Midwest Roadtrip: Nauvoo

We arrived in Historic Nauvoo Monday afternoon and went straight to the official Visitor's Center. They have a lovely statue garden outside, and some missionaries assigned brass band duty were all dressed up and playing music out there, too. Inside, the center was filled with all you'd expect: artifacts, information, dioramas, more missionaries inviting us to watch a movie (which we did, except that some of the little kids played in the aisles the whole time).

I really, really love dioramas.

If you don't know your LDS history, Nauvoo is a city on a bend of the Mississippi settled by Mormons in 1839. It became the largest in the territory (present day Illinois) and this became a problem rather than an asset for the early Church members. When they'd settled earlier in Missouri the community was obviously very religious, law abiding, and free-slave accepting but were not welcome in this lawless western wilderness, slave keeping area. Persecution grew, culminating in angry mobs destroying their homes and even getting the governor to issue an extermination order! The Church moved over to the free state of Illinois (Nauvoo) and kept growing, even sacrificing much to build a big gorgeous temple as well as maintain a press and create all the private businesses... but  In 1844 Joseph Smith, the founder and prophet leading the Church, was murdered and in 1846 the majority of the Saints packed up what they could and started the journey that eventually led to the Salt Lake Valley. That's it in a nutshell. Nowadays, the Church repurchased most of the old town center, including the temple grounds, and either rebuilt or restored things to create a really authentic, educational (and free!) early America experience.

We spent the rest of our afternoon checking out whatever historic shops or homes were still open. We really liked the Brickyard, the schoolhouse, the wagon, and John Taylor's home where we saw the rocking horse which had belonged to his son. (See this touching true story about it.)

Then we checked in at our hotel, unpacked, ate dinner, and swam in the (cold) hotel pool. The next day (Day Ten of our trip), Laura was so kind to watch ALL the kids and feed them breakfast while Mark & I experienced a temple session (and subsequently visited with the head gardener - from Wales, who took our picture).

We spent the rest of the day back in the historic area. We toured the home of Lucy Mack Smith (the prophet's mother), the Browning home and Gunsmith Shop (so informational and inspirational), as well as the Post Office, Printing Office (another educational hit), Bootshop, Bakery, and the Blacksmith.

After lunch we checked out the Family Living Center. Inside were demonstrations on many more trades and crafts essential to the times: candle making, pottery, spinning and weaving, barrel and rope making. Kids got to help with the rope demo!

Then we decided to walk a little ways outside of Church-owned Historic Nauvoo to the properties maintained by the Community of Christ church (founded by some of the members who did not follow Brigham Young west), including Joseph and Emma Smith's home and the Smith Family Cemetery. We only walked around the free, outside areas - electing not to pay for their official tour. Mark bought us the most delicious hard licorice candies to share. Also on our walk, we passed a Nauvoo police officer who gave each of the kids Honorary Deputy badges they were proud to wear.

After dinner, Laura kept Owen & David while Mark & I hauled the rest of the gang back down the Historic Nauvoo Outdoor Stage to see a performance of "Sunset by the Mississippi". It began with a patriotic parade from all the kids in the audience, and included a lot of humor with it's fun musical numbers.

It was a big hit. We finished off the night by walking down the Trail of Hope to where the fleeing Saints crossed the Mississippi, leaving their hard-earned metropolis behind.

And thus concluded the highlight of our entire trip: Nauvoo and cousins.