Nauvoo: The City Beautiful

After Boards, we decided to take a mini-vacation down to Nauvoo, IL. For those who don't know, Nauvoo was a city founded by early members of the LDS Church. It's located on the banks of the Mississippi River, on the border with Iowa, down toward Missouri. Originally it was swamp land, but we drained it and built a beautiful city there. At one point it was bigger than Chicago! However, persecution has always followed our Church, and after Joseph Smith was murdered in 1844, the "Mormons" were driven out of yet another state by mobs and violence.

Today, Nauvoo has only about 1100 residents. Despite this, there are many historical sites that have remained intact or have been rebuilt in the last century and it is a popular place to visit for those of our faith. This has become especially true since the Nauvoo Temple was rebuilt and dedicated in 2002.

Well we figure this is probably the closest we will ever live to Nauvoo (about 5 hours), so we should take advantage of it.

Thursday morning, we left home and headed southwest. Our long drive included strange back-roads and alleys, and following probably the slowest vehicle in existence for about 1 mile. But finally, at about 3pm, we pulled into our hotel in Keokuk, IA.

We spent the next 8 hours seeing the visitor's center, listening to a bagpipe band, touring old Church buildings, getting overheated (100 degree weather, gross humidity, and pregnancy do not mix), eating some good food at the Nauvoo Hotel, and seeing the Nauvoo Pageant. I also saw a couple of memorials mentioning one of my ancestors! All of which were awesome!

The next day, we drove out to Carthage, IL, to see where Joseph Smith and his brother Hyrum were martyred. Despite having to wait for some huge groups to go ahead of us (ironically, the group was from the area of Michigan I was born in), and this really pompous guy with a camera, it was a very special experience. We then drove back into Nauvoo to spend the rest of our day.

We visited the Joseph Smith family sites, which are owned by the Community of Christ (formerly the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints) and bought a few souvenirs, namely: root-beer, licorice, and a little red brick that has Nauvoo stamped into it.

Following this we hit up some of the sites we missed the day before including the Seventies Hall where we looked up some of our ancestors; and the trail of hope, where the saints lined up their wagons to take them across the frozen Mississippi River (this ended in a Pioneer Memorial where we found more of our ancestors names).

As it started to rain, we headed to town for some lunch, before going to the Temple. (Just so you know, there are seriously like 5 places to eat in all of Nauvoo and they are not open for all meals.)

Last but certainly not least, we were able to go to the Nauvoo Temple. It was a very special experience, as it is a very special building. They tried to rebuild it as close to the original (which was destroyed by arson), while updating it for modern safety requirements. Inside are many things that are very special historical antiques for those of our Faith. It's very beautiful and very sacred inside.

Our last stop on our way out of town was a bakery. We picked up a couple of turnovers (cherry for me, blueberry for Devin), and a vanilla soft-serve cone for me. One long drive later, and we were home and being greeted by our lonely kitty.

It was a nice little trip and we're glad we went! Hope you enjoy the pictures!

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