Our Family Road Trip

This may be a long post, but it is for journaling purposes, so bear with me. Our family took a 9 day, 3250 mile road trip. We have been planning this trip to Nauvoo for about 6 months. When we were planning our trip, our main goal was to see as many Church History sites as possible. The kids were excited. Blake's main goal was to see as many Cabelas Stores as possible. He found 5 of them on our trip. We left the day school got out (May 21)and drove to Denver and stayed with Marks brother Kelly. We got in late, but still had time to visit with him.
Friday we left Kelly's and headed to Kansas to stay a few days with Marks sister Mickie. It took us about 9 hours, the most time our kids have ever spent in the car traveling. Needless to say it was a long day. For those of you who have been to Kansas from Colorado know that there isn't too much to look at when you reach Eastern Colorado and Western Kansas. Just alot of corn fields. We stayed until Monday morning with the Crowthers. Boy did we have a good time. They have a beautiful place in Northeastern Kansas. Much prettier than Western Kansas. on Sunday after church we drove to Kansas City MO. They took us to Independence and Liberty Jail. That was awesome. The visitor centers at both places were great. the picture of our family on the header is in front of the visitor center at Independence. The kids were fascinated with seeing the original jail key at Liberty.

Monday we headed to St. Louis. Blake found a Cabelas in Kansas City that we had to stop at. He was collecting the penny from each store. Before we found our hotel near St. Louis we found another Cabelas. So we stopped.

We were staying in Pontoon Beach IL. Just across the Mississippi from St. Louis. On Tuesday morning we went to see the Arch in St. Louis. I wasn't going to ride to the top in the tram, but Mark wanted to take the kids. Of course before I knew it, he bought all 6 of us tickets. So guess what. I went to the top. I get very claustrophobic and heights really freak me out, but I went anyway. The tram has a bunch of compartments. They seat only 5 people, but our little family got into one. Had I seen them before, I would have never agreed to go up. It takes 4 minutes to get to the top. It is a beautiful view from up there, but real scary. All in all the Arch was alot of fun.

We then headed for Nauvoo later that day. We stopped in Hannibal MO and checked it out. Samual Clems who wrote under the name Mark Twain lived there. That was neat.
We got to Nauvoo and just hung out at the Condo. I did laundry and cooked dinner. the next morning Mark and I went to the Temple. That was great. It is so beautiful. Then we started our tour. We took a wagon ride around Old Nauvoo, saw a musical that the kids just loved and saw alot of the sites. The kids got to ride on an ox cart, learn how they made candles, bread, rope and spun wool. We had a great day. We saw another show that evening in the outdoor theater. Blake would love to serve his mission there and be in the Browning Gunshop, or the Blacksmith shop.
Too bad they only send Senior couples and Sister missionaries there. Blake was able to do baptisms for the dead the next morning. We met Mark and Blake afterwards and tried to see as many sites as possible before we had to leave that afternoon. Saw another show and Mark found where his great great grandpa, Noah Rogers had lived when he was in Nauvoo. That was cool. We left Nauvoo that afternoon headed to Carthage. It was really sad. I could have spent the rest of the week there. There is such a spirit in that small town. What a great time we had.

Carthage was neat too. We left there headed to Pella Iowa. We were all a little somber on the drive to Pella. Thank goodness it was only about 2 1/2 hours from Nauvoo. Mark found out that Noah Rogers was buried in Iowa. We thought it was in Council Bluffs, but it wasn't. It was near a small town called Thayer Iowa. So on Friday we headed South. It only took us about an hour extra to find it. After that we were on our way to Council Bluffs. They have a neat visitor center there. We learned a lot about the Mormon Battalion. Then we were off to Winter Quarters. It is only about 18 miles from Council Bluffs. We saw the Temple and another visitor center. It was really neat, but kind of sad because that was the last stop we made for Church History.

We left around 3:30 pm on our way to Kearney Nebraska. Blake found another Cabelas near Omaha Nebraska, so we stopped. It was a long drive to Kearney. Or so it seamed. Only 3 1/2 hours but long. We got there just in time to go to the 4th Cabelas store. It was by far the smallest that we had seen. Saturday morning we got up early and left for home. It was going to be a 10 hour drive. By then we were all grumpy and ready for a break from traveling and each other. We were together 24/7 for nine days. We were ready to get home. We drove to Sidney Nebraska to the last Cabelas Store on our road trip. We spent about an hour there and had lunch then headed home, only stopping for a potty break. We made it home by 6:30 that evening. All was well with our home and yard. We had such a wonderful time on our trip. The kids loved learning more about Joseph Smith and all the pioneers. Izzy wants to go back next year. We told her it took us 12 years to get back to Nauvoo, and it may take another 12 years to get back there, but maybe we will plan a reunion then. We may have a daughter-in law or two and maybe grandkids.
We came back from trip with our hearts full. The sacrifices that our ancestors went through for us was amazing. We all learned a lot on this trip. And we even came home still liking each other.