Nauvoo, Illinois

I just watched an uploaded youtube video of my brother in the green man suit attacking my sister: awesome.

Today was jam packed, with lots of driving and mormon stuff.

Dad and I made it to Nauvoo in good time this morning. The town is pretty much one street with one gas station, a few restaurants, and little mom and pop religious stores. The tallest building is the 2002 restored version of the original Nauvoo temple. There are lots of churches there, I was surprised that there were so many different ones in a town that was founded by Mormons and was originally a malaria infested swamp that they were forced into from the Missouri river, but I suppose it makes sense as it is a little community that was founded by highly religious people at the onset.

Dad and I stopped in the visitors center and quickly realized we were on a tour with a the Community of Christ - a church that splintered of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (or Mormons). It was pretty interesting - I guess when the Mormons moved from continued pressure from the government and mobs and after Joseph Smith's death, his wife Emma decided to stay and her son founded the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints; later becoming Community of Christ.

Anyway I saw Joe Smith's house and other sites in Nauvoo that were well preserved. Walk a little further down to and you get onto the property owned by Mormons. It's kind of confusing. Dad really likes gun history and will name firearms while watching a movie. I on the other hand could care less what handgun was manufactured where and who created it but I also never knew that it was a Mormon, John Browning, that created many of the guns that were used in the US wars and still are used today. It was kind of bizarre because we walked in thinking we'd take a quick look around and leave but were were roped into a tour by an elderly Mormon guy who ended the tour with his testimony and handed us a card to fill out so we could send stuff to a friend about the church. Such is the way with Mormons; always being missionaries. I was getting a little irritated with not being allowed to just look at the site from an objective historical view with both these churches giving their testimonies, though the Community of Christ is very intriguing to me as most splinter groups are.

The Nauvoo temple was recently restored from a fire long ago. It's a really pretty simple temple that looks out onto the Mississippi. And as always when you stop at these locations we saw Mormon wedding pictures going on.

We ate in the little town and walked around a bit. Then we took off for Iowa just past the Mississippi where Nauvoo lies on the Illinois side. We stopped in Des Moines to eat and look around. We found a German pub/restaurant and ate there. Des Moines wasn't very interesting so we left pretty quickly after that. Unfortunately it isn't quite corn season so I didn't get to see what Iowa was known for. Dad read me the story of an ancestor from his side: five Robertson brothers and their mother moved from Scotland to join the church sometime after they were already in Salt Lake. The mother died and was buried in an unmarked grave at the location we were heading to spend the night: Council Bluffs, Iowa. It's pretty neat reading about these five and especially the one I'm descended from. The guy even seems to have my dad's cheesy factor as is evident in some "poetry" he wrote.