Thanksgiving on the Mighty Mississippi

So my brother James and his new bride Stephanie picked Thanksgiving weekend in Nauvoo, Illinois as their wedding venue. For those of you who don’t know, Nauvoo is a tiny town on the Eastern bank of the Mississippi river in Southwestern Illinois (current population approx 1100). The place is significant for Latter-day Saint church members because early church pioneers developed the city way back in the 1840s. They built a beautiful temple there before being forced out in 1846, but unfortunately it was destroyed only two years later. But not to worry! It was finally rebuilt in 2001. Also, many of the historic homes and shops of “Old” Nauvoo have been restored and are run by church missionaries as a visitors’ center area. Ok. Enough history lesson. Back to our trip.

Supposedly Nauvoo is where James and Stephanie “kinda” met about a year ago, on a church sightseeing trip for singles. I confess I’m a little fuzzy on the details. (My bro will have to work on his storytelling skills. . . .He always ends up cutting his narrative short with a laugh and twinkle in his eye, as if the outcome is too obvious, and gushy, to continue.) It was about a 5 or 6 hour drive for them, from Manhattan, Kansas, where they are both in school. For Heather and me, it was a cool 17 hours or so. And when I say, “cool,” I mean it. We decided to drive because we figured it would be way cheaper than trying to fly and rent a car. Sure this would mean more hours in route. And what about motel expenses? Well, we thought of that. We figured we could just take a few extra blankets and pull over at a rest stop. Call us crazy, but that’s just what we did. We stopped at a rather nice rest stop (as far as rest stops go) near someplace called Zanesville, Ohio. Heather climbed in the back seat and I pushed the passenger seat back as far as it would go. No offense to the Koreans, but their Hyundai hatchback is not well equipped for this kind of thing. Within a short time I began to feel my nose hairs starting to freeze. I did my best to hunker further down in my blanket and I peeped back at Heather to see if she was asleep. She wasn’t moving (I don’t think she could have if she tried), but I had a hunch she was not asleep. My suspicions were soon confirmed. My toes had just finished going numb when Heather suddenly pleaded with me to turn the car on. Ok, good, I wasn’t the first to crack! I turned it on and we slept fitfully for an hour until the heat became too much to bear. Back off. Back on….etc. We were up and out of that place before 6:00 am. By 1:30 pm we were in Nauvoo. It was Thanksgiving Day and I wasn’t sure what the day would hold. Would we get any food? My parents had suggested going out to eat somewhere once they arrived in the evening. We decided to be the advanced scouts. We drove across a bridge into Keokuk, Iowa. It was the largest nearby town (but that isn’t saying much). It looked like it was gonna be Dominoes or nothing. That’s when James called us to let us know that his bride’s family had cooked a more-or-less traditional Thanksgiving Dinner and they wanted us to come over and eat. Good job James, looked like you picked winner in-laws! We quickly checked in to our Nauvoo bed-and-breakfast to clean up and then went over for dinner. The bride’s family had rented a historic home in Nauvoo for the wedding weekend (Hyrum Smith’s home), as they had 8 children—some married—and needed the space. We got to meet them all. They were very laidback people, and friendly. They live on a farm in Northeastern Kansas, and they were joking about how obscure the location is—only one traffic light in the entire county. Will James and Stephanie end up in some place like that? Only time will tell.

Anyway, I am probably boring you with blow by blow details. Let’s just throw out some pictures for you. Friday, Heather and I toured the old Nauvoo sites with the fam. Saturday morning was the wedding. It was . . . well, like a wedding. Everything went just fine.




















After the wedding, we stopped by Carthage, Illinois to tour the jail where Joseph Smith was murdered. Then we hightailed it home as fast as we could, though this time we got a motel in Indianapolis (and went to church there Sunday morning). By the time we got to Maryland on Sunday night, traffic had grown thick as January molasses, so we peeled off the interstate and took a more creative way home. We were back in our own beds by 10:00 pm, and we were never more grateful.