This and that

We are beginning to see a major upsurge in visitors at the sites as we head toward Pageant in a couple of weeks.  It has been great to meet people from all over and share our testimonies with them.  

The Pageant work crew has arrived from all corners of the country and they are beginning to put up the stage on the Hill Cumorah. Most are young men just out of high school who are called on three week missions just to be here to construct the stage for Pageant.  Huge light towers were erected a couple of weeks ago so things are moving forward.  The costume crew is here working on costumes - we've been invited to go over and check that operation out.  The cast of over 700 arrives on Friday to begin rehearsals.  These photos were taken with my IPhone, rather than my camera, which I did have with me - I've discovered it pays to check that you have an SD card in the camera before going on a shoot...

We're getting more and more acquainted with our ward.  We spoke in church on Sunday, so that will help.  The ward has so many visitors each week it's hard to tell who belongs and who is passing through.  We've been able to do some teaching with the other missionaries, which has been great.

On a P-day we drove over to the little village of Fayette, near the Peter Whitmer Farm.  There isn't much left these days, however the German Reformed church the Whitmer family attended is still standing on the main street and is pretty cool.  It wasn't open, so we couldn't go in, but poked around outside for a while

German Reformed Church in Fayette

We then headed down to a place called Taughhannock State Park, which has the highest waterfall in the Northeast (not sure exactly what that means, but it was pretty).  The falls are almost on the shore of Lake Cayuga (one of the Finger Lakes) about 50 miles from here.  

A little further south was the city of Ithaca, which is at the southern edge of the lake.   It is a nice little place, with two colleges:  Ithaca College and Cornell.  Cornell is one of the top rated schools in the world and is pretty impressive.  It sits on top of a steep hill in the middle of town and the tower in the picture can be seen for miles around.  

Cornell University

On one Saturday our upstairs neighbors, the Bean's, invited us to go to a town called Penn Yan to a Mennonite auction.  Penn Yan sounds like it should be in Cambodia or someplace, but it's smack in the middle of a large population of Mennonites and Amish in New York.  The founders apparently couldn't agree on a name - some wanted to call it "Pennsylvania" and some "Yankee"  So they compromised on "Penn Yan."  Clever, these New Yorkers...

In any case the auction was fun.  They had a great breakfast, with all kinds of homemade stuff and then the auction began.  They were raising money for Haitian relief and had lots of things to auction off, including a brand new buggy ($7,000 - set price).  There were many "Traditional" Mennonite families there.  This sect uses buggies like the Amish, but dress a little differently.  The men all wear plaid shirts and are clean shaven, with little hats.  The women all wear long print dresses and the older ones (after baptism, usually) wear the Prayer Veil on their heads.  There were also some non-traditional Mennonites there who drive cars, use electricity, etc.  A few Amish attended as well.  The Amish men all have beards and big round hats and the women wear long, very plain, solid color dresses, along with the Prayer Veil.  The kids were really cute.  

Rides for the kids

Ann and Marsha Bean checking out the Whoopie Pies

They had dozens of beautiful hand-stitched quilts up for auction.  They sold for ridiculously low prices of $150 - $500 dollars.  I told Ann we should buy them all next year and open a quilt store in Colorado Springs, where I'm sure we could sell them for four or five times that much.

Your latest ride:  The cockpit of a brand new, state of the art Mennonite/Amish buggy.  You have to provide your own horsepower...

Ann was the happy winner of the auction for this chair.  She was a determined bidder!  Ed now has to figure out how to get it home to Colorado Springs.  Luckily he has more than a year to work on that. 

Looks like volleyball is the game of choice for Mennonite girls with long dresses.  I think they had four games going on (the boys were also playing).

We've had several unexpected visitors in the last couple of weeks, which has been really fun.  This included our son, Ben and his family.  They were in Nauvoo, Illinois for Heather's family's reunion and decided to drive east instead of west after it was over. They called on Monday and got here on Tuesday.  We had a good visit.  Heather's sister Sarah and brother Steve brought their families as well and we had them all over for dinner one night.  Luckily the weather was good - it would have been a bit cozy in our little apartment!

At Chill and Grill - best ice cream in town!

Heather with a bunch of happy cousins

Heather's brother Steve and family and Ben's clan

We also got a visit from Kevin Schlag, who was one of my young men when I was a Young Men President years ago.  He is now the CIO at BYU Hawaii.  It was good to see him.

The American Heritage Youth Chorus came to see the sites.   They're from American Fork, Utah.  They sang for us at the Hill Cumorah Visitors' Center and were fantastic!  

Sister Stoddard and Sister Jones are the Site Training Leaders and help to train all the other missionaries here.  We all showed up for a shift at the Book of Mormon Publication Site in coordinating teal outfits totally by accident...

Our good friend Dale Samson stopped by the Hill Cumorah Visitors' Center where we were working last week.  He had been at the temple with his mother.  He and his wife, Yvette and their children lived in Colorado Springs for many years and Dale and I worked closely together in several church capacities.  It was good to see him.  They now live in Syracuse, NY, about 60 miles from here, so we hope to see them often when they come to the temple.

A few more shots around the Smith Farm:  

Stafford Road and the Barn

Crooked Creek

The Cooper's Shop

We've decided to try and identify all the trees varieties that grow in the Sacred Grove while we're here.  There are over 30 varieties of hardwood trees alone that grow there, so it will take us a while...

Tree leaf lesson of the week:  

Silver Maple

Only 29 more to learn.  There will be a test.

Heating up!

Things are starting to heat up around here, both weather-wise and visitor-wise.  The weather is still mostly pleasant, but we've had a few days which hint at a soon to be pretty sweaty time.

School's out!  Visits have skyrocketed in the last week.  It's really fun to meet people from all over and share a little of the history and sacredness of these sites with them.  We've had some great experiences.   

We've had a bunch of fathers/families and sons come through on their way to Cooperstown, NY for youth baseball leagues.  We were thinking about heading over that direction (about 150 miles east of us) to see the Baseball Hall of Fame, but I think we'll wait until fall. Apparently each week for the next 12 weeks they have over 100 teams show up to play ball in the place where it all started (by some accounts anyway...).  Cooperstown isn't a very big place, so I imagine hotel rooms are pretty scarce in the summer.   

Lots of families are starting to come to the sites and the bus tours are ramping up.  We'll be busy from now until Pageant in July and then really busy for a couple of weeks, then busy again until fall.  There is also a brief bump up in visitors when the leaves turn in October.  Winter is pretty slow - it seems that only the really dedicated are willing to trudge several hundred yards through waist-deep snow and a windchill of 40 below to see an old barn...   
   
They're starting to set things up at the Hill Cumorah for the Pageant (light towers and such).  The Pageant starts on the 10th of July, but the crew starts arriving pretty soon to set the stage up.  The cast arrives about the 1st of July.  We're really looking forward to seeing the show.

You'll be happy to know that the Killdeer eggs hatched and that the little Killdeers made their way out of the parking lot.  They apparently are mobile pretty much from day one and go find a better place to sleep than the one their crazy mom provided.   Two of them were already gone when I got this shot.  These two were out and about when I checked a few hours later.

The Killdeer children snuggled in their comfy nest...

Speaking of wildlife and such:  We came upon this little guy slowly walking across the road with rubbery legs one morning.  There was no mom in sight, so we were concerned about him.  He was about the size of a Chihuahua and was brand new (I'd guess no more than a few hours, maybe minutes old).  He finally got across and into the brush while we watched.  Hopefully he found his mom...

We see deer quite often around the farm, but they're pretty shy. The mule deer we have in our neighborhood in Colorado Springs will let you walk right up to them, but not these little critters.  They'll literally hightail it over a fence if you even look sideways at them from 100 yards away.  Which conveniently brings me to my etymology lesson of the day:  "Hightail it" - "An idiom meaning to hurry or to flee.  To go as fast as possible.  From those animals which raise their tails when fleeing."   There you have it.  Whitetail Deer (which we have around here) hold their white tails straight up when they run and thus when fleeing are "Hightailing Whitetails."  Now you know...

The fire flies have come out, which is really cool for us westerners.  We walked down near the Sacred Grove last night and watched them for quite a while.  There are thousands of them.  I didn't get a photo.

We took a cruise on the Erie Canal one evening last week.  Unfortunately it was cold and wet, but it was still fun.  There were 82 missionaries (temple, site, FM) aboard.  We went about 10 miles west from Fairport (which is 15 miles west of Palmyra), and then back, going through one of the locks.  

For you history buffs:  The canal was started in 1817 and finished in 1825.  Originally 40 feet wide and 4 feet deep, it has been widened twice over the years to its present width of 120 feet and depth of 10-12 feet.  It's 363 miles long, running from Albany on the Hudson River in the east, to Buffalo on Lake Erie in the west. There's some commercial traffic these days, but nothing like it used to be.

"Low bridge, everybody down!"  I remember those words from an old song we used to sing in elementary school about the Erie Canal.  It is certainly true.  The bottom of this bridge for instance is only about 6 inches above the rail on the boat.  Everybody (including the captain) has to crouch below the rail to go under.  

Our intrepid captain

We went through Lock #30 (low to high going west and vice versa on our return trip).  A few shots in the lock while heading west.

Our Neighbors the Millers

The Guenthers from Alberta,Canada

The Veatch's from Orem with their daughter

We took a drive on our P-day to Irondequoit Bay, north of Rochester on Lake Ontario.  The bugs were so thick on this little jetty (some kind of miserable mosquito-like thing) that we only stayed long enough to take this one picture. 

Deciding we'd had enough bugs, we drove into Rochester to the George Eastman Home and Museum of Photography.  Some nice digs as you can see.  Eastman invented the portable camera in 1888 that changed the world of photography.  He founded the Eastman Kodak company and the rest is history.  Interestingly, he made up the name "Kodak" as a catchy name that people would remember (of course today, not so much - Kodachome 64 anyone?).   He never married, but rattled around in this huge house with his mother.  He was a bit eccentric, but brilliant (and rich).  He gave his entire fortune away, including millions to the University of Rochester, so he's pretty well thought of around here.