Day 9

We started out this morning with a trip to the Winter Quarters Temple, Visitors Center and the Mormon Pioneer Cemetery. It was a beautiful and humbling experience. The temple was really pretty, but we did not take the time to do a session. The Visitors Center was fun, they had a miniature covered wagon that they gave you 30 seconds to fill. I managed to get a tent, toys, sugar, flour, and a table just to mane a few, they had 4 people at a time load the wagons. mine had the most in it of the people that also loaded wagons.

the Winter Quarters Temple

Me loading my wagon

There were so many that died young over half of the graves were for children. I cried at the grave of an 17 month old. There was also a statue of a Mother and Father burying their child in a shallow grave.

Next we drove to Sioux Falls, SD. It was really quite pretty, there we saw a triple waterfall. We spent about an hour or so here before moving on.

the triple fall

a close up of part of the falls

After leaving Sioux Falls we drove to Garretson to camp for the night at Palisades State Park here we snagged a really nice campsite near the water, we could hear rushing water all night long it was heaven. To top it all off the campsite was only $10 for the night.

The empty campsite you can kind of see the river behind the trees

This is a view of the campsite from the rivers edge

After setting up camp and eating dinner we drove around the park and took some pictures. We also watched the sunset.

Sunset at Palisades State Park

Day 8

Today we went to a cooperage, no we didn't buy any barrels, but we did get some postcards to send home. We almost got into our first accident of the trip at the intersection of roads D&HH, on the way to Far West, we had a stop sign and the traffic going the other way did not, but due to the terrain we could not tell if there was anything coming so we decided to chance it, and narrowly avoided a collision. I ended up walking through the intersection as Deb drove through as this was the only way to safely cross.

We visited the Far West Country Store which had just opened and was very cute. They had a lot of really cool items. I bought a sterling silver ring.

After that we drove to Adam-ondi-Ahman

Me along the trails at Adam-ondi-Ahman

Deb on a huge log at Adam-ondi-Ahman

Adam-ondi-Ahman was a lot of fun, we walked along a few of the paths and came across some really cool things. It was awesome to walk in the same place that Adam had and I couldn't help thinking of the first parents and all that they must have gone through at the time that they were here.

Day 7

The hotel that we stayed at was only a few blocks from the building that the Concordia Branch meets at so it took all of five minutes to drive to church from the hotel. After church we drove to Independence, MO to go to the Visitors Center. This Visitors Center was pretty cool. It had a replicas of a log cabin and a printing press inside.

Me and Deb at the Independence Visitors Center

We then went to Liberty Jail.

This flower was growing outside the jail, I thought it was pretty

Liberty Jail was pretty neat. Well the jail isn't there anymore but there is a life sized replica. The walls were 4 foot thick, 2 foot of stone 1 1/2 foot of wood with loose stones in between. A prisoner would not have been able to reach from inside the jail to the outerwall.

This is the picture of the replica of the jail

Day 6

We got up at 5am to try to get pictures of the Nauvoo Temple at sunrise. Some of the pictures came out better than others. We did a second session today at the Temple.

The Nauvoo Temple at Sunrise

After the session we drove to Carthage Jail, it is only about a 30 minute drive from Nauvoo.

Me and Deb at Carthage Jail

After leaving Carthage we drove to Moberly Missouri to go to a Drive-in Movie Theater, there hasn't been one in Palatka in years and thought it would be fun to go to the movies without leaving the car. Before we got to the drive in we went and got chinese takeout to eat during the movie. The movie we saw was called Next.

Moberly, MO Drive-In

I love this photo because it makes it look like we are the only people at the drive-in with the exception of the other truck in the picture, we were a little bit early. More people really did come. We chose the early show since we still had an hour and a half drive to Concordia once the movie was over. The second showing was a totally different movie and most cars that paid for the early show stayed and watched the later showing as well, or so it seemed.

Day 5

Today we got to see even more of Old Nauvoo. In Old Nauvoo we went to the blacksmith, the post office and to the brick yard. Lunch at Grandpa Johns was a nice treat and also reasonable. In New Nauvoo we went to a t-shirt shop, a scrapbooking store ( the owner also does old time photos, but we were not able to get a sitting), and a quilt shop. We took a wagon ride through Old Nauvoo and then to the Red Brick Store which is owned by the Community of Christ or the re-organized church. It was neat because this is pretty much the only place in Nauvoo that you can buy things that are similar to the things the pioneers used.

Deb walking down the trail of hope and reading the markers

Near sunset we walked down the Trail of Hope, the path that leads from town to the Mississippi River. All along the trail are markers with some of the thoughts of the Saints as they were leaving Nauvoo. Reading these markers was very moving and seeing how the city has been preserved and rebuilt is amazing. We got to the river just about sunset.

Sunset on the Mississippi

Day 4

Nauvoo is beautiful. The temple is amazing. To think of how the Saints spent all their time and resources to build such a building only to have it burned by an angry mob hurts my heart. We camped last night at the Nauvoo State Park which is pretty nice. Deb says that her family was here about 10 years before and the bathrooms got locked at dark and so they had to leave and get a hotel. Lucky for us that is not a practice that they are still doing. We got a beautiful campsite located just a short walk to the bathrooms.

We started our tour of Nauvoo with a session at the Temple. It is so amazing inside and out. We also visited the Stoddard Tin Shop, the Print Shop, the Riser Boot and Shoe Company, the Cultural Hall and the Family Living Center. We also went to the Nauvoo Visitors Center where we got tickets for Rendezvous in Old Nauvoo. We then went to Ducks, a mom and pops type grocery store in the New Nauvoo part of town, to get something to cook for dinner. The show started at 8:15pm and was very entertaining, one of the best free shows that I have seen. Yes the show is free, actually everything in Nauvoo is free on the LDS side of Old Nauvoo, that is.

Day 3

Today we stopped first at The Land Between The Lakes National Recreational Area. The lady at the rest area/tourist information center convinced us that it is a must see. So we went. In my opinion there really wasn't much to see and kind of a waste of time. But it was a chance to get out of the car and to stretch our legs and buy more postcards. We crossed the state line into Illinos around noon. We stoped in a town named Shilo for supplies and were back on the road and headed to St. Louis. We arrived in St. Louis around 5 pm and headed straight for the Arch. I got some really good photos of the Arch from the car on the bridge on the way into town.

This photo was taken from the car window on the bridge on the way into St. Louis

We arrived at the Arch too late in the day to procure passage to the top, but spent some time on the grounds around the Arch and the pathway from the parking garage to the Arch is really pretty and there is a lot of grass to sit on it is a very beautiful park. I can imagine going there quite frequently if I lived closer. After the Arch we got back on the road this time heading for the St. Louis Temple. We had a picnic dinner there on the temple grounds it was very nice.

This is me and my picnic dinner

Next stop Nauvoo, Illinos. We arrived about 11pm, so we got to set the tents up in the dark.