Vacation Day 1, Harmony, PA, and Niagara Falls

This year for our family trip we decided to make a triangle. We drove from our house in Allentown, PA, to Niagara Falls, NY, then to Andover, MA, then back home. We stopped at some Church historical sites along the way. Our first stop was at the Aaronic Priesthood Restoration Site. It was 8:00 am and still pretty nippy outside. Although we crossed over the Susquehanna River on a bridge to get there, this monument isn't actually on the banks of the Susquehanna like I expected. We made it a point of reading all the epigraphs to the kids, and talked about their significance before and after in the car with them. It really added to the tone of our trip.


Our next stop was Niagara Falls. I liked how it was at a state park with nice trails. We parked on Goat Island, and walked all the way around it and got to see both the Horseshoe Falls and the American Falls.

The hard thing about taking a pictue of the falls is that there is so much mist that it just looks like a white background.
Here is a test to see if my hubby (I can't use his name anymore because he doesn't want to be google-able) is reading my blog or not, because he told me I had to check with him first before posting a picture. He tries to get out of being in pictures with the excuse that he hasn't shaved. Well, seeing as how he only shaves on Sundays, I guess that is the only day I am technically allowed to photograph him.
We went on Cave of the Winds, which was not actually a cave from what I could tell, but still really cool. You take an elevator down to a path close to the falls and then you walk up this wooden walkway and steps to get even closer. I had packed sneakers for all the kids, becasue I was afraid that they would slip, and it was a big deal changing all their shoes when we got out of the car. Then to my chagrin, they make you wear special sandals along with the yellow ponchos. You get to keep them. Dallin loves them, he kept saying, "I guess these are my new sandals." I let him wear them for playing in the back yard, and I put everyone else's in the trunk of the mini-van for emergencies. I hope that the rest of the sandals that most people put in the recycling bins get set to shoeless people in Africa or something.
We had been talking about "our trip" for weeks ahead of time, so it was really funny that after we came back up the elevator after the Cave of the Winds, Dallin said, "Wait a minute, is this our trip?" We had driven about 6 hours in the car that day.
Here is one of a shot my hubby tried to take of the falls.




That night we stayed at the Raddison in Rochester for only $70. I love Priceline, because a hotel room with nice sheets makes all the difference. Last year, driving home from Wisconsin we just stopped somewhere and ended up spending just as much at a one star hotel with scratchy sheets, and strange smells. We got pizza from the in house restaurant and ate in in the room, watched Home Alone 2 on TV and got a good night's sleep. The kids who got to sleep in the bed (Dallin and Adriana for the record) were actually jealous of the ones who got to sleep on the ground (Ariel and Annika). We woke up in time to shave and get ready for church in Palmyra. That will be Day 2.