Family Vacation 2011. Nauvoo trip Part 1

For our family vacation this year we decided (since the kids just finished D&C in seminary) it was good timing to make a trip to Nauvoo and stop and see other church history sites while we were in the general direction. In addition to visiting church history sites we wanted to visit some family and friends we had been missing.

Our time was limited, and there would be a lot of driving, so we decided to leave on a Sunday. Normally we would not travel on Sunday be this time we felt we needed the extra day in Nauvoo. So Sunday after church we loaded into the car and headed off. Driving straight through to Sydney Nebraska that first day.

While there we stopped into Cabala's, which was much smaller than I remembered, especially after having visited the one closest to us just a few months prior. One funny note I have to say was that in driving towards Cabala's we drove through town. All of us thought it was extremely funny that the local health clinic and the mortuary shared the same parking lot.....I tried to get a picture but it just wasn't possible to get the words on both buildings to show in one picture. But it was HILARIOUS. We joked about it for a while.

Next stop was Winter Quarters Nebraska. We thought this would be a quick jaunt off the freeway but NO it was a lot harder to find than we thought. we looked for quite a while, grabbed some dinner (note to self, fried chicken is not good eating in the car food) and an atlas and eventually found Winter Quarters at about dusk. It was worth it! The Temple was beautiful and the visitors center was really neat.
They had some life size replicas of the way the pioneers traveled and some cool hands on things for kids to see what it would have been like to be a pioneer.
They played with the hand cart and all took turns with the smaller set that they got to load things into and try to make it all fit.
The statue in the front was cool we liked that it had kids about the same size as our family and showed everyone helping.The Temple.... It was really cool to be able to walk around the grounds and see it from all angles. there are some beautiful stained glass windows that were hard to see in the pictures since it was later in the day. It was cool to see the fireflies just starting to light up as we walked around. Sorry the picture is on it's side, one day there will be a way to change it without loading it onto my computer and using photo shop.

After Winter Quarters we loaded back into the car for the long drive to Burlington Iowa where we would be staying for the next few days while we visited the sites in Nauvoo.

At this point we have driven from Utah through Wyoming, Nebraska and Iowa.

We'll save Nauvoo for the next post.