St. Louis & Nauvoo

Bop and I in St. Louis...if you couldn't guess. This is how pictures usually are when you're traveling the two of you and there isn't anyone around to take your picture.



We finally found a nice man to take a shot of us. Kind of a lot of pavement in the shot, but beggars can't be choosers.



We had fun looking at the arch in the hot sun. It really is an amazing thing to see in person.





Going up in the arch was a different story. They take you to the "tram" room and put you in front of a door that looks only high enough for a child so I was immediately skeptical.



Then my worst fears were realized. We were going to travel up the arch in a mork and mindy time machine...or maybe it was a washing machine. Let's just say 5 grown adults inside a tin can is a tight squeeze as we jerked back and forth to the top.



At the top you get to lean over at a 45° angle and look out tiny windows down to the brown murky water on one side, or the capital building on the other. It wasn't spectacular. My advice if you ever go, enjoy the beauty and amazement from the outside and skip the ride to the top.





After that we had our rental car trauma. A dead battery, so we called hertz, who called AAA who jumped our car, which we drove back to the airport and got another one. The good news in all of this is we got a new car with a GPS in it, which saved our lives in getting to the next phase of our trip. Let's just say we were a little lost, heated words were exchanged followed by wanting to kiss the woman in the GPS device for finally getting us to Nauvoo. We stayed at the Zion's Mercantile right next to the temple.







We saw Bops Aunt and Uncle and spent a lot of time with them in Carthage. The spirit was very strong there, just like it was the last time we were there with my brother and sister in law. We cried and really enjoyed hearing the testimonies of our family.





We got to witness Bops Aunt and Uncle in a play. It was so fun!





We spent our last day cruising through the rest of the sights. One of our favorites was the trail of hope and reading the touching journal entries from those that left their homes behind and the faith that they had to endure such a trial.









On a final note, we did have 2 days of wonderful weather, but also 2 days of serious are we going to have a tornado weather. Giant hail, gusting winds and major rain.