We booked it to get to Nauvoo by noon so we could go on the Wagon Ride around the town, and we barely made it. We pulled in about 2 minutes to twelve, and luckily the wagon hadn’t left yet. After the wagon tour we drove around town and embarked on our day long journey to re-find Heber C. Kimball’s home. We stopped at the Printer, John Taylor’s home, the bakery (I was getting a gingerbread cookie!), and generally just looked around. The fantastic missionaries had also suggested that we come back for Rendezvous that night so now we had after dinner plans, as well.
After looking around a bit, we headed to Carthage to see Carthage Jail, and I will not lie, I pretty much cried the entire time. It was such an amazing experience, and an amazing place to be…Both Nauvoo and Carthage. We grabbed dinner at a Dairy Queen (choices were extremely limited), marveled at the farmland of the mid-west and drove back to Nauvoo.
Rendezvous: it takes a brave person to commit to putting on a song and dance show every night when they have no training and (sometimes) no skill. Willingly because they have to. But it was a lot of fun to watch and participate. Afterward, we drove over to the Smith family cemetery. The sun had just gone down and it was dark and quiet and so peaceful; the spirit there was amazing. I could’ve sat by the river all night.
Nauvoo is an incredible place, with an especially incredible spirit and I’m sure I would’ve been emotional any time I visited, but on the particular trip I was struck with the parallels to my own circumstances. The whole spirit of Nauvoo is exodus. We were repeatedly reminded how the early Saints had built a beautiful city and a wonderful life and they left it all behind. Packed whatever they could fit in their wagons and headed west, to an uncertain life and an uncertain future. I was in the process of my own exodus. Leaving everything I had built for myself, my family and friends, and heading east to a new job, a new life and an uncertain future - my car loaded with the possessions it would fit, and hoping that I had everything necessary to start over. And so, after visiting the grave of Joseph and Hyrum Smith and watching the Mississippi roll by, I got back in my car and drove up the trail of hope moving east instead of west to my new life.
