The Kruger Family: Family Vacation Day 5 and 6- Nauvoo, Carthage, Quincy & Keokuk

Wednesday morning, Shaun and I decided to head into Nauvoo by ourselves so we could do some exploring on our own. Plus I want to see if there was any chance of being able to go on a carriage ride to Inspiration point, which there wasn't... Since we weren't able to do that we spent some time looking around the visitor center. While there we watched the film "Remembering Nauvoo." It was an excellent film. I really enjoyed it.

Our next stop was the Brickyard, where we were told how they made bricks, which is actually a pretty cool process. At the end of the explanation we received our very own Nauvoo brick (exciting huh? :) ). Other building we visited were the Lucy Mack Smith Home and the Heber C. Kimball home. By this time it was getting really hot outside. It was 96 degrees, but with the humidity it was 106+, which made it not so fun outside.

After touring those to homes we headed up towards the temple. There were a bunch of shops up there to look through. We even found a frozen custard shop. YUMMY! Next stop was the Nauvoo Cheese Factory. It was really just a winery where they sold cheese. Not at cool as we were hoping.

Later that afternoon the whole clan (minus Chelsea) headed to Carthage Jail. I think that Carthage is an awesome experience.The spirit there is definitely strong. I could say more about Carthage, but I will leave it at that.

On Thursday the whole family headed to Quincy, Illinois for the day. Part of the group went to see Toy Story 3 and the other part of the group (Michelle, Kari, Eliza, Shaun and me) went to the local mall and went shopping. It was a pretty small mall, with not a lot of shops, but it was still fun. Shaun and I found a game shop in the mall, where we ended up having a lot of fun. The owner of the shop taught us how to play different games, two of which we ended up buying. (Ligretto and Ratuki). Once the others were done with the movie we headed back to Keokuk and had dinner at this pretty good pizza joint.

The rest of our evening consisted of getting things packed up for our drive home the next day. Tom, Kim, Shaun, and I did take a little bit of time to go exploring Keokuk. We ended up at the dam, where we were able to watch a barge get moved through the lock. It was actually pretty cool to watch. Nothing I had ever seen before.