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Our Family Vacation: LDS Church History Sites

Our family recently took a marathon road trip.  We were gone 3 weeks and we drove 6000 miles.  We were in 20 states plus the District of Columbia and saw so many different sites.  I want to focus this post on the LDS church history sites we saw at the beginning of our trip up to Nauvoo and Carthage.

The LDS Church has devoted a lot of resources to building and maintaining historical sites important to their history.  I think they do it not only because these sites are somewhat sacred to us as a church but also as a missionary tool to introduce people to our beliefs.

Our first stop was Liberty Jail in Liberty, MO.  Joseph Smith was imprisoned here for several months and received several important revelations here.  I have been here several times and always like going.  It's a sacred place.

They took the remains of the jail and built a visitor's center around it.  I can't remember what percent of it is originial.  Down below the floor in the picture is the jail where they have placed life-sized figures of Joseph Smith and his fellow prisoners.

After Liberty Jail, my husband and my brother took the teenagers in our two families and did baptisms at the Kansas City Temple while my sister-in-law and I took care of the younger children and had lunch nearby.  I wish I could have seen more of the temple.  My sister-in-law pointed out that one motif in the temple is the olive tree which represents peace in our time between the LDS people and the people in Missouri which they did not have in the 1830's.
My youngest with their youngest two (twins)


On our way to Nauvoo, we also stopped at Adam-ondi-Ahman.  This is the place that LDS people believe that Adam gathered his posterity before he died.  There is not much here but it's a lovely place and we enjoy taking the walk down the trail (with plenty of bug spray on.)


Our family with my brother's family at Adam-ondi-Ahman.  We stayed with them for a few days and here is where we said goodbye.  We really enjoyed seeing them.

We got to Nauvoo on the day after Memorial Day.  I thought this was a great time to visit--not too hot or crowded although the air conditioning in almost all the sites was very much appreciated.  We spent two nights and one day which was not much time for all the sites there are to see.  However, we have visited Nauvoo several times with the last time being in 2007 when we were in the pageant so we are already familiar with it.  And we will be back again!

We stayed in the Nauvoo Log Cabins in Nauvoo.  We were in the Nixon cabin which has beds for 10.  We enjoyed our stay there.  Our 10-year-old got sick with stomach flu the morning we were there so he missed most of our sightseeing but fortunately no one else got sick.

We started out our day with a wagon ride.  We lucked out because we didn't have tickets but they had room for us and let us on without having to wait.  This is a fun way to see Nauvoo and rest your feet!  Later we visited the blacksmith shop, the shoemaker shop, the school, the brickyard, the family living center where the kids got to make a rope, watch a candle-making demonstration, etc.  We enjoyed hearing from the missionaries and would have enjoyed learning more.

On the wagon ride, a brick house in Nauvoo.  You see a disportionate number of brick houses because those are the ones that survived.

With two of my girls in the Relief Society garden outside of the Visitors' Center.
In the Family Living Center, learning how to make rope.

My daughter was quite pleased with the rope she got to keep that the children helped make.
My children enjoyed playing pioneer games with two sticks and a hoop.

The following morning, on our way out, we stopped at Carthage Jail which is about 45 minutes away from Nauvoo.  We were the first ones to go through and enjoyed our personal tour.  A good description of the events that happened there is here.


In front of the Carthage Jail, by the statue of Joseph and Hyrum Smith who were martyred together here.

The actual door with a bullet hole in it.

The rest of the day we spent traveling to Kirtland, Ohio, about 8 hours away.

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