Well, we work hard and we play hard! Having had a very busy Spring semester with classes and activities, we had a little break before Summer semester begins at the institute…no classes to teach, most of the students away for the break, and no missionary district meeting.
SO…you KNOW that we are very experienced at packing a lot of tourism into a short period of time…
Actually, we spent a Saturday in Holland MI for the annual Tulip Festival. The following Monday we had to go to Ohio for a routine Kaiser visit (there is no Kaiser Permanente in Michigan and every visit is a 460 mile round trip!) SO we added a couple days to visit Kirtland, Ohio, which is just another 40 miles beyond where we had to go anyway.
Kirtland is the site of an extraordinary and formative time in the history of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and we’ve long looked forward to being able to spend a little time there learning more and absorbing the wonderful knowledge that some incredibly important events occurred there.
So with that introduction, here’s the update…
Today (5/22) it’s a humid 88 degrees! Seems like we had a few spotty days of spring and launched right in to summer. Everything is green, flowering, and beautiful.
Our feathered and furry friends are busy behind our apartment…
Mr. Squirrel says “Am I feeling lucky today?”
Whoops…maybe not so much….
The fields are being prepared for planting…
On the MSU Campus, love is blossoming….
As are the flowers and trees….
And the Red Cedar River has finally stopped rising and is becoming peaceful, although still overflowing its banks….
In Kirtland, Ohio, we visited with our Half Moon Bay friends Dean and Marjorie Cook. Elder and Sister Cook are spending their summer as service missionaries helping to maintain the church historic sites in the Kirtland area. It was great to spend time with them as we visited the sites.
In front of the main visitor’s center…yep, it’s us!
And here with the Cooks at the John Johnson Farm, where the Prophet Joseph Smith and his wife Emma stayed for a time…
The Kirtland Temple....
School of the Prophets in the Newell K. Whitney store….
And a bonus lighthouse on our way home. This is the Marblehead Light on the southwestern shore of Lake Erie….
The Holland Tulip Festival. They plant 120,000 new tulip bulbs each year for this. It is fantastic! Holland is a very nice town on the eastern shore of Lake Michigan that was founded by Dutch settlers…as you can see, their legacy has become a very big annual festival!
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