Tiny Liberty, MO, sits across the Missouri River to the north of Independence and is the county seat of Clay County. Joseph Smith was imprisoned for five months in the Liberty Jail. The Liberty Jail Historic Site hosts a replica of the prophet's prison. The site of Jesse James' first daylight, peacetime robbery is celebrated... Continue Reading →
Independence, MO, is the county seat of Jackson County and a suburb of Kansas City. With population over 123,000 it is the fifth-largest city in Missouri. The city is overlaid with layers of history, serving as a starting point for overland trails (California, Oregon, and Santa Fe), a promised land for Latter-day Saints that never... Continue Reading →
In the 1830s, Joseph Smith taught that the Biblical patriarch Adam gathered all of his posterity together, just before he died, to give them a final blessing. In 1838, he identified the place of that gathering as being in present-day Missouri--a grassy valley near the Grand River that they named Adam-ondi-Ahman. Saints began moving to... Continue Reading →
July 24 is a holiday in the state of Utah, so I logged a 69-mile ride around the Salt Lake valley to take in the festivities and remember some special pioneers. I followed the parade route -- South Temple, 200 East, 800 South -- then up to the Salt Lake Cemetery and This is the... Continue Reading →
I left the Erie Canal pathway for a spin around the Latter-day Saint historic sites near Palmyra. Joseph Smith's family lived in Palmyra from 1816 to 1831. The Sacred Grove The Sacred Grove in Palmyra, New York, is the site where Heavenly Father and His Son, Jesus Christ, visited young Joseph Smith Jr. in 1820.... Continue Reading →
Thanks to a work trip to the Midwest in autumn, I took a quick spin today around Historic Nauvoo, and then went up through Nauvoo State Park to an old pioneer cemetery. The Nauvoo Temple. It was drizzling a little when I began, then it started to rain quite hard, and then it stopped--leaving me... Continue Reading →
I hopped on the Bonneville Shoreline Trail in North Salt Lake to ride up the back side of Ensign Peak. The light and clouds were beautiful, making the views stunning! The peak is an oddly-shaped protuberance in the foothills above the state capitol in Salt Lake City that has played an outsized influence on Latter-day... Continue Reading →
Cabrillo National Monument The Cabrillo National Monument on the southern tip of Point Loma peninsula commemorates the landing of Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo at San Diego Bay on September 28, 1542, marking the first time a European expedition set foot on what would become the west coast of the United States. The route to the monument... Continue Reading →
the Bikeswain 