In the middle of July, we took our family to Nauvoo, Illinois, to participate in the Nauvoo pageant. On our way to the pageant, we spent some time in Omaha, Nebraska.  I wanted to visit the Winter Quarters LDS temple which we had never been to before.  We also visited Pioneer Courage Park in downtown Omaha. We arrived in Nauvoo on Sunday afternoon so we could go to our orientation that evening.  The pageant is performed for 4 weeks every summer and we were to be the performing cast for the 3rd week.  The core cast of about 22 people is there the whole time and 4 rotating family casts make up the rest of the cast.  There were about 135 people in the family cast during our week. We learned the pageant the first week which meant about 6 hours of rehearsal per day (4 hours in the morning usually on stage, 2 hours in the afternoon in the air-conditioned Pageant Building). After the afternoon rehearsal, we got dressed in our costumes, a...

On Sunday, we attended church at the building right next to the temple and then we drove up to Denali National Park, about a 4-hour drive.  We stopped along the way at a viewpoint to possibly see the big mountain but there was a fair amount of smoke in the air thanks to a lot of fires.  Forest fire season in Alaska is apparently most of the summer.  There were a lot of dead pine trees in the forests we saw that were probably dead due to a huge beetle infestation.  Alaska has a LOT of pine trees and it was sad to see all those dead trees. For Sunday and Monday nights, we rented a dry cabin to stay in.  Staying near Denali is quite expensive so we decided to stay in a dry cabin with a kitchen to save money.  A dry cabin means using an outhouse and not having a shower.  The cabin was very clean and quiet but I have to admit I would have enjoyed running water and a flush toilet.  One thing about Alaska in the summer is that sky doesn't ev...