Friday, November 5, 2010

The Trip - Part 11 - Palmyra, NY

Day 13
This is the place I was really looking forward to. When I was 11 my family spent a week in Palmyra visiting close family friends (the Grahams) who were serving a mission there restoring the Grandin building. I haven't been back since and was really excited to see it all again!

We first drove to the Smith farm and took the tour there seeing the log cabin, the frame house and the sacred grove.

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View of the Palmyra temple from the log cabin

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Then we had the opportunity to go visit "Pop" (Ken Graham) and his new wife Cora. Pop is the same family friend I went to visit the first time I came and he now lives in Palmyra. Visiting with them was a lot of fun since I was close to their family growing up and hadn't seen them in a long time but also because he had a lot of wonderful stories to tell us from his service in the church. He worked on the restoration of the Grandin building and the Smith's log cabin and was involved in many other church projects in the area. We enjoyed hearing the stories and before we left he gave us a few nails taken from the original floors in the Grandin building.

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After the visit we went straight over to the Grandin building for the tour and to look for all of the neat things he told us about (we felt like we were on our own secret tour since much of what he told us isn't included in the actual tour - it was really cool).

After touring the Grandin building we went to the Martin Harris farm which was especially exciting for me. You see, when my family came to visit Pop last while he was serving a mission, the Martin Harris farm was the mission home - so we were able to spend a week living there. Since there were so many of us visiting (all of his kids, grandkids, and my family) they converted the garage into a temporary apartment for all of us - we just had to shower in the house. So each morning as my friend Ashley (Pop's Granddaughter) and I would be walking into the main house in our jammies for breakfast and to shower we would get stopped by tourists asking all of these questions about the farm, house, and how we were related to the Harris family. Some people would even ask for our picture in front of the house.

At first we were a little weirded out by it and didn't know what to say. Before long, though, we were making up all of these elaborate stories of how we were related to them, about how the farm worked, even that there were homeless people who lived in the corn field behind the house so we would never get rid of it since that's where they lived. Looking back that was probably not the best idea, but we were sure some imaginative kids!

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(the Harris home)

We spent the rest of the day visiting the Hill Cumorah, touring the Peter Whitmer home, and seeing the temple.

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(Cute little house in town that reminded us of the house from 'Up')

That night we had another long journey ahead of us to our final destination!

Next up: Worcester & Concord, MA

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