City of Joseph

We have been determined to get to Nauvoo one of these summers since we drive so close to it from our big trips out west. It's really not that far from us anyhow, but it's hard to find the right amount of time to go. On the way home from our Utah trip, we stopped by Colorado Springs to stay the night at Jason's parents. They had planned to go on our trip to Nauvoo with us, so we just spent the one night there. We got to see Jason's sister Auburn and her family that evening, which was lovely.

Since we had seen Palmyra a few years back, Kirtland this last Easter, and were on our way to to Nauvoo from Salt Lake City, we had to stop by Independence, and the surrounding church history sites, to make the tour complete. Independence was also a good stopping point. We can only drive so long in the car before we need to stop for the evening/night! And boy were we ready that night! The girls were riding in Gramms and Abuelo's truck and the boys were in the van with us. We were getting ready to get off our exit, among some traffic. The boys were about finished so I was looking for things to distract them, when I saw some clouds swirling in a different sort of way outside the window. There were many clouds in the sky in different levels, depths, and colors, but these particular clouds were swirling. I said to the boys, "Look at those cool clouds, they're swirling!" I guess Jason had been looking at some other set of clouds that were also swirling, in an ominous way. After my comment, he quickly rolled down the window to listen and heard the tornado warning sirens. He instructed me to check the weather on my phone, where it said there was a tornado warning for the exits on the freeway where we were! We got off and sheltered at Lowe's for about 15 minutes. They dismissed us when it was safe, but we later found out that a tornado touched down on the same street where we were staying that night! It caused some damage to the Plato's Closet there. Austin was disappointed to have not seen an actual tornado that day when we drove the whole day through Kansas! I assured him that we didn't really want to see one!

The long-awaited dinner at a bbq joint in Kansas City. This was just after the tornado incident.

Independence, MO. temple, owned by the Church of Christ.

visitor's center play area

visitor's center Christus 

We also saw Liberty Jail and the four cornerstones at Far West. It's only a 4 1/2 hour ride from there to Nauvoo, though it did seem longer since it was later in the day after sight-seeing.

Nauvoo was great! I've been two other times and they were both really hot and humid! Not to mention all the mosquitoes that come with that kind of weather. We weren't there during pageant time either, so it was less crowded. We'll go back another time for the pageant. We enjoyed some other shows that we might have overlooked had we gone during the pageant.

I really enjoyed going to all the shops and homes and learning about how the pioneers lived. I also enjoyed that at each place they applied a principle to our lives now.

The kids enjoyed the wagon rides with the horses and the oxen. They also enjoyed playing at the play area, called Pioneer Pastimes. They played there for hours both days!

Ride that took us past all the main sites.

Erik played house and enjoyed feeding this baby. This tough boy can be sweet, too!

Wooden toys 

 

Oxen ride

We saw the fireworks on the fourth from the temple, overlooking the Mississippi River.

I love the temple!