This is someone else's blog post...

... but I think it is really worth reading. Another great post can be found here.

Josh and I have rarely spoken out about our childlessness, but, trust me, it's on our minds. Sometimes people say things that are ridiculously insensitive (boy, could I tell some stories!), but it's especially awful when such offensive insensitivity is perpetrated by a national organization that I have supported.

The Night Chicago Died

Chicago is most notable for the many toll roads (which is really shocking for a west-coaster). Thankfully, none of the tolls were more than a dollar or so. 

We stayed at the Palomar, which I highly recommend. Once we dropped off our bags, we immediately went to the Magnificent Mile for some shopping. Our first stop? The Lego store. Why? Because my dad is obsessed with Legos and apparently you can't just buy the separate pieces online without great expense. Of course, we ended up buying ten bottles of Lego pieces because my dad wanted wheels.

The Lego store had this cool display of Godzilla tromping down a Chicago street. All made out of Legos. 

We did more shopping, but nothing else of note. For probably months Josh researched deep dish pizza places because he wanted a genuine Chicago pizza experience. He finally decided on Giordano's, which was tasty.

Though they were very busy.

Too busy to fix their sign, it would seem

We capped off the night with a trip to Sprinkles.

 Yum!

 The next day, we made a late start for the Willis Tower. Here is a tip for you if you ever go to Chicago: Go to the Willis Tower as early as possible. Even if it's a freezing day in March, it will be busy! We had absolutely no idea, but it took an hour to get to the top. It was ridiculous.

Willis Tower, grounded version

The view from the top

If you didn't know, Willis Tower (formerly the Sears Tower) is famous for these sky ledges that are constructed so you can wait in line while other tourists (mostly kids) can sit for 20 minutes while their parents take a million pictures, elbow you out of the way, and walk in front of your pictures when you're trying to take one of your husband and/or your feet. 

The "sitting on the floor of the ledge, taking up space and getting in Emily's way" was a popular picture pose

My only complaint is that they built the sky ledges on the really boring side of the building.

Oh, it might also be famous for being tall. How tall? 284 Barack Obamas, that's how tall!

And slightly more Josh Alders tall

We also walked around the city and saw things like:

The Chicago Theater where Charlie Sheen performed a week later

The riverfront, where Josh wanted to go for an early-morning run but it was just too cold!

More buildings on the riverfront

Later that day we went to temple #41. The Chicago temple is sisters with the Dallas and Boise temples. It seems larger than the both of them (especially since you have to walk back through the dressing room from the chapel to the ordinance rooms in Boise), but is actually smaller.

I think this temple is the only one that any of my family members had visiting that I had not because my sisters would do baptisms there with the Rhinelander branch during the summer (we had a house in Wisconsin).

I was the only female in the session, which has never happened to me before. In fact, I think there were more men than women in all of the temples we visited during this trip. My experience in this temple was special-- not because it has unique architecture (though there is what appears to be a kitchenette in the dressing room, which was new to me, and the bathroom looks like it hasn't been renovated ever), but because I heard one of the most moving prayers ever, and because one of the temple workers came up to me afterward and shared with me that she's also a graduate student in a doctoral program. It may seem like such a silly, small thing, but it meant a lot to me. We're a small group-- the doctorate-seeking, childless, LDS females-- and it gets really (really) lonely. But she knew that and we shared a moment of connection.

Our last Chicago meal involved hot dogs at Portillo's. It was good! Josh's research on the place for the best Chicago dog paid off.

 Inside the restaurant

Chicago is beautiful. Josh and I already have tentative plans to return and do some of the architecture walking tours. We could/should have spent the entire week there, but we had to move on to Nauvoo!

Detroit Rock City

Although I was sad to be leaving Cleveland, we had to get moving on to our next stop: Detroit! I'll admit, I was a little scared. But we never actually went into the city.

There is a lot of cool stuff to see outside of Detroit, such as the Henry Ford Museum, which was recommended by my dad.

The museum houses such gems as:

An original McD's sign

The car in which JFK was shot. The hard top was added later because, and this is a little freaky, they continued to use this car to transport presidents. Seriously.

Josh got to pretend to steer a locomotive.

Josh's dad, grandfather and an uncle
are all railroaders for Union Pacific.

I got to pretend to be a Barnstormer

George Washington's camp cot

The chair Lincoln was sitting in when he was assassinated. Yes, that's blood on the back.

The actual bus in which Rosa Parks refused to move to the back.

She was sitting where Josh is sitting.

Here I am being caged by the bonds of patriarchy in the Women's Liberation exhibit

Of course, there were also Model Ts. This exhibit shows how they were constructed.

There was an exhibit about how homelife changed over the century. I'm standing in the '80s room, which reminded me of my sisters' rooms.

This exhibit made me nostalgic for life in high school.

The Weinermobile

The infamous Detroit Josh Dog

We're probably going to have to come back because the museum has a second part, Greenfield Village, which was closed due to the season.

Thankfully, the Detroit temple is not actually in Detroit but Bloomfield Hills, which is a very affluent suburb.

It was snowing a little.

Although it's in a nice area, this temple is small and pretty plain. It was built in 1999, which makes it similar to all of the other small temples built at that time (e.g. Palmyra). We did, however, get to see how they trained temple workers (basically just by job shadowing).

Temple #40, yo.

We were in Detroit for less than 24 hours, and then went off again with Chicago in our sights!

What's that smell? It's Cleveland!

I had never been to Cleveland, had never considered visiting Cleveland, and didn't imagine I would have feelings about Cleveland at all. So I was shocked to discover that I loved Cleveland. Like, I immediately began looking up internship sites in the area so we could move there next year.

Here is why:

Cleveland looks like a city following a zombiepocalypse. Although we were walking around during rush hour, there was practically no one on the streets (and not because the streets are Philadelphia-scary either!) The city is clean. I didn't get yelled at by homeless people. There was little traffic. For a misanthrope like myself, this seems like the perfect place for me.

Cleveland has some really cool public art and it's everywhere. I discovered so many things to look at-- on sidewalks, on buildings, on the huge lawn down the street from our hotel. I loved it.

Cleveland has the Rock-and-Roll Hall of Fame, which, though it was fun to visit, I doubt I'll ever plan to go again. But it is amazing, and Portland doesn't have anything nearly as cool.

We weren't allowed to take pictures inside, but we did take several outside:

It looks a little like the Louvre, which prompted Josh to make many Louvre-related jokes.

Josh was excited for the "W" from Weezer's concert shows

And one covert (and, frankly, unflattering) shot inside a listening booth:

We were listening to our favorite one-hit wonders, which included MC Hammer, Four Non Blondes, and Eiffel 65. And we may have been dancing. A lot.

Cleveland also has one of the best restaurants in the whole-wide-world (and I'm only being slightly hyperbolic), Melt Bar & Grilled. Josh insisted we go there as it was featured on both Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives and Man vs. Food.

They serve different types of grilled cheese sandwiches, where I ate the summer chicken (havarti cheese and garlic!) and my first-ever fried Twinkie (not as good as I had imagined):

We also went on an impulsive, last-minute trip to find Lilly Pulitzer, which my new favorite clothing store, because there aren't any stores near Portland and I wanted to try on some dresses. It involved driving top-speed to the suburbs, running through a mall only to discover we were in the wrong place, driving to a different mall (across the street), and rushing into the store 10 minutes before it closed. They were really nice about it, even though it was a completely jerky thing for me to do. (I hurried, I promise!)

For the rest of the trip, I mourned the loss of Cleveland. It turns out that I am still a midwest girl at heart.

One last picture:

The Soldiers and Sailors monument downtown

We then went on to Detroit, which I liked a lot less than Cleveland, but will write a blog post about soon anyway.

Kirtland Temple: Basement to Belltower

On our third day, we made the long drive from Toronto to Kirtland, Ohio (passing Buffalo, NY, where Josh saw a building he admired and I spent an hour on Wikipedia trying to figure out what it was called. (Long story short, it was this one).

Josh signed us up for the "backstage tour" of the temple, but first we went on the regular tour with two other families-- one with four teenagers and the other with three kids. Some background: when I got dressed in the morning, I agonized over whether I should wear a dress. "It's a temple," I told myself. "I should show some respect!" But then I reasoned, "It's no longer used as a temple, just as a meeting house. I would wear jeans to the church (not on Sunday)!" Plus we were driving 4 1/2 hours, etc. etc. So we wore jeans. When we saw the other people on the tour, I was convinced there was no way they could be church members because they were practically wearing pajamas (well, basketball shorts, sweatshirts, flip-flops). There were a few other reasons I was embarrassed that these people are church members: 1. One of the teens fell asleep while our guide was talking, 2. One of the other teens asked a very stupid, very judgmental-sounding question about "What makes RLDS different from LDS?", and 3. The mothers of the same family asked whether a hymnbook that the tour guide was passing around was the actual hymnbook that Joseph Smith used. Um, what?

Here are some things, folks: the idea that "there are no stupid questions" no longer applies when you are 45 and in front of actual adults who actually heard what you just said out loud. Further, just because the Community of Christ is no longer affiliated with your church does not mean that they are dumb enough to be passing around priceless, antique artifacts from the 19th century for you to get your Twinkie fingers all over. Also, if you are going to take time out of your life to drive more than 15 minutes to a location of historic significance to your religion, please, PLEASE educate your kids at least a little bit about the organization that maintains it, especially if it's also of historic significance to your own religion!


Also, put on real clothes in public. I mean, seriously, show some respect. Even if you apparently have no knowledge of the Community of Christ church, you must at least be aware that it's a place of significance and reverence, otherwise you wouldn't have bothered to show up. Spend the 30 seconds it takes to put on some pants over your pjs, brush your hair, and be nice. Obviously, this was a subject about which Josh and I spent a lot of time discussing. And now about the temple...

We weren't allowed to take pictures inside, but you can see some pictures here. It's pretty amazing to be in any historic building, but to know the history of this temple, the sacrifices people made for it to be built, and then to stand inside (and under and on top) of it was an experience that I think every LDS (and RLDS) person should have. During our "behind-the-scenes" tour, Josh and I were able to stand in the basement and touch the tool marks, see where improvements have been made, see where mistakes were made, and know that we were touching materials that the Prophet and other early members touched. Then we climbed into a crawlspace above the first-floor meeting room and saw how the ceiling was constructed to allow maximum air movement during the summer and heat-containment during the winter (among other architecture-related elements). Finally, we went up into the belltower to peek at the bell and look at the roof. We were allowed to take pictures of the roof.

And the view:

Not much going on in Kirtland. (Shocker).

One of the coolest parts of our tour was in the belltower. I noticed that people had scratched their names into the wood and we asked our tour guide about that. He said that they used to just let people roam the temple, unaccompanied, and so people would deface the wood. When we looked closer, we realized that some of the names had dates, and some of those dates were early 20th century. That was pretty cool. (Of course it also means that people were douchebags who defaced temples even in 1903).

The belltower, safely from the ground

Both of us were showered and not wearing sweatshirts.

Because that's how the ShepAlders roll, temple syle.

I need to say, because we also went to RLDS-run sites in Nauvoo, that the tour guides and people who work at these places must deal with a lot of stupid LDS church members who ask a lot of mean, pointed questions, because it happened on both of our tours. There are a few times where I've been embarrassed about the culture of my church and church members (note that I did not say that I was embarrassed about church doctrine or my membership in the church. The culture and the doctrine are very different things), and these interactions were two major ones. Please, PLEASE, if you go to either of these places (Kirtland or Nauvoo) and take tours, be respectful. I can understand that it would be difficult when you are so self-satisfied and smug, but please don't say things like, "How could you possibly believe that?" or laugh derisively when your 60-year-old tour guide tells you that their church members don't believe that Joseph Smith had multiple wives. Don't snottily refer to websites that "prove" otherwise. Don't roll your eyes when the guide is bearing his heartfelt testimony to you about how Joseph Smith's son, not Brigham Young, was a true prophet. Just because you don't feel the same way does not make their feelings any less valid. Shame on you.

After our pleasant tour, we drove to Cleveland, where I immediately fell in love. But that's for a different blog post...

P.S. I'm sorry that this was so ranty, but I was really bothered by the whole thing, and I've had time to stew.