Nauvoo Vacation

Last week my parents drove out here to pick up Parker and take him home since he is done with school...sort of. He still has to finish his internet class. Anyway, they started their journey on Thursday and arrived here Friday about 12:00PM. Michael came home from work at about 1:00PM and we all jumped in the van that we rented and headed to Nauvoo for some historic vacationing. The journey to Nauvoo was only supposed to take 7 to 7 1/2 hours but we used my parent's GPS and it took nearly 12 hours to get there, so we got to Nauvoo about 2:00AM Saturday morning. Apparently the GPS was set to shortest distance so it was taking us through dirt roads and all kinds of weird things. It got really frustrating. We asked my mom about the settings and she said they were all correct but the next day when Michael was looking at the GPS he found that the settings were all weird. We went to all kinds of shows and looked at all the houses and buildings. It was really a cool experience. Here are some pictures of our adventure.

We started our trip by going to the early temple session on Saturday morning. The Nauvoo temple is beautiful.



These are the graves of Joseph, Hyrum, and Emma.





This is the Mansion House where Joseph and Emma resided for a short time.



Benjamin got tired so he decided to take a nap while we were touring Nauvoo.



Garrett decided to climb trees so Parker had to follow suit. Garrett got up a lot easier than Parker did. Parker, you need to work out a little more.





Michael and Benjamin are ready to cross the plains.



Oxen ride. Those are big animals!



Garrett and Parker doing the stick pull. I could have told you Garrett would win.



This is "Sunset by the Mississippi". We went to an outside stage and the performing missionaries and the senior missionaries put on a little skit type thing. It was cute.



Benjamin is really enjoying the long car trip.



On the way home we stopped by Adam-Ondi-Ahman and Liberty Jail.







The Liberty Visitors Center is built around the reconstruction of the jail. They had a recording of journal entries and such about what was going on in the jail and the revelations received.



This is the RLDS Temple across from the Independence Visitors Center. We are in the Missouri Independence Mission so we saw a couple of sisters that had served in our ward while we were in the visitors center. One of them even took us on the tour. It was cool.