Mormon Trail Center

After church today we went up to Omaha to Winter Quarters to the Mormon Trail Visitors center. It was a really cool experience. Since it was slow today we were able to get a tour from one of the missionaries. There were so many interesting facts that I didn't know about. Here are a few pictures from our visit.

Visitors Center Entrance.

Example of the beds on the ships that the pioneers took from England and Germany. They would sleep 5 to a set. As you can see we could barely fit in them.

Small replica of the Salt Lake Temple

They had a handcart that you could try to push, it was filled with 400 lbs of items. The space in the front was so small, you can see how Erick and Gavin fit in there.

The Sister Missionary was explaining that although the handcarts were built so well that they balanced the weight for easier maneuvering, she said it still wasn't easy and then put a few rocks in front of the wheels. The boys turned into pansies, ha ha!!

Our last stop was the cemetary across the street where more than 600 pioneers were buried. It's such a tiny space for 600 people, I can't imagine the sorrow that took place there. Sister Lewis asked us if we wanted to see how the metal stakes would tell us were people were buried. She said that when you walk over a grace the 2 metal pieces would cross and when you left they would uncross, We thought she was playing us, so we told her to prove it. We thought we were walking into a Ouigi board situation and she was going to cross the pieces herself. She walked out into the middle of the grass and took 2 pieces that looked like wire hangars, took a few steps and they crossed, a few more and they uncrossed. We were getting a little freaked out. So I asked her, ok what's the catch. She explained that the ground that the cemetary, visitors center and Temple are built on is very magnitized, which causes the metal to stay apart. But when you walk over a grave there is a disturbance in the magnetic field and the pieces cross. So although she wasn't playin' us. We were a little freaked out more that we were standing on peoples graves. It was really interesting to see how close together they are buried.