Visiting Liberty Jail & Far West

We stayed overnight at a hotel just a few blocks from the Liberty Jail Visitors Center. This was Grant's ride into the hotel. He got a lot of smiles from the people who saw him riding the luggage. I took him swimming in the big swimming pool and in the hot tub Friday night, when he should have been going to bed. Vacation's all about breaking the rules, right? He loved to splash all over the place while he stood on the steps of the pool.
On Saturday morning, we ate breakfast and then drove to the visitors center and took their tour. The tour guide said that we were lucky they had power inside the center, since a poor unfortunate squirrel had been toasted in the transformer earlier that morning and their power had been out for a while. This is a picture of Jared and Grant standing in front of the open side of the jail. That's Joseph Smith you see in the jail cell writing. Our tour guide's great great great great grandfather (4 greats) was Hyrum Smith.
Our next stop was at the temple site in Far West. It's out in the middle of nowhere. The four cornerstones are each set in cement and protected by a case. There are several markers inside the gates that talk about the history of the city of Far West and about each of the cornerstones and what they represent. This large marker talks about some of the doctrines received and begun during the time that the church was headquartered here. There isn't anything else to see really except for the little Community of Christ chapel across the street from the temple site. It's hard to believe, but there aren't any indications anywhere (ruins, whatever) that a city of over 5,000 ever existed on this spot.
Grant had fun looking at all the pretty flowers and finding sticks to bring to us too. He was happy for a chance to run around on the grass.
It kind of gives you chills to walk on the ground here where the early leaders and members of the church met and dedicated these cornerstones, anticipating the day when a temple would be built here. We looked at a copy of the plat of the city in one of my books and tried to figure out where different buildings and homes would have been located.