Road trip!

In order to make the trip more fun, my Dad and I decided to make short goals along the way to make it to different things we wanted to see. Our first destination, Nauvoo IL, and important historic site for the LDS church.

We made it to Carthage (the jail where Joseph Smith was shot and killed by a mob) by about 2 pm this afternoon. We watched the video and took the tour of the jail. In the room where Joseph Smith was shot they play this tape and you can just picture the mob coming up those stairs and Joseph falling out the window, it is very sobering. They still have the original door with the bullet holes in it. The jail was turned into a home later and the new owners replaced the piece of the door where the lock was shot. But when the church bought it back, they found the old piece of the door that was replaced in a toolbox so they put it back.

Then we headed over to Nauvoo, where they have reenactments of what it was like when Joseph Smith and crew lived there (abt 1840). We checked out the brick making, Browning guns and the blacksmith. At brickmaking we learned that they called it “hacking” when they would have to go out and turn over all the bricks again and again as they dried so they wouldn’t get soggy on one side and fall apart. They thing this is where the term “can’t hack it” comes from.

At browning gun we saw how they used to make guns and some of the original Browning guns, one of which was the first machine gun. That was pretty neat.

At the blacksmith we learned how they made wagon wheels and horseshoes. We met Brother Dayley who was from Burley ID and knew my Dad’s uncle. He and his wife invited us to dinner, they seemed nice enough so we went! We had hot wings and salad and it was great! The people who “work” at Nauvoo like the Dayley’s are senior missionaries, they were all so nice.

After dinner we went to the play that the senior missionaries put on called “rendezvous”. It was cute to see all these old people singing and acting. I smiled the whole time. They sang a song about leaving Nauvoo “willingly, because we have to!”

We were going to get on the road tonight but we decided there was more that we wanted to see and we found an awesome place to stay for the night. It’s called Nauvoo log cabins. This guy finds old homestead cabins all over the country and brings them to Nauvoo where he restores them and rents them out. They were so cute! The decor inside each of them was so creative. Much better than Motel 6!