Seeing America, Part 2

As you may recall, I made the long drive from Austin, TX to Albany, NY about 5 months ago. Well, it was time for Part 2 of the journey, Albany, NY back to Austin, TX: the Reverse Trip. My friend Nathan drove with me and it took us 2.5 days.

The route this time around was different. Since it's not winter, there was no reason to avoid the northern route, which is actually less miles than the southern route. Our route laid out like this:

We left last Thursday afternoon around 1:00. Our goal for the first night was to make it to Cleveland. We made it all the way to Kirtland (which is about 30 minutes outside Cleveland), which worked out great for our sightseeing hopes.

We made our way across upstate New York and the first stop of interest was Niagara Falls. I've heard the Canada side is the best for viewing, so we headed across the border. Fortunately we are both seasoned travelers and had our passports ready. (They are now required for crossing the border.) And they didn't even get suspicious with all the stuff I had packed into my car. Though the border agent into Canada did get after me for not staying behind the stop sign while I waited. (I didn't even SEE the stop sign.)

I've never been to Niagara Falls, and I was pretty excited. It was even cooler than I thought it would be. It was amazing! It was raining, but at least it wasn't dark yet. Here are some pictures.



This one will probably go into my collection of "Elizabeth in Front of Famous Things," even though the mist makes it kind of hard to see the falls.

We joked that this structure from the American side actually looks like an unfinished bridge. I was finishing it for them.

We stayed Thursday night in a Ramada Inn about 10 minutes from Kirtland. The rooms were fine, but I was highly disappointed with the breakfast. When I called them as we began looking for a place, I specifically asked if they had a free breakfast. (It's question #1 that I ask a hotel.) They said yes, but failed to explain that their "continental breakfast" was really small muffins, a bowl of apples and bananas, coffee, and water. (Not even juice!) Yeah...uh, kind of lousy. But whatever.

There are lots of cool church history sites in Kirtland, but we didn't have much time, so only went to the temple. We (i.e., the Mormon church) don't own the Kirtland Temple, but rather it is owned by the Community of Christ (formerly the RLDS church). They recently built a very nice visitors center right next to the temple. The tour of the temple starts off with a 20-minute video about the history of their church and the church's history in Kirtland. I'll be honest, it's kind of weird since their history is also OUR history, but told with a different spin in some ways. So interesting. At the end of the movie, "The Spirit of God" is playing over the speakers, the screen lifts up, and the curtains open. You're then left looking out a huge picture window with an incredible view of the temple.

We then walked over to the temple where the tour guide took us to all three levels. It was amazing! Such a beautiful building.

The tour concludes with the group (it was us and two families) sitting in the pews on the first floor. After the guide explains a few more things, he invited us to sing "The Spirit of God," asking for a volunteer from the group to play the piano. I volunteered Nathan, as he is an incredible pianist. And hey, playing that hymn in the Kirtland temple is too cool to pass up. Nathan noted later that the hymn book they had sitting on the piano was, in fact, a Mormon hymn book. Go figure. (But they don't print the music in theirs, so it makes sense, I guess.)

Here is Nathan and I after the tour. Someday I'll go back and see everything else.

So here's what I got thinking about as we saw the Kirtland temple. (Well, one of the many things I was thinking about.) If we owned the temple, what would we do differently than them? In a broad sense, I mean, what would we do with it? It certainly can't function as a standard temple because it wasn't ever designed to do so. (Especially when you consider that the temple ordinances weren't revealed until Nauvoo.) And making it a functioning temple would require a major overhaul of the inside, and I don't see that happening. Not given the beauty and historic significance of the temple to Church history. Anyway, that's some food for thought. Anyone have any thoughts?

Anyway, we got back on the road with St. Louis as the eventual goal of the day. We hit two more capitals on our way down, Columbus and Indianapolis.* These brings my total to 22 capital buildings visited! I'm almost halfway there!

Me and Columbus. No, Nathan didn't cut out the dome, turns out that's what it looks like. Maybe they ran out of money in the construction?

And here's Indianapolis. This one was right in the middle of downtown and harder to find a good angle for the picture.

Okay, and here's a totally random picture. This cement thing had these hand prints on them, and this was the most clever pose I could come up with on the spot.

We made it to St. Louis by about 8pm, and stayed the night at Nathan's sister's apartment.

Saturday was our final day on the road. We knew it would be long and it was! We were on the road for about 16 hours. We pulled out around 7:30am and were determined to make it to Austin. (We drove through Oklahoma City, but didn't stop for the capital, as I've already been there.)

Nathan took this picture of the "frosty air" my AC can create if left on long enough. I won't go into the details, but basically last summer my AC was broken and rather than paying $500 to fix it, my mechanic (who is a genius, by the way) came up with a cheaper way to hot wire it. It's basically like super AC now and gets so cold that eventually the air begins to blow out frosty. Thank goodness because it gets hot in Austin!

Texas!! We made it! (Of course, making it INTO Texas is only half the battle. We were still like 6 hours from Austin.)

I had to give Nathan a proper Texas experience, and that included eating bbq and Tex Mex. (Though not at the same time.) We stopped at Rudys in Waco for dinner. I think he was sufficiently overwhelmed by the pro-Texas spirit of our fair state.

The next day was Sunday, and we saw UT campus in the morning before going up to church. He took this great picture of the Tower and the Littlefield Fountain.

And we found the giant 5-point star downtown. He liked it.

That evening we also went to a concert in the park, walked around the Town Lake trail by Auditorium shores, saw the capital, and almost saw the bats. Monday morning we ate Tex Mex at the Hula Hut and got Amys Ice Creams. (I was saving my treat for finishing Chapter 2. Yay!) Nathan then flew back to New York, and I have to get back to work on my thesis.

It was a good trip, and I'm happy to be back in Austin. Yay Austin! Many thanks to Nathan for making the long drive with me.





* To my friends in Columbus (Katie) and Indiana (Kevin, Ted, and Aubrie): Okay, so I'm sorry that I couldn't stop to see you. We were a bit pressed for time. Next time. :)