Nauvoo – Part 1: The Drive and Saturday

We left Friday around 4 to drive down to Nauvoo, IL.  It’s about a 7 hour drive and with a stop for dinner and another to stretch our legs (and change a diaper) we made it to our hotel around midnight.  We listened to  a book on tape and I re-learned how to knit (made almost an entire dish cloth).  Samantha did rather well and around 9pm I got her to fall asleep and she slept the rest of the way there.

On Saturday we slept until Samantha woke us all up around 8:30am.  We very gradually got ready and headed down to the old city of Nauvoo.  I had absolutely no idea what to expect as I had never been there or really thought much about the city of Nauvoo except as it came up in Mormon history. 

Saturday was also the beginning of winter in the midwest.  I had checked the weather at least 15 times before we left and each time it said the weekend would be in the low 50’s.  HA!  What a joke!  Saturday was a lovely 36 degrees with a frigid wind.  We went through a few of the tiny houses.  First up was the Gunsmith’s.  I must say I was much more interested in the process they showed about making the barrel of a rifle than anything they said about the person that actually owned the home and what his 3 great-grandchild did (designed many of todays guns).  It’s also difficult to take a 2 year old into a “no touch” zone.

The second house we went into was the Wainwrights & Blacksmiths.  I enjoyed the demonstration there as they explained how they made all 2000 wagons, and then just general blacksmithing.  It plays to my engineering and manufacturing brain (I enjoy knowing how something is done…. but not necessarily doing it… even if I can).

Samantha next to a wagon

Samantha peaking into the basement at the gunsmiths

IT’S COLD!

Blacksmith’s making a horse shoe

For whatever reason, Stephen and his dad felt like it would be a good idea to go on one of the wagon rides around the outskirts of the city.  There were two flaws in their plan, however.  1) It was 36 degrees and 2) they scheduled it at 2pm right in the middle of when Samantha is usually down for a nap.  They provided quilts for everyone to bundle up in, and I would have been decently warm had I not had a squirmy 2 year old who would cry if she couldn’t see her feet and just wanted to jump on my thighs (ow).  She knows when to put on a show for the camera though, doesn’t she? 
 

That night we went to a buffet for dinner (very yummy) and were going to go to the “Rendezvous” a variety show of sorts put on by the service missionaries there.  I got sick however and we decided to just go back to the hotel and go swimming, but we mostly stayed near the hot tub.