Nauvoo

We had a great time visiting Nauvoo - it was a much smaller and rural town than I had in my mind. Everything shut down at 5 p.m. and we actually had to drive 10 miles into Iowa (across the Mississippi river) to get dinner at night. But it was a great time to go because it's off-season and there weren't many people. We were able to do everything we wanted pretty much. We even saw a musical called, Rendezvous, one night and it was so good - Drew and Dilan sat through the whole thing and loved it.

One morning we drove to Carthage jail where Joseph Smith was killed and it was probably our favorite place we went to. It was so interesting to be there and to hear the account of what happened.

We also toured Brigham Young, John Taylor, Wilford Woodruff and Sidney Rigedon's homes. We walked the Trail of Hope, and we learned a lot how the pioneers lived back then. And one of the highlights was that Colleen and I went to the Nauvoo temple (David watched the kiddos!). We were able to go and do some work for my family - it was really neat and the temple was gorgeous. We met a nice ox and took a wagon ride too.

Here are just the first part of our pictures - if you are interested, click to open the slideshow and you'll see my captions of what I wrote. It was a memorable Thanksgiving being grateful for the pioneers of Nauvoo and all they sacrificed for us to be able to worship as we do today.