generation" (D&C 107:53–56).

Adam-ondi-Ahman will also be the site of a similar gather­ing just before the Savior's Second Coming (see D&C 116).

After visiting Far West, we headed south on I-35 toward Kansas City, where Kathryn led us to her house, where we spent the night. It was raining again when we arrived. Shauna discovered that she was al­lergic to the cat that the Kieffers got rid of two weeks ago, so she and Michael stayed in a nearby motel and the rest of us with the Kieffers. Later in the evening, after Kathryn and her parents returned from a wedding re­cep­tion, Kathryn took Michael, Shauna, Rachael, and PJ around the Kansas City area, including into the state of Kansas by mistake, and to a huge Barnes and Noble bookstore.

Saturday, May 27
Missouri, Iowa, Nebraska

We awoke and had a pancake breakfast kindly fixed by Sister Kieffer. Kathryn had left earlier on a 7:00 plane for California. After we packed the car again, we said good-bye to the Kieffers and went to find Michael and Shauna at the Motel 6 where they spent the night. We drove through the Kansas City area to Indepen­dence, where we first visited the LDS visitors' center and then went across the street to the RLDS Temple. It was raining very hard, and we were drenched getting between the buildings and cars. A kind sister in our visitors' center loaned Michael and me an umbrella to use in going to fetch the cars from the parking lot.

After we finished in Independence, we drove a few miles north to Li­ber­ty, where we toured the Liberty Jail. The Prophet Joseph and others spent the winter of 1838–39 im­prisoned here, and some of the most glorious revelations ever given were received there (see sections 121, 122, and 123 of the Doctrine and Covenants).

We stopped to eat lunch at a Wendy's, then headed north on I-29 through northwestern Missouri, the very south­western corner of Iowa, and eastern Nebraska. We crossed the Missouri River for the final time near Nebraska City as we passed from Iowa into Nebraska.

We had originally planned to drive as far north as Council Bluffs and Omaha to visit the historic site at Winter Quarters, but we decided this morn­ing that we were more interested in getting home and could save our­selves a hundred miles and a couple hours if we bypassed Winter Quar­ters. It proved to be a wise decision in other ways as well: as we were approaching Lincoln, the capital of Nebraska, we could see severe weather behind us and heard on the radio that there were tornado watches out for the counties of eastern Nebraska and western Iowa. We were glad to be getting out of the area as quickly as possible.

At Lincoln we caught I-80 and headed homeward. We stopped for gas and dinner at a Pizza Hut in Kearney. We arrived late in Ogallala to spend our final night in a motel. We hadn't really planned to come this far, but the Memorial Day weekend has begun, and we couldn't find any rooms to reserve in North Platte, where we had planned to sleep. To­morrow, however, we will be glad we are 50 miles closer to home.

Sunday, May 28
Nebraska, Wyoming, Utah

The final day of our trip began this morning in Ogallala, Nebraska, where we had spent the night at a Comfort Inn. After we had eaten our continental breakfast, packed the cars, and were ready to leave, we held a brief sacrament meeting in our motel room. I con­ducted, Rachael led the music, Michael and PJ blessed and passed the sac­rament, and I spoke briefly about what had happened and will yet happen at Adam-ondi-Ahman.

We then con­tinued west on I-80, roughly following the route of the Mormon Pioneer Trail, across the rest of western Nebraska, all the way across southern Wyoming, and into eastern Utah. Occasionally rain fell on us as we headed west. There were still patches of snow along the freeway as we crossed the mountains just west of Laramie. We stopped for gas and a final meal at a Wendy's in Rawlins, Wyoming. I kept re­minding the children that it took more weeks for the pioneers to make this trek than the hours it was taking us to make the same trip.

We've been looking for license plates of all the states as we’ve crossed the country. Yesterday, driving across Nebraska, we finally saw South Dakota. That made 49 states. Alaska is still missing. We did see plates from Hawaii, Guam, about half of the provinces of Canada, one state of Mexico, the District of Columbia, and all the rest of the states except Alaska. Some of the kids saw one in Bountiful a few days after we returned home.

A hearty cheer went up as we crossed into Utah and con­tinued the final miles through the lovely mountains toward the Wasatch Front. We decided this portion of Utah was as beautiful a place as any we had seen across the country. We arrived home in Bountiful around 8:00, hav­ing traveled 7,471 miles through 28 states (29 states for Michael and Shauna) and one province during our 25-day trip.