Anniversary trip to Nauvoo

This will be a long post and I don't expect everyone to read all of it but I need to write it all down before I forget. That's what happens when you have kids....your brain just stops working!
Anthon and I will celebrate our 5th wedding anniversary on the 16th of this month so we decided to make it a big one. Thank you tax return! We decided to go to Nauvoo since neither of us had ever been there before. We found REALLY cheap airfare out of the Gateway airport. It was $89 over and $29 back. Amazing, I know!! We left on the 9th and got back on the 12th. We wanted to be there a little longer but even just adding 1 day to our trip would have made it a LOT more expsenive. Our car rental was $80 for the four days total and just adding one more day would have been an extra $80. I don't know why...I thought it was really dumb. Also, flying out any day other than Wednesday would have added about $60 to the airfare. So, it was really short but SO much fun!!
We met my parents in Globe on Wednesday night so they could take the kids. I cried when I had to leave Mason. 2 1/2 months is the youngest that I have ever left my child overnight. It was hard on the drive home but once we got home and started getting everything ready, I was OK. My mind was busy the whole time so I didn't think about it too much. Of course, I missed my children but I'm glad I was able to enjoy the trip.
Anyway, here is a picture of the Nauvoo temple.

SO beautiful!!

Our flight left at 7:40 am. There is a two hour time difference so lost those two hours on the way over there. We got off the plane around lunch time so after we got our rental car we found some place to eat. We spotted a quaint little place called Culver's. Oh my gosh!! I don't know if it was just because we were really hungry or what but this place is SOOOOO good! If you ever fly into Cedar Rapids or go to Iowa City you have to go to this place! We were looking forward to eating there on our way back to the airport but it was closed for Easter :o(.

Culver's

We flew into Cedar Rapids which is about a two hour drive from Nauvoo. I can't believe how open it is and how spaced out the houses are! It was really pretty. It was all farm land and farm houses.

This is what the entire drive looked like.

With a house like this every couple of miles.

Even without much to look at, the drive seemed really short. Here is our first view of the Mississippi River.

It is so beautiful!

View from the bridge.

We stayed at the Nauvoo Family Inn & Suites. It was nice. It was only seven blocks from the temple. Since airfare was so cheap we decided to splurge a little and get a room with a jacuzzi.

The room had a fireplace which we DID use.

When we reserved our room it said we could either have a room with a big bath tub and jets or we could have a jacuzzi. We chose the room with the jacuzzi but I'm wondering what the difference between the two is.

This is the jacuzzi, which was pretty much a bathtub with jets. Maybe the difference was the jacuzzi was in the room and not the bathroom...I don't know.

I used it every night! It was so nice to just sit there and relax and watch a little TV. Anyway, as soon as we got to the hotel we got dressed and went to the temple to do a session. Unfortunately, the last session was already full. We were forty minutes early! So, we did sealings. The temple is SO beautiful inside!!

The next morning we went to Carthage. It was so amazing. The spirit there is so strong!

Carthage jail

We happened to get there at the same time a group of people from Joliet got there so our tour was really crowded. We stayed behind to take pictures of each room after everyone left. Unfortunately, the last room they do is the room Joseph and Hyrum were killed in. I waited for everyone to leave but by the time we got into the room to take pictures, another group was coming through so we had to hurry. I didn't have time to sit and absorb everything.

This is the room they were killed in.

This is the window Joseph threw himself out of

This is the bullet hole from the bullet that got Hyrum in the face.

Joseph fell from the top window

I can't even begin to describe all the emotions you go through in this place. Those of you who have been there, know. It's an amazing thing to be where it actually happened. I hope we can go again sometime soon and stay a little longer.
We met a couple from Mesa that were in the same tour as us and they were nice enough to take a picture of us by this statue of Joseph and Hyrum.
Our time in Carthage was short since the only thing there is the jail. We went back to Nauvoo to look for a place to eat lunch but there isn't a whole lot in Nauvoo. We ended up going to Keokuk which is the nearest town to Nauvoo with places to eat. For about 11 miles of the drive the road is right next to the Mississippi. If you veered off the road at all you would go straight into the river. On that road I spotted my future home! Here it is

Isn't this house amazing!! I couldn't believe how huge it was! The river is right in it's back yard!

On the way back, we stopped to take a picture of us by the river. I can't believe how huge it is!
We got back with lots of time to spare so we went to Old Nauvoo and checked out Heber C. Kimball's house. They sure had really big houses back in the day! But I guess you kinda had to when you had a few wives and tons of kids, huh? ;o)

Heber C. Kimball's house

Anthon had an ancestor named Edmund Lovell Ellsworth who lived right next door to Brigham Young so we decided to check it out and see if there was still a house there......

Nope! This is where the house used to be.

We went to the vistor's center after that and ended up watching the Joseph Smith movie. I can't believe it has been out for like 3 years and we still hadn't seen it. It was REALLY good. Of course, I cried. It was a little rushed but you can't expect them to get Joseph's entire life in detail and fit it into a 68 minute movie. Anyway, I'm glad we saw it for the first time in Nauvoo. It meant a little more to me seeing it there.
Just outside the visitor's center they had a full piece of the original Nauvoo temple.

I thought it was really cool.

We went to the Land and Records Center afterwards to see if we had any other ancestors go through Nauvoo. The farthest back I knew of was Aurelia Spencer Rogers. She is my great-great-great grandmother. She is the one who started and organized Primary. They call her the "Mother" of Primary. Anyway, I wasn't sure how old she would have been when the saints were in Nauvoo or if she was even born then. We found out that she was 12 years old when the saints left Nauvoo. We also learned a lot about her mother. Her mother's name was Catherine Curtis Spencer and she was an amazing strength to the people around her. She was the first saint to die on the trail after the saints left Nauvoo. She was 9 days shy of her 35th birthday when she passed away and the saints were only a day or two out of Nauvoo. They decided to sneak back in and bury her there next to her 13 month old baby who had died only 6 months before her. Right after she died, her husband was called on a mission and he had to leave his six children to cross the plains alone (the oldest being only 14). The sad thing is, Cathrine's parents lived in Nauvoo and could have taken her in but they said that the only way they would help nurse her back to health was if she renounce the church. She didn't so they let her die. The saints went through so much! It is such a testimony builder for me.
Anyway, we went to the Old Nauvoo Cemetery to see where she was buried.

This is the road up to the cemetery.

They had a gazebo with names on the walls of all the people who were buried there. I found Catherine's name there but I don't know which one is her daughter.


Unfortunately, her grave was one of the many that were either unmarked or illegible. So I took a picture of the cemetery instead of the grave.

This isn't the entire cemetery, just part of it.

We headed back to the temple to walk around and take more pictures. I could spend all day there!

This statue of Joseph and Hyrum is across the street fom the temple. It is such a beautiful site walking out of the temple and seeing the Mississippi right there.

The next day was dedicated to walking around Old Nauvoo and checking out the rest of the houses. First thing in the morning we went to the visitor's center to pick up tickets for a show that was playing that night and then we went to the Joseph Smith History Center where we were disappointed to learn that it was run by the RLDS. The Reorganized church. They own the Mansion house, Lucy Mack Smith's homestead, the Smith family cemetery and the Red Brick Store. You have to pay for a tour of all the houses so we decided we would do it later if we had time. We took it upon ourselves to tour the cemetery though.

L to R
Hyrum Smith, Joseph Smith & Emma Hale Smith

Here is the Mansion house.

We never ended up making it in time to tour the house :o(. I really wish we had, but at least I saw it.
We went to Lucy Mack Smith's house that she lived in for a few months after Joseph Senior passed away. They had some of her original things in there. I was impressed how nice the china in this cupboard was. It was given to Lucy by her sister-in-law. It was in REALLY good shape!
We went to the brickyard where they showed us how bricks were made back then. Making brick's was where the saying "They just couldn't hack it" came from. During the process of the brick making, there is a part where the brick has to dry for a week. Once a day they had to turn the bricks over so that the water doesn't stay on one side of the brick and make it uneven. They would turn over about 40,000 bricks a day.This process was called Hacking. Anyway, it was really tiring work. So, now if someone can't finish whatever they were doing, they say that they just couldn't hack it.

The Brickyard

After the Brickyard, we went to The Seventies' Hall. This is where the quorum would have their meetings. It was also their Missionary Training Center.

I thought it was a really pretty room

At the top of the Seventies' Hall they had a bunch of artifacts that were found that dated back to the saints. They also had records of all the old Seventies and Anthon and I discovered that between the two of us, we had 10 ancestors that were in the Seventy. I thought it was really cool. We learned a lot about our own history as well as Nauvoo history.
We went to the Blacksmith right down the street and watched the Elder make a mini horseshoe. There, they had two of the original bellows and an original anvil.

This guy was SO funny.

We went to Brigham Young's house and took a tour. They had some original things of his there also. He was a carpenter and he did the cupboard's and the fireplace mantel and all of his original woodwork is still in the house.
He had a seperate little room in the house that lead into the kitchen. This room was used for meetings .

This is where the quorum of the twelve met.

We went to John Taylor's house also.

This is his shaving stand that his family donated to the church to put on display in his house.

The Sister that was doing the tour told us a cute story that I would like to share.
When the saints were forced to leave Nauvoo, they had to leave most of their belongings behind. One day, after a couple days on the trail, John Taylor's little boy started to cry. All day long he cried and cried. Finally, President Taylor asked his son what was wrong and his little boy said that he missed his rocking horse and he wanted it. Being the incredible father that he was, he risked his life and snuck back into Nauvoo in the middle of the night and into his house and got the rocking horse for his little boy.

This is that same rocking horse.

They tied it up to the side of the wagon and it made it all the way to Salt Lake City. President Taylor's family was nice enough to donate the rocking horse also.

Mail...thing and the mail carrier on top were found buried while they were restoring Old Nauvoo. They were used while the saints were living there.

This is Old Nauvoo running water :o) hehe

That's a little joke. They would take these down to the river, fill them up and then run the water up the hill to the men working on the temple.

Our last tour for the day was the medicine store.

This is one half of the store.

This little contraption is a pill maker.

The little doo-dad with the white handle behind the toothbrush is a tooth extractor!!
We left and then went to have dinner and get ready for the show we got tickets for that morning. It was the cutest thing ever! It was a bunch of the missionaries who acted out the time that the saints spent in Nauvoo. It was only an hour long. It was so funny!

The last thing we did that night was walk down the Trail of Hope. Every twenty feet or so, they had a plaque with a quote from one of the members. I was surprised to see one of my ancestors on one of them.

This is her quote

We went back to the hotel and packed our stuff :o(. I spent one last night in the jacuzzi and then went to bed.
We headed back to Cedar Rapids at around 8:45 am. Our flight left at 12:40 pm. We got home in time to take all our stuff in and get Easter baskets ready and then we drove up to Globe to get our children back. I was so happy to have them back...and then they started fighting in the car on the way home and I wondered if our vacation was a little too short :o).
We didn't go straight home. We went to see Anthon's dad because it was his birthday. We stayed there until about 8:30 pm and then came home. The kids were excited about their Easter baskets. They looked and played for a few minutes then they went to bed. What a long day it was!
I'm sad it's over but glad to be back home with my children.