Tuesday, March 17th
   Before we left Omaha we went to Winter Quarters visitor center and the temple was just across the street.  Originally we wanted to go to the temple but it only has sessions in the evening and we weren't going to wait that long.  The visitors center was very interesting and it's just hard to imagine all that the saints went through there.

 

From Winter Quarters we went over to Council Bluffs. 

 

Some of the bridges here are pretty interesting.  I got these pictures of one of the bridges.

There was another that was really colorful. Reds & yellows, totally different shapes

but I couldn't get my camera fast enough.  Then leaving Council Bluffs I got this one.

 

We went to the tabernacle in Kanesville.

 

We saw a film on the Mormon Battalion.  They left from here and it was very interesting.

Again, hard to imagine all that they went through,

Then we went to the tabernacle and were told all about it.  The original tabernacle was built a couple blocks away from where the one is now.  It was built with cottonwood trees and there was a natural spring that ran underneath it.  The wood isn't a good building wood and rotted away.  This replica is also built out of cottonwood because the Historical Society decided it needed to be authentic.  But this one has rebar in the walls and is built on a foundation with a crawl space under the building.  In the crawl space at the end of each rebar is a jack, so to speak, that can be tightened as the wood dried out.  Cottonwood holds the moisture and that is a problem in building with it.  In the last couple of years they haven't had to tighten any of the jacks so the settling is mostly over.  About the only trees we see around here are cottonwood so that is all that was available.

The Historical Society worked with the church to rebuild it as close to the original as possible.  Then in the late 90's they sold it to the church for a dollar and the church took over all the maintenance,  which was time consuming and expensive, because of the cottonwood. 

Inside you can look closely and see where the wood rots out.  Our guide told us last year they had to replace part of the wood because of it's rotting.  In this picture you can see the rotting wood up near the top.

This is where Brigham Young was sustained as President of the Church.

This is the stage are where that was done.  The mural is of the apostles that were present -

three were missing, if I remember correctly.

There's a old organ (on the right) that looks almost exactly to the one Dan has that was Mom's.

It has been restored and is electronic - the peddles don't work anymore.

The fireplace is made of the same kind of adobe kind of material - mud and grass.

It doesn't function as a fireplace but this is what it looked like.

This is a statue of the first presidency when Brigham became President

This is one of the center posts (cottonwood tree).  Each one also has a jack under the floor too.

You can see the crack in it.  The guide said that the center of the tree is hard and sturdy so the crack won't go through.