Harris Family Reunion – Nauvoo

Kathy, the Brandon Harris family and our family left the Dells and drove to Galena, Illinois while Chad’s family enjoyed the pools a little longer. Galena is a really picturesque tourist town with a Park City vibe. It has a fun main street with shopping and restaurants. We ended getting there just in time for the last trolley tour of the day. We had wanted to do the trolley tour but hadn’t had the time yet. It was a little expensive but a lot of fun. After the trolley we planned to visit the shops but they had all started shutting down for the day. It was a weekday and they closed early. Sorry Brandon and Julia. I thought it was still fun walking up the street.

 

Chad’s family met us there and Tyson was able to give them the unofficial tour. We drove the rest of the way to our house and had pizza for dinner. It was nice spending the night at home.  

 

Our next stop was historic Nauvoo. In the morning Tyson had to do some work so the family went on without us to Carthage Jail. We all met up in Nauvoo.    

Angie rented a house right on main street for the family. It was a cute house and it was a lot of fun to stay all together like that. The closet between two rooms was a secret passage and Lilly still talks about it.

While in Nauvoo we were able to go to almost all of the houses. My favorites were the visitor center, relief society garden, brickyard (for our Nauvoo brick), Brigham Young’s home, family living center, Lucy Mack Smith’s home, pioneer pastimes (kids got to play games), Scovil Bakery (for our free cookie), Trail of Hope (overlooks the river), and the blacksmith shop (we got our prairie diamond rings). We also went to the old burial grounds and took the carriage and the wagon ride.

 

 

Here is an interesting fact about old Nauvoo that I learned – The three most common ways women died in Nauvoo were: 1. childbirth, 2. falling down the stairs (when you see the crazy stairs you can totally understand this) and 3. having their skirts catch on fire while cooking. Don’t you think that if catching your skirt on fire and dying was such a serious problem you would just were less clothing to cook?

My favorite story was about Lucy Mack Smith. When she wasn’t able to walk around very well her grandkids made her a wheelchair to push outside so she could see her beloved gardens. I liked this story because it reminded me of my grandma who was in a wheelchair and how much time we would spend with her in her beautiful garden.  

In the morning of the second day there was a heavy downpour. Our carriage ride around the town of Nauvoo was pretty rainy and cold. We couldn’t hear what they were saying because the rain was so loud.  We also had to do some dashes from the car to the buildings. Both of my kids ended up getting soaked.

 

We were lucky to be able to see the Nauvoo Pageant and the British Pageant during our stay. Before each pageant they have a country fair where you can play games and do crafts. They then invited all the kids to help march the flags up to the stage in a mini parade. Tyson accidently joined the parade with Lilly on his shoulders while he was trying to find our seats. Lilly was SO excited to be a part of the parade.

I loved both pageants. I thought the British Pageant was inspirational because at the end they had a lot of the missionaries from the local area come up on the stage for the final song. The pageant was about the few missionaries that first went over to England. Watching over 100 missionaries go up on the stage at the end was such an awesome reminder of how much the church has grown. Our local missionaries were able to go and participate in that the next week.

Again, I didn’t take as many pictures as I should have at Nauvoo. Just too much fun!