About the Tour Guides:

Dr. Steve Harper is a historian of early America and a leading scholar of Joseph Smith. With decades of experience as a professor of history and religion and a prolific author and editor of historical texts, he guides this tour with a wealth of knowledge and an unparalleled personal touch.

Scott Salvesen has both a passion for and a master’s degree in tourism. With a passion for history and years of experience in tourism and adventure therapy, Scott manages each tour with expertise and care.

Trip Dates: May 28 – June 8 (see itinerary below)

Trip Length: 12 days

Trip Cost per person: The cost is $3,195 per person double occupancy, or $3,395 single occupancy

We offer the best itinerary, more sights, shorter days (more time to explore and relax), tasty meals, comfortable buses, high end hotels, awesome swag, less backtracking, and no airports – with Dr. Steven Harper and Scott Salvesen at your service from beginning to end.

This trip is for Latter-day Saint adults (young, old, and in between) and their family and friends including teens who think about scriptures when they don’t have to. You’ll need to be able to walk a mile each day and ride in a bus for up to three hours at a time. If you’re not sure it’s for you or your family and friends, contact us, and let’s chat about it.

The itinerary follows:

We’ll meet in Philadelphia, enjoy dinner together, and plan for our travels beginning the next morning.

We’ll see sites of the American Revolution–the room where the Declaration of Independence (1776) and the Constitution (1787) were discussed, debated, and signed; Valley Forge where the Continental Army wintered (1777-1778); and Washington’s Crossing of the Delaware River on Christmas, 1776. We’ll dine where Washington and Franklin dined, and we’ll overnight in the Poconos.

In the morning we’ll make the scenic drive to the Susquehanna River Valley and see where Joseph Smith met and married Emma Hale, where she scribed as he translated the Book of Mormon in their cabin, where they buried their first child, and where angels ordained Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdery to the holy priesthood. We’ll see the river where they performed the first authorized baptisms of the last dispensation.

We’ll continue north, stop at Taughannock Falls, then on to Fayette, New York to the replica farmhouse of Mary Musselman and Peter Whitmer, where an angel showed the Book of Mormon plates to Mary in her barnyard, and to her son David, Oliver Cowdery, and Martin Harris in the nearby woods. We’ll see where the Savior’s Church was organized and its first conferences were held and several revelations were received. We’ll stay near Seneca Lake, where many of the earliest saints were baptized.

Hoping for a beautiful, clear, spring day 204 years since Joseph’s First Vision, we’ll start in the Grove where it happened. Before lunch, you’ll have time to yourself in the grove and learn more about the vision than many scholars know. We’ll visit the Smith cabin and frame homes and see the spots where Joseph discovered a seer stone, attended Methodist meetings, and unearthed the Book of Mormon plates. We’ll visit the Grandin Press, Martin Harris’s home, and Alvin Smith’s gravesite before we enjoy the ride to our hotel in Niagara in time for a relaxing evening or a concert in the Artpark.

We’ll have the day to enjoy Niagara Falls. You’ll have easy access to any or all of taking a boat ride to the falls, shopping, relaxing, and taking in the view of Niagara Gorge at Whirlpool Park.

We’ll stop in Buffalo for sacrament meeting as we “go to the Ohio” (DC 37:1). We’ll learn what Joseph said about seer stones buried nearby, and contemplate Lucy Mack Smith’s heroic story of the New York saints boating from Buffalo to Fairport Harbor to obey the Lord’s command to gather. We’ll tour the House of the Lord in Kirtland to see where the Savior and ministering angels appeared and endowed the saints with power and began to resolve Christianity’s soteriological problem.

We’ll start the day touring the many sites at Historic Kirtland Village, stop at the rock quarry for the Kirtland temple, then tour Elsa and John Johnson’s farmhouse to see where Joseph revised the Bible, envisioned the Father and the Son, and saw the heavenly glories. It’s here that Joseph was dragged from bed, beaten and tarred, where the Lord revealed through Joseph the answers to William McLellin’s intimate questions, and where the Book of Commandments was born. Then we’ll head west, as if we’re marching with Brigham Young, Heber Kimball, Wilford Woodruff, and the rest of the Camp of Israel, on our way to Zion in Missouri. We will overnight near the temple in Columbus, Ohio and learn about Hyrum Smith’s ministry to Sally Parker near there as he led Kirtland Camp to Missouri.

We’ll continue west, stopping where Joseph Smith spent several weeks in the summer of 1832, and where he prayed almost daily in the woods. We’ll stop for the night in St. Louis, close enough to Busch Stadium to catch a game if the Cardinals are in town, or to ride to the top of the Gateway Arch, or to cruise the Mississippi River on a paddlewheel steamboat.

We’ll stop in Jefferson City, Missouri and see Executive Order 44, the infamous Extermination Order, and get a taste of Missouri in the 1830s in part by touring the state capitol where we’ll see Thomas Hart Benson’s massive painting of Bishop Partridge being tarred and feathered. Then we’ll go to the site where that happened–to “the land of promise, and the place for the city of Zion,” or “the place which is now called Independence” (DC 57:2-3)–where we’ll also see the temple site, and where the Saints’ printing office was destroyed and some copies of the revelations were rescued by brave saints including Vienna Jaques and Elizabeth and Caroline Rollins. Today, there’s a temple in Liberty, Missouri. We’ll stay near it and make time to worship or relax.

This morning we’ll spend time in the Liberty Jail, discuss how it was both heavenly and hellish, and learn the Lord’s restored response to the problem of pain and suffering. We’ll see the temple site at Far West and take in the views from Adam-Ondi-Ahman. Then, like Joseph and Hyrum, we’ll take our change of venue for the state of Illinois.

We’ll spend all day in Nauvoo with ample time to attend the temple and/or to explore. We’ll talk all about what Joseph’s store has to do with the Relief Society, Masonry, the endowment of power, and the restoration of the new and everlasting covenant of marriage. We’ll dine well before relaxing for the evening at the hotel.

We’ll visit the Hancock County Jail in Carthage, Illinois, the sacred site where Joseph and Hyrum Smith sealed their witness of the Savior with their blood. We’ll follow the road back to Nauvoo, tell the story of how the Saints finished the temple, were endowed with power and sealed, and then crossed the Mississippi River in search of refuge and religious freedom far away in the west. We’ll have some free time in Nauvoo after that–enough for temple worship or sightseeing or shopping or some of each.

Then we’ll head south, stopping at Mark Twain’s birthplace. We’ll enjoy local Missouri barbeque, and arrive at the Marriott hotel next door to the St. Louis airport, where, alas, our tour will come to an end.

• Ground transportation
• Accommodations
• Breakfast each day
• Lunch OR dinner each day
• Entrance fees into activities as outlined in the itinerary
• Gratuities at all group meals and for all services covered by trip fee

• Airfare and baggage fees to Philadelphia, PA where the tour begins, and from St. Louis, MO where the tour ends
• Snacks and one meal per day
• Souvenirs and clothing
• Activities not included in the itinerary
• Personal medical and emergency costs (we strongly recommend purchasing traveler’s insurance for this trip, and all trips you may take)

The cost is $3,195 per person double occupancy, or $3,395 single occupancy. That includes whole group activities (breakfast and dinner each day and all gratuities for the bus driver and waitstaff at group meals). It doesn’t cover lunches or optional add ons that the whole group doesn’t participate in together, including the Maid of the Mist at Niagara Falls, a baseball game, a Mississippi dinner cruise, the Gateway Arch, etc.