alicia and co.: Nauvoo and Carthage, Illinois

I love Nauvoo. We visited here a few times while living in St. Louis in 1996, then again while driving across the USA in 1999. This is my favorite vacation spot in the whole USA. We camped in the Nauvoo State Park for 3 (hot) nights and overall we're all glad we did it. I guess every super-long road trip has its Low Point, and unfortunately mine was the night we arrived in Nauvoo. We arrived at 10 p.m., so it was pitch dark and we still had to find the campsite and put up the tent. Our atlas got us to Nauvoo, but we had no directions to find the camp ground. I assumed I'd find it easily enough, since it's a very small town and I've been here before. But I wasn't counting on arriving so late... it was so dark. We drove around for a long time, very frustrated and exhausted. Finally we found a place to camp. Eliza and Madi (whose job it was to pitch the tent) talked me into letting them wait until morning to pitch the huge tent. So they put up the 2-person tent for Josh and me, and Rachel slept out in the open on an air mattress, and Eliza and Madi slept in the van (they emptied a lot of stuff out of it and slept on an air mattress). It was so hot and muggy and we had a miserable night. Rachel was the least hot, out in the open, but she was eaten alive by bugs (despite all her bug spray). But the next morning, we were able to visit the (air-conditioned) pioneer homes and play some pioneer games. It was great. In the afternoon, I went to the Nauvoo Temple while the children hung out at the Visitor's Center and watched the movie, "Joseph Smith, Prophet of the Restoration." Then we had dinner at a little downtown diner (the downtown area is just a few blocks long), played more pioneer games, then watched the Nauvoo Pagaent. Then we walked back to our campsite and had a much better night, in our big tent (with no rain fly on it, so the breeze came in and we had our best night of the 3 camping nights). We had walked all over Nauvoo that day, but it was so hot that we decided to drive around the small town the next day. We toured more sites, walked along a Trail of Tears to the Mississippi River, walking past pioneers in costume telling about their experiences when they were in Nauvoo and then had to leave. We toured more homes, played more pioneer games, and watched 3 fun musicals (about Nauvoo in pioneer days) that day. Eliza and Madi’s favorite part of Nauvoo was watching the live musicals in the theaters. The actors and actresses (traveling missionaries) were so talented and the story lines were corny (but fun). Josh loved watching a barrel-maker do his presentation, and he impressed the barrel-maker (and me) by answering hard questions about barrel making that no one else in the large crowd could answer. Maybe Josh should’ve been a pioneer! He would love to roll a hoop, make a barrel, and only bathe once a week. That night for dinner, we ate at the nicest restaurant in town: Hotel Nauvoo. We ate the best buffet dinner we’ve ever had. It was way better (and bigger) than Thanksgiving dinner. After dinner, we enjoyed another musical before heading back to our campsite and falling onto our air mattresses, exhausted. I was planning to get a VERY GOOD night’s sleep that night because I needed to drive 16 hours the next day to get to Florida. And I got to sleep early enough… but around 2 a.m. we were awakened by a huge Midwest rain-lightning-thunder storm. Josh and I quickly put the rain fly on the tent (while hoping the lightning wouldn’t strike us) then tried to stay dry as the tent began filling with water and half of the tent collapsed. (Good lesson about why stakes are important.) I had told Eliza and Madi to pitch the tent on the top of the hill in case of rain (which they did), but then rain filled up every little crevice so we had puddles all around us. The lightning didn’t let up for over an hour. It was scary (I wish we’d known that the tent poles weren’t metal) and we didn’t want to make a run for the car down the hill, because the break between lightning flashes was only a few seconds. Pretty impressive storm. Because I didn’t get my good night’s sleep I was hoping for, I did not attempt to drive all 16 hours the next day. We were so grateful that we were all safe and sound the next morning, and I was so grateful that the storm struck on our last night there so we didn't have to worry about drying out all our camping gear in our little mud swamp. We just piled our soaking wet tent and sleeping bags in the car and took off for Carthage the next morning, on our way to our new home.

Our Nauvoo brick

Josh especially loved the gun maker's house

Rachel mastered the stilts

Gingerbread cookies at the bakery

Eliza and Josh on our hot walk to the Nauvoo Temple

The pioneer games were great!

Cooling off with snocones

Eliza and Madi loved the sack races. Too bad there was no 3-legged race; twins always dominate that one!

The end of the Nauvoo Pagaent, on a hill in front of the temple

At the Mississippi River

This sign (in a little downtown shop) made me smile! So true!

Prairie diamond rings (made from nails at the blacksmith shop). We sent one to Isaac because he had one when he was 6 years old that he loved and wore everyday. When it fell off at school out on the playground, his whole first grade class went out to search for the ring because they knew how much it meant to him.