Ohio

Although it didn't start off on a great note, Stephen and I had a blast on our trip! First of all, I hate traveling by airplane; I have to take a minute and complain about the first day of our trip because we were stuck in the airport ALL day--for over 12 hours! One thing is for sure, we will never fly with American Airlines or American Eagle again. We both thought Wednesday would be a nice relaxing day--we would leave SLC at 7:00 am and be in Cleveland by 3:00 pm so we'd have the rest of the evening to drive to our hotel and go out to dinner and catch some Zs so that we could get up early to hit the roller coasters.

We got up at 4:30 am to arrive at the airport by 5:00 am; when we were five miles from the airport Stephen got a phone call from a 1-800 number and ignored it because lately he's been getting calls from telemarketers as early as 6:00 in the morning. We pulled into the parking lot and his phone rang again, so Stephen was ready and willing to answer the phone to give them an ear full for calling him so early in the morning. Well, it turned out to be the airlines telling him that our plane had been delayed for four hours so instead of leaving at 7:00 it wouldn't leave until after 11:00. We went inside to see what was going on and they told us our plane would leave around 9:30 so we decided to stay at the airport instead of going back home. Well, 9:30 came and went and the plane was delayed some more; we were at the SLC airport for almost 6 hours before we left. We finally got to Chicago to catch our connecting flight and that plane was delayed by a few more hours, so we didn't get to Cleveland until 10:00 that night. Then on top of that we still had an hour drive to where our hotel was so we didn't get dinner, sleep, or the relaxing evening we had hoped for.

CEDAR POINT
We were so excited to hit all the roller coasters Thursday morning. Luckily school started the day before we got into town so the lines for the rides weren't as bad as what we thought they would be. The longest we had to wait for a ride was 45 minutes. This amusement park is one of the best, if not, the best in the nation. It has some of the longest, fastest, and tallest coasters in North America. We rode the rides for about seven hours the first day and Friday we rode the rest of them and headed into the water park for the rest of the afternoon.

 This is the Dragster--it's 410 feet tall and drops you at 120 mph. Its a short ride, but wow, it make your stomach curdle and tie up in knots!

     
These are just a few of the other big coasters we got to ride. this wooden one called mean streak was so rickety that it knocked the wind out of us after climbing a hill and it came a sudden halt at the end of the ride that if we weren't strapped in we would have gone flying several hundred yards out of the roller coaster. Magnum was my favorite coaster; we rode on that one twice (the first picture) and Stephen's favorite was Millennium Force (the second picture). The only souvenir we took home was a caricature of the both of us. The water park was a lot of fun as well, we spent a good portion of the afternoon on the water slides and the wave pool. There are at least a dozen water slides but the wave pool was my favorite part even though it cut up the bottom of my feet pretty good.

KIRTLAND
We spent a day and a half in Cleveland and Kirtland for the remainder of our trip. We went to the Museum of Natural History Saturday morning before we headed to Kirtland. I love museums like this one; it had animals, birds, and insects from every continent, dinosaurs, rocks and gems, a planetarium, and an evolutionarily wall where they keep the famous "Lucy" one of earths earliest bipedal human beings.

I've heard about Lucy on the history and discovery channels before and find her fascinating. They don't have all her bones, but she is the most complete and oldest biped to this day. She is an adult human who only stands at a mere 3.5 feet tall!

We spent a few hours in this museum and then drove to Kirtland where we toured the Newel K. Whitney store, his home, the John Johnson Inn, the saw mill, and lots of other historic places. My favorite was the Newel K. Whitney's store because it's a lot bigger inside than what it looks. It was so neat to see how they lived and where the prophet Joseph Smith and his family stayed with them. We went inside the School of the Prophets, and the parlor where Joseph received the word of wisdom and many other revelations.

 Newel K. Whitney Home

 The store. Poor Stephen had to stand there facing the sun, lol

                       The School of the Prophets

Even though I have been told all the stories growing up in the church about the life of the prophet Joseph Smith it was really amazing to see everything first hand and walk where he had once walked. You could feel the spirit as we walked through each room in every building testifying that what we were witnessing was true--all the stories we hear in church every week and that the gospel really is true. I loved the stories, or testimonies rather, of the people who saw Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ in this very room.

Next stop was the Kirtland temple. By this time in the day we were kind of exhausted and really tired, but took a tour of the inside of the temple. Again it was cool to see first hand the pictures they show you in sunday school. The time an energy those people had to go through to build that temple and then have to leave it a few months afterward was just amazing to look at and hear about. The temple is gorgeous inside and out. We would have loved to go to the John Johnson and Isaac Morley farms, but it was late and we were just way too tired to drive around some more. All the tours had closed for the day anyway, but there's always next time.

  The Kirtland temple in all its splendor

SUNDAY

Our last day in Cleveland was quite relaxing, for the most part, we got to sleep in until we needed to check out of the hotel and spent a few hours in the art museum (it was free). This place was huge! We enter one room and go through the next and the next; it was like a maze that was never ending and it was two floor at that. First, we looked at all the pieces of art and artifacts from around the world including Rome, Africa, England, and Asia. There were things dating clear back from 1 AD and beyond! We saw pottery, sculptures, coins, and jewelry from ancient Rome and Italy, Armour and swords from Medieval times, paintings of Christ, apostles, and saints from the Christian era, and modern American art from artists like Pollock (whom I don't care for), Pablo Picaso, Vincent Van Gogh, and Auguste Rodin.

The Thinker (Rodin)

This wasn't as large as I thought is was in real life. I was expecting a monumental size of this tiny statue, but it was cool nonetheless.

We ended up going to the airport three hours before our plane was to leave because we had nowhere else to go. We got there and waited for the plane, and again, our flight was delayed two hours which meant that we wouldn't make it in time for our connector in Dallas so we complained to the desk and they switched us to Delta which got us home four hours earlier than when we would have gotten home and we only had to fly to Cincinnati and then to SLC.

Our bodies are all bruised, cut, and tired and aside from Stephen getting pulled over, our delayed flights, and muggy weather it was all worth it to get to spend a long weekend with Stephen before he leaves me in two and a half weeks. We so needed this vacation from all the school and moving we had to do this year. I love you Stephen, thanks for the vacation!