Days 9 & 10 (Sat/Sun)

On Saturday July 17th, we drove 620 miles to Michigan. We made two stops along the way: the Kirtland, Ohio temple and Niagara Falls. At Niagara Falls, we saw a weird little caterpillar thing and we also shopped at a gift shop where Amy got a t-shirt. At the Kirtland Temple, Dad liked seeing the pulpit where Joseph and Oliver saw the Savior, Moses, Elijah and Elias! Our tour guide was an Aussie named Kevin, born into the Reorganized LDS faith.  Amy thought he was very talkative!

Here is the funny-looking caterpillar:

Here is a rainbow we saw at Niagara Falls:

Here is Josh, Amy and Mom at Niagara Falls:

And here are the gorgeous falls!

Here's the four of us in front of the Kirtland Temple:

Here is the Kirtland Temple:

We drove a lot that day, and we arrived in our arrival city at about midnight.  We followed the directions of our GPS, and "Jill" told Mom to turn left, at a busy intersection.  Cars were streaming in the other direction, but finally, Mom found a gap in the cars, so she gunned the car and drove left.  Unfortunately, the street was dark, and Mom actually turned into a gas station that was pitch black.. She raced through a cemented island and nearly gave Dad a heart attack.  He kept yelling, "Brakes!!!!!"  Thank goodness, the tires still had air in them after we came off the cement. That night, we checked into a Best Western hotel with a lukewarm hot tub, but no pool.

The next day (Sunday July 18th), we went to the Saint Joseph ward for sacrament meeting. The theme for the speakers was on mothers. Then we changed clothes, checked out of the hotel, and drove to a state park that we thought would be a beach on Lake Michigan. We started walking through a forest trail full of huge, nasty bugs that supposedly led to the lake, and after ten minutes, we realized it probably wasn't leading to the beach, so we turned around and hiked back out. Then we drove to Warren Dunes and found the actual beach. The water was very nice and the beach was packed with people from Chicago. However, we didn't have towels, so we just dipped our feet in the water for a few minutes. The sand was so hot, Mom got blisters on her toes. In the bathroom area, there were a bunch of small bird nests with baby birds in them that were so cute.

Here is Dad, Josh, and Amy at Lake Michigan:

Here's the nest full of cute baby birds:

After going to the lake, we drove through Chicago. The traffic was terrible! We went through a killer rainstorm. After sitting on the interstate for what felt like hours, we finally stopped at a Quiznos in downtown Chicago for lunch. They had a neat soda machine that was a touch screen, and you would choose your soda, then choose if you wanted an add-in such as strawberry, orange, lime, vanilla, etc. It would then shoot your soda into your cup. It was pretty cool. :) After Quiznos, we got some ice cream at Cold Stone, then continued driving until Minnesota, where we checked into the Baymont Inn.