Road Trip Leg 1
NAUVOO
We've been meaning to get out to Nauvoo for several months now, but with all of Kevin's travelings we never got a chance. There's no way we would have left without going to Nauvoo Illinouis first. What a beautiful place!
This is the view right in front of the Nauvoo Temple. You can see the river in the distance.
The statues are of Hyrum and Joseph Smith on their last ride together before their lives ended at the Carthage jail.
We got to go through the little town where they have all the houses and shops that the Saints had. The kids got to see how the Saints made bricks for their homes, the print shop and basically just how they lived.
You can see the school in the back right (and it was also a house!)
Lucy Mack Smith's home
Print shop. I can't even imagine putting all those tiny letters together to make a newspaper! Crazy!
John Taylor's Home
The blacksmith. Here they showed us all the work that went into making wagons. The Saints made 2,000 wagons to pack up everything they knew to head West.
The kids each got to pick a ring from made from the blacksmith out of nails.
The red brick store. You can see the river behind this store too. No wonder why they loved this place so much- it was beautiful!
The house in front of the Smith Cemetary
Hyrum, Joseph and Emma Smith's headstones. Kevin thought it was pretty amazing that he was just in Palmyra New York last week where Joseph Smith was a young boy, and then got to come to Nauvoo and see where his life ended.
After Nauvoo we drove over to Carthage Jail.
Another statue of Joseph and his brother Hyrum
All along the walkway they have plaques of different quotes from Joseph Smith. Pretty neat!
Back then a lot of times their were families who lived in the jail to take care of the imates. This was the room of the couple who took care of the jail. The night before Joseph and Hyrum were killed, the couple let them, along with John Taylor and Richard Willards sleep in their bedroom to get a comfortable nights sleep.
Then the mobs broke into the jail and house and were shooting through the door. They still have the bullet holes in the door.
This bullet went straight through and was the one that killed Hyrum
and once the mobbers were inside they shot and killed Joseph while he was trying to climb out the window. They played the whole story out on tape and Scott was listening so intently. Afterwards when we asked him about the Carthage Jail he said, "Yeah- I really felt the spirit in there."
After Nauvoo and Carthage we were headed to Colorado. We were going to try to get to Kansas City and get a hotel there, but we underestimated Memorial Day and all the hotels there were booked. We ended up driving until 1 am to Topeka Kansas where we stayed the night. Luckily the kids slept from about 9:30 until we got to the hotel, so we actually got in some good (peaceful) driving!
