First thing after taking down camp, we went to Nauvoo, Illinois.
Nauvoo is where many early members of our church lived before being forced to move west.
Nauvoo was not what I expected.
I didn't know what to expect, except for a few buildings with historical interest.
If you ever get the chance to visit Nauvoo, make sure you plan to spend more than just a couple hours there!
You can go on a horse-drawn tour of the old Nauvoo area if you get tickets from the visitor's center before noon or so.
They don't over work the horses, so don't do the tours after a certain time.
There are also tours in each of the buildings that were important for consumers in the time of pioneers.
Several missionaries give tours of buildings and help people in the visitor's center.
These missionaries perform in the style of pioneers.
It was really fun, and we ALL enjoyed listening.
Butterfly or moth, it's pretty!
Inside Brigham Young's home.
The back of his home.
We were waiting at the visitor's center for Andy to get the car.
I was too hot and tired from walking so much.
Andy called me and said there was a special garden out the back of the center.
We went out to look, and it was a garden made to honor women and their roles, alone, in society, in families, and in general.
I was impressed that the caretakers of the grounds were all women too.
I was talking to Andy on the cell phone when I went out to look and that made a cardinal fly away.
The caretakers were pretty bummed, but went back to what they were doing.
It was a true sisterhood.
hot and tired
These flowers were huge and so pretty!
They were so dark purple, they were almost black!
Nauvoo, Illinois Temple
After Nauvoo, we traveled to Carthage, Illinois.
Carthage is the location of the jail where our prophet, Joseph Smith, was martyred so long ago.
Here is a statue of Joseph and Hyrum Smith, brothers.
One of the rooms in the Carthage Jail.
The jailor and his family (I think she said 7 children...) lived in the downstairs, and the jail was in the "dungeon."
The dungeon was actually upstairs and quite dark and dismal, even in the middle of the day.
The walls of the jail are 2 or 3 feet thick, making the jail a storm shelter for tornadoes and such.
The jail is where we decided to not have Anthony be potty-trained for rest of the trip.
He had an accident in the very room that Joseph Smith was killed in...
That night we stayed at D & W Lake RV Park in Champaign, Illinois. EXCELLENT service, and upon hearing about Anthony's Down syndrome, one of the owners brought us freshly grown cucumbers from their garden as a nice gesture. She teaches special education. Wonderful people, nice clean campsite, and a lot of fun!
FIREFLIES!!! We saw our first fireflies here!
It was kind of interesting that this was the first campsite that has you put the garbage in a big trash bag and they pick it up in the morning. Not in a garbage can. Guess they don't have bears. :)
It was somewhere around here or a day or two away where we noticed that margarine and butter came in the long, skinny sticks instead of the short, fat ones. And, they use styrofoam cups for soda at fast food places instead of plastic. These aren't bad things, just different than how things are in Washington!
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