A Trip to Remember

The rest of the family is going to the blogs, so I guess we will give in and do the same. And what better time to start than to tell about our vacation last week?

We left the from the Boise airport on Wednesday morning (8/6) en route to St. Louis. We had an almost three hour layover in Denver, but all the flights were on time. We arrived in St. Louis at around 6:30, and had planned to hustle to our hotel (right across the river from the Gateway Arch in Illinois) and drop off our luggage, and then take the Metro back across the river to the Cardinals-Dodgers game that started at 7:15. We knew we would miss an inning or two, but thanks to a lost reservation, we ended up taking a long time getting our room (and we had to take a smoking room at that), so we didn't get to the game until the 7th inning. We missed home runs by Manny Ramirez, Albert Pujols (a grand slam, no less), and Jason Ludwick! Oh well, it was fun to see the new Busch Stadium, and to see the Dodgers go down to defeat.

The next morning we got up and had breakfast at the hotel, checked out, and headed over to the Gateway Arch. That is a pretty impressive structure! We had pre-purchased tickets to ride the tram to the top at around 9:00, and we made it in plenty of time to do that. We spent a little time in the Museum of Western Expansion underneath the arch (and, of course, a little money at the gift shop -- I was traveling with three women after all), and then piled back into the car to head north towards Nauvoo. By the way, we had reserved a standard size rental car, but when we arrived in St. Louis they gave us a Ford Explorer. Not so good for gas mileage, but it was nice to have the extra room.

We got to Hannibal, Missouri, birthplace of Samuel Langhorne Clemens (aka Mark Twain, but you knew that, right?), around noon, so we stopped at the Mark Twain Family Diner for lunch. Not the best food we've ever had, but it was edible. We spent some time looking around the town, but we decided we didn't have enough time to make it worth spending the money to pay for the tour through the museum and his boyhood home, so we just walked around outside and took pictures. Anna and I walked down to the river while Erin and Liz hit some stores.

From Hannibal we crossed the Mississippi River into Illinois and headed on north towards Nauvoo. We had reservations to stay at the 1850s Guest House bed and breakfast about 10 miles north of Nauvoo, so we drove on through Nauvoo to check in. Liz had talked to the owner on the phone when she made the reservations, and the lady had told her that she had just taken ownership of the place. Well, when we arrived at the house the lady we found there informed us that the person Liz had talked to had backed out of the sale and was gone. This lady was the previous (and now current again) owner. Luckily she still intended to honor our reservation, although she did ask us to take a room upstairs instead of the downstairs room Liz had reserved. She said she had an older woman and her daughter coming the second night we were there who couldn't climb the stairs, so she wanted to give them the downstairs room. To compensate she actually gave us two rooms upstairs, so Erin and Anna got their own room. It turns out those other two women were the only other guests they had the whole time we were there, so we pretty much had this huge house to ourselves. The breakfasts we had there were all excellent -- the only downside was they had some problems with the water heater, and the first morning we all got to take cold showers.

After getting checked in, we made the short drive back to Nauvoo and met up with Uncle Lee and Aunt Diane at their apartment. They fed us some dinner and then they headed over to get ready for their performance in "Rendezvous in Old Nauvoo," which they had gotten tickets for us to watch. It was very entertaining, and Lee and Diane did a great job on their part. From there we headed over to the seats Diane had staked out for us for the pageant. When we got there we ran into someone from our ward who was out there with his family to perform in the pageant. Its a small world! This was the next to last performance of the pageant for this year, and they did a great job. It really is an amazing production that really puts into perspective what an amazing church we belong to!

I should also mention here that we had really nice weather the whole week we were out there. Diane told us that the heat index on the Monday before we got there hit 115 degrees! While we were there the highs were in the lower 80's with nice breezes most days. Most days were also pretty sunny, with the only exception being Saturday when we had clouds in the morning and just a few drops of rain.

Friday morning we started our touring at the Nauvoo Visitor's Center, where we had to pick up our tickets to the performance of "Just Plain Anna Amanda" later that morning. We also had hoped to get a reservation for a carriage ride, but they were already booked up. We spent some time in the Monument to Women garden before heading over to the old Nauvoo Cultural Hall for the performance. This show is put on by the young performing missionaries that serve in Nauvoo for the summer. It's mostly geared towards young kids, but it was very entertaining. After the performance we had Diane take us on a tour of the Cultural Hall. Her shift ended about then so she went with us over to the Brickyard where Lee was just finishing up his shift. He gave us the demonstration there, and then we all went to the Schoolhouse. I think we also visited Lucy Mack Smith's house somewhere in there. Then we went to the Webb Brother's Blacksmith and Wainwright shop, and the missionaries on duty there let Lee do the demonstrations there for us (and the other visitors who happened to be there at the time). I had the closest birthday, so I won the little mini horseshoe he made.

We dropped off Lee and Diane at their house and then had a late lunch in town before going back and visiting the Joseph Smith sites that are owned by the Community of Christ church. While the LDS presented stuff in Nauvoo is all free, the Community of Christ charges a small fee to take a guided tour of the sites they have, which include the original homestead that Joseph Smith first lived in in Nauvoo, the Nauvoo House, the Mansion House, and a reconstructed Red Brick Store. I think we also saw the Brigham Young home, the Post Office, John Taylor's home, and the Printing Office that afternoon.

After that we met back up with Lee and Diane and they were kind enough to take us out to dinner at the Hotel Nauvoo. They put on a big buffet there, which was definitely the best meal in town from what we experienced. After we stuffed ourselves we drove down to the end of Parley Street to watch and take pictures of the sunset over the Mississippi River. After the sun went down there was still enough light for us to walk back up Parley Street and read all the quotes on the "Trail of Hope" that Pres. Hinckley once said he hoped everyone would take the time to walk.

Saturday morning we had made reservations in advance to attend the 11:00 session at the Nauvoo temple, so we had to get dressed up before we left the house. We stopped off at the visitor's center again to pick up tickets for the "High Hopes and Riverboats" show in the afternoon and try unsuccessfully again to get signed up for a carriage ride. We had a little less than an hour before we had to be at the temple, so we went to the Lands and Records office and looked up a bunch of our ancestors and found out where they had lived in Nauvoo and left with a CD full of information about them. The temple was beautiful, of course, and it was great to have our whole family there together. I think it's the first time we've all been in the temple together since before Anna went on her mission. We took some pictures together at the temple afterwards, and then went and had some lunch at a deli kitty corner across the street. The ladies did a little shopping after that while I waited in the car, and then we went and changed clothes at Lee and Diane's house before visiting a couple of other sites. First we went to the Family Living center where Uncle Lee showed us how to make a rope, and we also learned about candle making, baking, and coopering. We had time after that to make a quick stop at the Scovill Bakery, and then it was back to the visitor's center to see the young performing missionaries put on "High Hopes and Riverboats." Aunt Diane joined us there. There was some really neat music in that show, with our favorite being an a cappella song about Joseph. We headed into town after that to grab some dinner and then came back to the outdoor theater next to the visitor's center to see the performance of "Sunset on the Mississippi." This one is basically a variety show that's put on by the senior missionaries (including Lee and Diane) and the young performing missionaries. It was immensely entertaining, but the bugs that feasted on my ankles all night were not so entertaining.

Sunday morning we had to get up early to be to church before 8:00. Lee and Diane saved us seats, so we didn't have to get there too much earlier than that. This is a meeting for the missionaries and visitors, and they only do sacrament meeting. After the meeting we did a little driving around to find some of the places our ancestors had lived in town, and then went to Lee and Diane's so that Anna could e-mail her missionary friends (we didn't have internet at our bed and breakfast). We had some lunch and then Lee and Diane had to work a shift giving tours, and we went out to visit some of the sites we hadn't seen yet. We made it to the Browning Gunsmith shop, the Stoddard Tin Shop, and the Sarah Granger Kimball, Heber C. Kimball, and Wilford Woodruff homes. Lee and Diane got off their shifts at 2:30, and we met back up with them at 3:00 and then drove out to Carthage to visit the Jail and visitor's center there. The Explorer came in handy here because it had two fold up seats in the cargo area that allowed us to all ride in the same car. After Carthage we went exploring in the area where Ramus used to be, where Benjamin F. Johnson had his home in the Nauvoo area. We had the map from the Lands and Records office, and we think we located it. We were driving down a gravel road that runs north-south right through the middle of where BFJ's property was supposed to be, and all of a sudden we came across an Interstate 90 sign attached to a pole on the side of the road. Obviously someone had "borrowed" the sign from its rightful location. It was pretty funny. There's not much out in that part of the country, so it's hard to imagine that there was once a whole community out there. We eventually found our way back into Nauvoo, and went back to Lee and Diane's for dinner and birthday cake.

Oh yeah, it was my birthday that day! My kids gave me a certificate to go take a flying lesson (thankfully it wasn't a certificate to go take a flying leap!). I don't know where they came up with that, but evidently there's a company here in Boise that does an introductory lesson in a special airplane for a reasonable price. Liz gave me gift certificates for iTunes and and Red Robin, but there was one more surprise yet to come. After some final visiting, we bade farewell to Lee and Diane and headed back to our home away from home. It was a lot of fun to spend time with them, and it was nice to have them to help us navigate all the stuff to do there. The church has really done amazing job of making Nauvoo a great place to visit. As you can see there is a ton of stuff to do there. In four days we still didn't quite manage to fit everything in.

Well, this post is already pretty long, so I think I'm going to go ahead and post it and finish the rest of the trip in a second post.

Till then,
Erick


Oh yeah, here's a link to the pictures, if you haven't seen them yet.