Nauvoo: Day 5 and 6

On Wednesday, we took a carriage ride through the wooded areas surrounding Old Nauvoo. Once again the horses were the stars of the show. The kids loved petting them before and after the ride.  They are massive, but so well trained. 

On Wednesday we went to see a showing of "The Promise" in the visitors center as well as the Women's Garden. Nauvoo has beautifully maintained gardens and grounds. The Senior Missionaries do much of the work on them.

On Thursday, hubby and I went to the Nauvoo temple for an endowment session.

It was pretty amazing for me to see the Nauvoo temple.  I remember visiting the site when I was a child in the late 80's. The area looked something like this:

Photo from here

It was just a field with some foundation stones. The temple built by the pioneers was burned by the mobs when they were driven out of Nauvoo in the winter of 1845.

 An artist drew the following pencil sketch of the heartbreaking remains of all the pioneers' hard work to build the temple. In 1999, President Hinckley announced that it would be rebuilt.  I can imagine how those early saints must have rejoiced in Heaven at the news!

The interior has beautiful details both in marble and woodworking. There are more wood floors than in any other temple that I have seen.

They tried to remain as close as possible to the original building design, while adding HVAC and other modern conveniences. The exterior is a nearly exact replication of the original design.

 

On Thursday we also celebrated Elder Grandpa and Sister Grandma's birthdays with delicious BBQ food from a local institution called Peter's Place -- only open in the summer. We took it home to the Grandparents' house and had a nice visit.

Afterwards, we toured the one room school house. We stayed in there for awhile because it was raining.

Then we went to see the Cultural Hall.  It is still used today for performances, such as "Rendezvous". We went upstairs to the second floor to see the antique quilt exhibit.

There is a dance hall on the third floor with large windows and a view of the temple. Most of the building is original, but everything other than the flooring of the third level had to be added back on. Over the course of our touring that became one of big sister A's favorite questions, "is this original or was it rebuilt?"