So as I previously mentioned, my parents were able to come out for about a week and a half to visit us! It was so fun to have them here and we were able to do lots of cool things with them. They arrived on Wednesday and got the grand tour of Le Mars! (My mom had been out here before, but my dad hadn't). On Thursday my dad had to do some work, so my mom and I spent the day in Sioux City shopping for a few baby things :) On Friday morning we started off on a road trip to see some historic sites for our church (The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints). Our first stop was in Nauvoo, Illinois.
Back in the early days of the church (the mid-1800's), Nauvoo was its headquarters. After a couple years the people moved out west to Utah. A few of the buildings from back then have been recreated for historic purposes. The pictures below show our hotel (the Woodruff Hotel), one of the other hotels in town, a statue of Joseph Smith (the first prophet of the church) and his brother Hyrum, and a couple pictures of downtown.
Here are some pictures of some of the buildings that have been recreated. In each one there are people there to tell you about what the building was used for. The big white house in the middle was where Joseph Smith and his family lived. The others were businesses and a school house.
The Trail of Hope was really cool! It was a trail lined with plaques, like the ones pictured here, with excerpts from people's journals about their feelings and thoughts when they had to leave Nauvoo. They loved their city that they had worked so hard to build, but they faced much persecution there and felt that they needed to move west. The Salt Lake Valley in Utah has been the headquarters for the church ever since.
Nauvoo is located right along the Mississippi River. Here are a few pictures of the river as well as a recreation of what they probably used to get their wagons across the river.
We also got to go see Carthage Jail while we were in Illinois. Joseph Smith was imprisoned here on false charges. His brother Hyrum, John Taylor and Willard Richards were also imprisoned. While they were here, a mob came and killed Joseph and Hyrum. John and Willard survived and John later became the 3rd prophet of the church. This was probably my favorite part of our trip because there was such a great feeling here. That might seem strange, since such a sad thing happened here, but you could just tell it was a very special place. It reaffirmed to me that Joseph Smith was a true prophet. He was such a Christlike person and a great example of how we should live.
3 comments:
Great post. I just finished my book tonight but haven't gotten a chance to post in facebook yet. The book was 32 pages long and I didn't even use all the pictures! So many great pictures! Thanks for being such great hosts and tour guides! Love you!
Great photos Heather! I was just telling Vaughn the other day that if we could take a rode trip anywhere, I'd want to go to Nauvoo to see the temple, historical sites and Carthage Jail. I'm a little envious that you got to go there :)
Oh and congratulations on the baby! I've been meaning to say that for awhile now. So exciting! We are happy for you and Clint :)
Great pictures! It was good to see some of the historic places again. Looks like you had a really fun trip. Hope everything is going well for the baby and parents to be!
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