You have probably seen and maybe even read a book or two in the suddenly popular “see before you die” segment of the travel book genre. At the library last week I came across “101 Places *Not* to See Before You Die,” a funny riff on the genre. Very funny, actually. And we can all use a little humor during this train wreck we call 2020. As well as maybe a lighthearted post, after all the doom and gloom posts of the last couple of months (because sometimes as a blogger you just have to play the cards you’re dealt). So first I’ll list a few of the highlights of the book. You can see the whole list of not-so-wonderful places by clicking the Amazon link and looking at the table of contents. I expect readers will chime in if they have seen these site or similar ones. Second, I’ll list a couple of Mormon places not to see before you die. Again, readers no doubt have their own sites to nominate.
Some of the entries in the book are straightforward: Euro Disney (called “a cultural Chernobyl” by one French critic) or Nevada (citing “the heat, the emptiness, the atrocity that is Lake Las Vegas, the nuclear waste, the alien sightings,” and so forth). Some are more involved, such as Amateur Night at a Shooting Range (not so funny, actually) and An Overnight Train in China on the First Day of Your First Period (probably the funniest entry in the book. Two words: squat toilet). Here are a few entries that might ring a bell for some readers:
- Stonehenge, somewhere in England I think. You’ve probably seen enough shots of Stonehenge that you feel like you’ve been there. At the real thing, you’re mostly stuck behind a fence now unless you take a pricey private tour. Apparently the view from the highway is just as good.
- Burning Man, somewhere in the California desert. It’s sort of an annual pagan festival. Described as “a parched desert squat with the population density of a refugee camp, but with more noise … and less hygiene.”
- Wall Drug, South Dakota. It first attracted visitors by advertising free ice water, which tells you something about South Dakota and something about America in the 1950s. Personally, I think the Corn Palace, just down the road from Wall Drug, maybe should have gotten this spot on the list.
- Onondaga Lake, New York. I’ll throw this in just because the name makes a guest appearance in the story of Zelph, as recounted by Joseph Smith. As you no doubt recall, Zelph (whose bones were unearthed from a burial mound by a band of Mormons in Illinois during the Zion’s Camp travels) was a mighty warrior who fought under the leadership of one “Onondagus,” a mighty prophet. You can find a nice discussion of Zelph and the gang at a very early BCC post. The lake itself, Onondaga Lake, is about sixty miles east of Palmyra, where Joseph Smith’s family lived. Due to industrial waste pumped into the lake over the years, it’s not a very inviting place at the moment: “the lake is still unsafe to swim in, and the sediments at its bottom are on the federal Superfund list.” Onondagus would not be pleased.
- Rush Hour on a Samoan Bus. I have been on a few Samoan buses. There’s the island music blaring from a cassette player up front, maybe hanging from the ceiling. There’s the fact that everyone on the bus seems to know each other, except you. It’s likely the brakes have not been serviced in quite a long time, which comes to mind as you descend a steep hill. The bus makes a variety of unexpected turns and stops — it’s maybe more like a taxi for 30 than a bus with an established route. But it’s Samoa, so there’s a certain friendly politeness about the gathering: “elderly people get the front, then come women with children, then women with no children, and finally a throng of men at the back.”
Okay, let’s get to the Mormon stuff. Any Mormon sites or events you thought were big downers that you would like to share? [Caveat: Hey, it’s Thanksgiving Week, so if you want to be unflinchingly positive and upbeat and thankful, yes, you can share a Mormon site or event that brought joy to your heart. But no hashtags.] I thought about Attending Conference In Person (first year at BYU, October Conference, I about froze to death in line, because I grew up in Seattle where it never gets very cold) and Any Youth Interview With the Bishop (but I’m sure your stories on this one are much better than mine; I had great bishops). But here are my winners for Mormon Places Not to See Before You Die:
- Sixth Crossing of the Sweetwater River, Wyoming. You will find this lovely oasis if you drive down US 287 from Lander to Muddy Gap, so it’s likely none of you have ever seen it. It is a bona fide Mormon Historical Site on the Mormon Trail, complete with a page at LDS.org and staffed by senior couples who drive their RVs there and stay for the summer. It’s got a connection to the Martin and Willie handcart tragedy, which is pretty much why it’s there. It was late in the day when I pulled off the highway to take a look, so the “museum” (a room or two inside a cabin, with a handcart or two on display, no doubt) was closed. A couple of Youth Trek groups were camped over in the meadow. It was chilly and windy. (Most of Wyoming is windy most of the time.) I hope they got good food for dinner rather than rice and beans on one of those zealous “eat like the pioneers” Treks.
- Cove Fort, Utah. You probably see the sign for this every time you drive from Salt Lake to California and back. It’s about a mile down the road from the I-15 freeway exit for the nice Chevron station on the east side of highway just as you head up a long hill. To give the kids a break, we decided to go see the fort. Again, it’s a Mormon Historical Site with it’s own page at LDS.org. In the days of Brigham Young, the fort was a convenient stop for travelers headed to St. George — kind of like the Chevron station is for freeway travelers today. You don’t just get a tour of the fort, though. You get the Mormon spiel. The missionary script. Whether you are LDS, non-LDS, or whatever. It was after our visit that I looked into the whole industry. Turns out Mormon Historical Sites are identified, researched, and developed by a department within the LDS History Division, but once open to the public they are controlled by the Missionary Department and staffed by missionaries. Which explains why the staff giving tours really don’t know much history, if any, about the sites they are staffing, but they’ve got their missionary script down pretty well. So I don’t go out of my way to visit any Mormon Historical Sites these days. Your mileage may vary.
So now is your chance to show off your global travels. Have you ever seen Stonehenge or Euro Disney? These items from the book didn’t make my highlight list above, but perhaps you have visited The Beijing Museum of Tap Water or The Grover Cleveland Service Area (a rest stop on the New Jersey Turnpike). And your Mormon travels. I’ve never seen the LDS sites in Ohio or New York; I’ll bet some are good and some are bad. And your Mormon events. I’m thinking an excommunication trial would make the list of an event to avoid (by which I mean if you are inclined to terminate your membership, resignation seems like a more humane choice). Maybe you have some good recollections to share. Or maybe you, dear reader, have a tale to recount of a Mormon place not to see before you die. Pray tell.
Wheat & Tares 
Mixed review and likely not possible any more (it was many years ago) . . .
Some time in my teens I got to spend a night in a cell in Carthage Jail. Probably belongs on the do-not-repeat list, but it was cool at the time.
Adam-ondi-Ahman is a lovely peaceful valley and well worth visiting, especially on a clear spring day and even if it IS in Missouri. The Church maintains the grounds in perfect understatement. One of my favorite places, not least because our beloved Jos. was at his imaginative best there, claiming this pristine spot as a kind of second home for Adam & Eve. You just don’t hear this kind of stuff anymore and frankly the Church is poorer for it. Dry sermons by money managers, lawyers and congenital Republicans are poor substitutes.
Adam-ondi-Ahman is a lovely peaceful valley and well worth visiting, especially on a clear spring day and even if it IS in Missouri. The Church maintains the grounds in perfect understatement. One of my favorite places, not least because our beloved Jos. was at his imaginative best there, claiming this pristine spot as a kind of second home for Adam & Eve. You just don’t hear this kind of stuff anymore and frankly the Church is poorer for it. Dry sermons by money managers, lawyers and congenital Republicans are poor substitutes.
Mormon historic sites owned/maintained by the Community of Christ charge admission ($4.00 per person to tour their visitors ctr. and 5 sites) in Nauvoo. The Nauvoo House is closed to the public and 2 others can be viewed by anyone (the Smith family cemetery and Red Brick store).So, you’re paying 4 bucks for a guide to show you 3 sites. Not a good value if you’ve got a busload.
I feel like the comments in the Cove Fort section about how the missionaries running the Church’s historical sites don’t know as much history as they know missionary scripts is pretty general across the board. I was much more impressed with the Community of Christ’s tours in Nauvoo than I was with our Church’s ones when I visited there a few years ago (even though I was a full-time missionary at the time). I also went on a tour of the Beehive House in Salt Lake City just a year or two ago and was very frustrated by how much more focused they were on conversion than history (I think the sister missionaries giving the tour were as baffled with me as I was frustrated with them and when they realized I was an active member who knew a lot about Mormon history, so they just rushed through the tour rather than letting me enjoy the experience and to get a good look at the building. It probably didn’t help when I wandered off to start silently reading the Deseret Alphabet Book of Mormon on display while they were lecturing about the Plan of Salvation in the early stages of the tour, though).
I visited the Mormon Battalion site last year, and it didn’t feel as overly preachy as the other sites I’ve visited–they even had some fun activities outside. I couldn’t help but think of a review I saw on TripAdvisor the whole time I was there, though: “The Mormon Battalion is an oxymoron. Learn about a battalion that never went to battle. Meet the people who built twenty wells for settlers in San Diego but didn’t stay to settle themselves. Pan for gold with the progeny of those who began the CA gold rush but did not rush for gold. Visit a Historic Site that has no history; it really is a fun, interesting place to learn.”
I was at Cove Fort last summer. The staff was well trained and several were grounded in church history and understood the various agricultural practices they were demonstrating completely.
Yes to the Grover Cleveland Service Area on the NJ Turnpike! It is, in two words, “perfectly awful.” It is a microchosm of everything wrong with America wrapped up in one spot that you have to enter because the kids need a bathroom.
For Mormon sites, Far West, Missouri, takes the cake as underwhelming. Simply nothing there other than the temple cornerstones.
I completely agree that the lack of historical knowledge by the missionaries who staff Mormon historical sites is a major turn-off. The last time I went to Nauvoo, I tried to get something, anything more than the basic missionary script answers about the lives of the people in the houses we toured. But it became obvious that the senior couples just didn’t know anything. We paid the money to go to the RLDS/Community of Christ sites and had a wonderful tour by an LDS women who worked there and had been multiple times to Mormon History Society conferences and was knowledgeable and willing to discuss all of the fine nuances of what went on between Joseph and Emma and such. Well worth the money paid. I learned my lesson. The CoJCoLDS views history only as a missionary opportunity, so don’t expect anything at a church historical site beyond a superficial, Disneyesque version of a site’s history and definitely not anything that will help make sense of the lives or the historical tensions that led to conflict there. So I have scratched all church historical sites off my list. Unless they start having missionary free days on Mondays or whatever day P-days are now.
It’s gone now, but hoo boy the Mormon Miracle Pageant was cringeworthy on a hundred levels: the incessant pre-show announcements offering free pictures of Jesus Christ to non-members, the self-congratulatory tone of the show (which completely turned off the non-member in my party), the corny costumes, the treatment of history like a magician’s card deck for shuffling and planned surprises* — ugh. And despite all that, people would practically bear their testimony of the pageant in following weeks. May it Rest In Peace.
* I don’t even mean this in a snarky, liberal Mormon way. No, Joseph Smith did not in fact have all the answers to questions like “Where did I come from? What is the purpose of life?” by the time period portrayed in the show. He was proceeding on revelation over time just like anyone else.
I have visited Stonehenge twice but before it was completely fenced-0ff from visitors. The car park was so jarring but nevertheless I’m glad to have seen it. An interesting fact is that it was much more imposing as recently as the 19th century. But the people of the area used it as a kind of quarry, taking many of the stones for other projects.
The most out off the way site for us was Hauns Mill. Since.it no longer exists it is iust an empty field with bees and flowers. It is literally a dirt road that leads to nowhere.
How old is this book? Because EuroDisney was rebranded as Disneyland Paris many years ago. If you like Disney, then it looks like any other Disney park. If you don’t, then I guess it’s bad.
I was in Kansas City for a wedding and, since there is nothing else to do there, I visited the sites. I really enjoyed Liberty Jail. The sister missionaries were so refreshing in describing how the Mormons came to town, talked down to the original settlers about how God was going to give them the land, hence Joseph landing in jail. I appreciated that they took blame for their part of the story rather than playing martyr.
Worst place? Adam-Ondi-Ahman. This couple missionary said it’s not to miss. I ended up lost, alone, in a field in the middle of nowhere in a classic spring Midwest thunderstorm that was completely terrifying to this Southern California native. Hashtag not impressed.
I actually liked cove fort. But one visit was plenty.
A non mormon site that baffles me is the seven magic mountains outside Vegas. It’s just a bunch of colored rocks. You can see it from the freeway. It’s nowhere near the exit. And it’s hot in Vegas. Everyone I know has pilgrimed there. I don’t get it.
My family spent a few days at Martin’s Cove. My in-laws were senior missionaries there, and they lived in their trailer for two summers. They invited us up. Muddy Gap is a very isolated place. We did venture to Lander and Casper, so it wasn’t time all spent at the Sweetwater. For a few years afterwards, many of the senior couples they served with would take their trailers to Yuma Arizona and do mission reunions there for a week or two. After hauling the trailer got old my wife suggested her parents buy a place down south instead. So they sold the trailer and bought a condo in Mesquite Nevada, ironically also on the list of places not to visit above. I actually liked taking a RZR across the desert and over the Virgin Mountains exploring.
Cove Fort has nice bathrooms.
Last month my running sidekick and I trekked out into the middle of the desert to the site of the Mormon Battalion Christmas Camp alongside the Gila River. Other than a metal sign erected by a stake in Mesa and a pretty neat corral (definitely built in the last century or so), there’s nothing there. But we went in with low expectations and had a great run through the desert on a beautiful morning.
Also underwhelming – the Mormon Battalion museum in San Diego. It’s a guided tour with a movie that is sort of interesting. But then you get the full court press for non-member referrals at the end that isn’t any fun.
Ditto times a thousand on the Mormon Battalion museum. The sister missionaries there created one of the most awkward situations I’ve ever been in with my wife. There were a couple non members in the 7 or 8 of us on the tour. At the end of it the sisters asked the non members about what they thought of Joseph Smith. Who isn’t in the video or anything there. It was so weird watching them reply “Who?”
Stonehenge is a fascinating and imposing place but tourism has changed everything. It’s so incredibly busy now and fenced – for good reason obviously. As a child I remember no huge crowds and being able to walk right up to it. We’d often pass it on our way to holiday destinations and it made quite an impact as it came into view.
The last church site I visited was Palmyra, and although somewhat interesting, the scripted missionary tours were sweet but also frustrating as you’d often be trapped for longer than you wanted to be. And like others have alluded to – a script with an agenda and I expect most of the visitors are already insiders. It was a lot different to a much earlier visit in 1990 though the set up now is more historically accurate. The Smith home that was used for tours previously wasn’t where the Smith family lived for all the visions etc.
1) Haun’s Mill is in the middle of rural
Missouri, the directional signs have been shot-out by the locals. They aren’t friendly in the roads or at the gas stations if you ask for directions. The church website no longer lists the actual location and routes you to a marker in Richmond. To see it, you have to use old guidebooks or research online to find it. No signs, no markers, no parking lot, just scrubby desolate woods. I imagine it is the most authentic site the church has yet to spoil. It would be nearly impassable in the snow, but at this time of the year when the leafless forest of arthritic-looking hackberries, slippery elm, cottonwoods and oaks scrag over a carpet of decaying brown leaves, mud, and an anemic, sludgy creek- you can transport yourself to the 1830’s. If you must go- keep it on the down-low. Be cool to the locals and don’t expect to be coddled with things like paved roads or restrooms.
2) The Independence Visitor’s center has been re-vamped and most of the history of the area has been removed. It’s essentially a Mormon commercial with a “ families are forever“ missionary discussion. In one room, they re-created the red-rock formations of southern Utah (Arches Nat’l Park) as a audio-recording begins telling the story of a family goes hiking together and a little boy dies (or something). You are guided through rooms that replicate a typical suburban, white, middle-class family’s home (not a midwestern home, but a home from Utah) as the narration continues with its gospel lesson. Atrocious. Talk about cultural-centric views and Salt Lake replicating itself across the globe without care for e else or (in this case) any place else.
3). Adam-ondi-Ahman
I can’t believe we we are sitting on $100 and this site is still just a pasture. You can stretch your legs for all of 3 min on a walking trail and drive your car to not one, but two look-out points. I think one info board still exists. They took down the info board about the Nephite alter. Preacher’s rock has no sign, but if you know what it is, it’s cool to stand on Joseph’s pulpit. There used to be trails around the site where you could visit the stone foundations of pioneer cabins, the ferry point, and an uncapped well dug by Joseph and others, but those things are all closed now. The missionaries know where these sites are, but are the only ones able to see them. In fairness, I don’t think much archeological work has been done in the area, and tourists shouldn’t be introduced until the site has been thoroughly studied and secured. Still. Aren’t we sitting on $100b?
I’ve always loved historical sites and museums and have dragged the fam to dozens. My favorite is the Henry Ford Museum and Greenfield Village in Dearborn, Michigan. Henry Ford brought historic buildings from all over the world – but mostly the US. Like Noah Webster’s home, George Washington Carver’s shack, and a 7/8th replica of Edison’s Menlow Park complex. You need two days there.
When we visited Carthage Jail, I was last in line as we climbed the stairs. When I got up there was no room so the missionary had me sit in the window – yes that window from which JS was shot and fell to the ground. I could barely get my head around that.
Cove Fort got an extensive re-fresh when GBH was president. His grandfather was the one call to lead the “mission” to build the fort and oversee operations.
My wife wouldn’t go into some of the church historic buildings we’ve visited and would just wander the grounds. Only recently she told me that they were the polygamy related houses and she did not want to go inside as the practice was so repulsive to her.
I have a relative that works for LDS Philanthropies. They tell me that nowadays the church taps wealthy members to donate the funds to create or fix up the historical sites – they don’t dip into the $100B kitty for that kind of stuff. The donors are then invited to the dedication ceremony with a compliment of attending General Authorities.
A few years ago they put on a high-end fundraiser (I can’t remember for what) in one of those Park City cabin/mansions. Pre-senate Mitt Romney was the drawing card for the event – along with some GA’s.
They also have an annual week-long to-do in Hawaii for big donors. They stay at resorts like Turtle Bay – a first-class experience with plenty of facetime with apostles and other GA’s. It’s like a celebrity meet-and-greet. I find that off-putting. Of course, the 2020 event was canceled. I wonder if they will pick it up again when they are able.
BeenThere,
Are you serious? I had no idea that’s how fundraising was done these days for church history sites. I know that Nauvoo was restored by fund-raising, but it was much more low-key, no fancy events or GAs, mostly family history groups.
Wow.
After touring Independence Visitors Ctr some years ago we told matron, who was standing near entrance, that we were going to walk across street to RLDS visitors center & museum. She scowled and said that when we wanted to “feel the Spirit again”, come back! Wow. Later, at RLDS museum – well worth seeing BTW – we asked a guide to tell us something about the Temple Lot group down the block. She just shrugged her shoulders:
Kissin’ cousins who apparently don’t have much to do w/ each other (like my family, unfortunately.)
At Temple Lot building we were looking at their pamphlets, one written by an “apostle” I’d never heard of. I read the name aloud and said to my wife, “I wonder who this is?” A voice from the back declared, “That’s me!” A delightful 20 min discussion ensued. FINALLY we’d gotten to meet one of the 12!
Interesting information, BeenThere. Thank you.
Many Conservatives think government shouldn’t be involved in helping people, but that it should be left to churches to care for the poor. In some ways, the lds church double denies the poor help: by not providing more than a relative pittance themselves, and by using wealthy members’ charitable donations for their own projects.
I noticed that the Old Testament uses language like, cause, just cause, and need when referring to needs of vulnerable populations.