Trip to Historic Nauvoo

Our fun trip to Historic Nauvoo. What we did and what we enjoyed.

Over Labor Day weekend we made the 8-hour drive to visit Nauvoo, Illinois. We caravaned with some good friends and enjoyed the full pioneer experience by all sharing a small one room cabin, complete with loft. We began our site-seeing by riding aboard the guided wagon tour through the old town, this gave us a good feel of things we wanted to see and do during our stay.

When you visit Nauvoo they like you to dress in the time period, they even have clothing to borrow if you don’t have any of your own.

Just kidding. You don’t have to wear a bonnet or anything but all the guides/senior missionary couples are in historic apparel which definitely helps set the mood. The clothing dress up was part of the ‘Pioneer Pastimes’ which was a favorite stop for everyone. We could have easily spent an entire afternoon there with our boys as they had games for all ages to enjoy.

The Family Living Center really brought the time period alive as guides gave demonstrations in a variety of 19th-century trades like bread baking, pottery, candle making, spinning, rope and barrel making.

It would have been an amazing learning experience… except that we had toddlers going to battle against each other. First Boston was knocked off a stool by his toddler friend and then he retaliated by hitting his friend on the side of the head with a wooden block. We separated the two and both families took to opposite sides of the Family Living Center. Boston still struggled so many of the presentations had to be condensed. A 30 minute barrel making demonstration was shortened to 5 minutes. All I learned about barrels is that the wood is pushed together by medal rings. Owell.

My husband really enjoyed the gunsmith shop. It was interesting to learn about the influence that Browning and his descendants had in the art of gunmaking, he actually invented the first repeating rifle.

The Webb Brothers’ Blacksmith shop hasn’t changed much since I was seven. Yep that’s me with the purple sleeves and four of my sisters in the same shop in front of the same wagon. The stylin’ eighties, everything is back in style now… well perhaps except for the haircuts.

We cooled off one afternoon by walking through the ‘Monument to Women’ Memorial Garden which is located in back of the Nauvoo visitor’s center. It is a lovely 2-acre garden filled with flowers and statues dedicated to important periods in a woman’s life. Boston was able to roam free and apparently practice his kissing skills.

When I was here as a child I had to envision what the temple looked like on the hill and now there is a real one! Since Boston saw this temple, he is calling every big church he sees a temple. Thankfully it worked out that we were able to watch each others kiddos so that we could all attend a session.

We walked the “Trail of Hope” and this is the view the saints had while they were being driven out.

We were a few weeks shy of seeing the Nauvoo Pageant, but we did enjoy the play “Rendezvous in Old Nauvoo” put on by the senior missionary couples, which helped give you a feeling for the time of the Saints. We were not able to visit all the homes and shops we had wanted to in our two day stay, but we did see a lot and it gave us a thirst to come back next year to visit the rest! Did you enjoy any last minute summer ventures?

Hopefully I didn’t bore you with facts from our trip to Historic Nauvoo and you caught a little bit of our fun as this post had to be rewritten because my husband said it sounded too much like a reader’s guide to Nauvoo. I like sharing all the facts, but I guess you can just go on their website for that.

And now for our baby stat update! Don’t you just love his curls?! We debated cutting them because at times it looks like a ‘comb over’ but I am glad we decided against it for now.