Des Moines to Rapid City (Sunday, June 12th)

Rachel loves playing with Steve and Jodie's kids, though I think Adam is a little too rambunctious for her at times. They were eating together at the kids' table and Adam was doing something (I don't know what) and Rachel turned on him like a mother bear and said, "Look, Adam! Just put it there and stay it there, okay?"

It was pretty funny; and they really did get along well for most of the time. We went to church with them in the morning. Rachel was excited to get to sit with Adam.

She even held his hand as they walked into the church building, though Adam doesn't look quite as invested in the hand-holding as Rachel does. In fact, he looks like he's trying to squirm his way out of her clutches. 

It was fun to get to visit with Steve and Jodie, even if it was only for a little while. We left after sacrament meeting and drove all day until we got to Rapid City, South Dakota. It's actually only a ten hour drive from Des Moines, Iowa, to Rapid City but we were lucky to be able to take the route we did. Because of flooding along the Missouri River, the east bound traffic on I-90 was rerouted. We were heading west, though, and our side of the freeway was open. We saw a whole lot of flooding, though!

Our last day in Nauvoo (Saturday, June 11th)

One of these days I need to blog about the present instead of the past because we keep doing stuff. Like Rachel had her last day of school (a long while ago), we went to a picnic where Rachel won $15 for having the best pioneer costume, I just had my birthday, and we went to a Princess Festival yesterday, and my cousin Jimmy got married today. See? Exciting stuff. But I can't justify writing about those things when we still have so much of our Nauvoo trip undocumented. Actually, we only have one more day of actual Nauvoo stuff and we just went around seeing things and then hightailed it out of there. So there isn't much left from Nauvoo.

We knew we had to visit Grandma's cousins—Marie and Monte. The problem was that we had been planning on taking Monte's carriage ride the day before but just couldn't squeeze it in. Instead we did a carriage ride this morning. While we were waiting for the ride to start, people were talking and somehow it came out that we were from Orem, but our baby was born in Egypt.

This woman across the way got excited and said, "I know you! You're Heissatopia! That's Miriam and this is Rachel!" Then she got a little embarrassed and admitted, "I read your blog. I'm Doug's mom...Geneen linked to it and I just started reading it one day and..."

A real sunset by the Mississippi (Friday, June 10th)

Just before we were going to put the girls down for the night, Grandma came bustling into the hotel room.

"You guys have to come see the sunset!" she said, "The lighting on the temple is just perfect. It's beautiful."

We said something about how we'd just lie the girls down and then head out but Grandma said no.

"You have to go now—it will be gone in 10 minutes!"

We had already missed the temple at sunset on Wednesday night because we were at Sunset by the Mississippi, and we missed it on Thursday night because it was so dark and stormy it was impossible to tell when the sun set. It was our last chance to see a sunset in Nauvoo, by the temple, looking over the Mississippi river.

I was still wearing my bathing suit, so I quickly changed into some dry clothes and we rushed out to the van with our barefooted, pyjama-clad children in tow. And do you know what? It was worth it...

A day in Nauvoo (Friday, June 10th)

We went to the temple in shifts since someone always had to be available to watch the girls. Andrew got up in the morning to drive Grandma, Uncle Morgan, and Auntie Emily to the temple. Rachel woke up just minutes before they were ready to leave so she went with Daddy to drop them off so that Miriam and I could sleep in a little while longer.

On their way back to the hotel, they saw a turtle in the road, so Andrew pulled over the car and moved the turtle off the road so that it wouldn't get hit by a car. Hopefully he moved it to whatever side the turtle was trying to get to!

While everyone else was at the temple, we took the girls to go see some more of the sites of Nauvoo. We visited the Pendleton School, where the girls got to draw on slates—they were asked to draw their favourite animals. Rachel drew a bunny and Miriam drew scribbles.

Carthage (Thursday, June 9th)

This afternoon we went to Carthage, where Joseph Smith was held in a small jail on trumped up charges of treason, and where he later died a martyr's death. The road out there was a little scary; it runs right along the bank of the Mississippi river and is windy and narrow. At times there were signs announcing "land slide areas" as if we needed a landslide to push us off the road and into the river, with all the curves and wind and rain...

We made it there and back safely, obviously, but it was a little scary at times. 

Pioneer Pastimes (Thursday, June 9)

This morning we ran over to the visitor's center to get tickets to the shows we wanted to see today. All the shows are free and you can stand in line outside hoping to get a seat but that doesn't guarantee that you'll get one. We didn't want to take any chances because the shows are so popular.

The first show we went to was called Just Plain Anna Amanda. It's about a girl named Anna Amanda Amelia Applebee, who is the namesake of her grandmothers, Anna and Amanda, and her mother, Amelia, and her quest to discover her sense of self. She feels like she's just a conglomeration of everyone else instead of an individual. At the end she's convinced that she's a "walking legacy," and understands that that's a good thing.

At the beginning of the show they made an announcement to be sure to keep the aisles clear because the actors would be using them throughout the show. Just after they said that, Miriam wiggled off her seat, ran over to the stage, and started climbing up the stairs. She's so silly—that face she's making is her "Is this a smile?" face.



Rachel got called onto the stage during the finale, as the actors were telling the children to celebrate themselves. She was tickled pink.

Sunset by the Mississippi (Wednesday, June 8)

As I said, we got into Nauvoo just in time to rush over to the stage for Sunset by the Mississippi. It's not actually a sunset by the Mississippi, though we were near the Mississippi and the sun did set. It's actually a show put on by the young performing missionaries—Auntie Emily played the flute in the Nauvoo brass band last year, and that's where she met Uncle Morgan, who was the percussionist. That's part of the reason we went to Nauvoo, because they really wanted to (but couldn't afford it unless Grandma came along) so that they could do stuff in Nauvoo that they couldn't do as missionaries...like hold hands and be all romantic.

Winter Quarters, Nebraska (June 7th & 8th)

I haven't spent much time outside of the Rocky Mountain range, at least not in North America. I flew to Georgia once with my dad and drove to Minnesota once with my mom (I don't entirely remember the route we took but I do remember crossing Mormon Bridge from Nebraska to Iowa and I know we stopped at Mount Rushmore on the way home).

Other than that I've travelled I-15 from tip to tip several times: California, Nevada, Utah, Idaho, Montana. I've also been to Washington, Oregon, Colorado, and Arizona. If we count Four Corners, I've been to New Mexico. Anyway, my point is that I've spent most of my life in the Rockies. Alberta, Utah, British Columbia, and California are all places I've called home. And they're all in the Rocky Mountain region. You could say the Rockies have been my childhood canvas since they've been east or west of me for most of my life.

It's no secret that I suffer from wander-lust, though, so when the prospect of taking a road trip "east" appeared I jumped at the chance. I will never fully understand the geographical terms for the United States because technically we only went to the "Mid-West" but that felt really east to a west-coast gal like me.