Frogley Summer Tour - Day 12

Day 12: Nauvoo, IL to Jamesport, MO

Today we woke up to a very rainy day. We spent most of the morning picking up the hotel room, doing another load of laundry, and checking out. We managed to get out by 11am, and our friends Erika and Aubrey Kall showed up right about then to visit with us for the day.

We drove down to the flats and visited the blacksmith shop, the brickyard, and the print shop. We had a picnic lunch under a tree to provide some protection from the rain (that was finally letting up).

After lunch we toured the gunsmith shop, then went to Pioneer Pastimes. The latter is basically a play area for kids. There are old timey toys, games, and dress-ups. Erika and I mostly sat and chatted, while Aubrey took pictures, and Dave tried out some of the games and activities.

We stayed at Pioneer Pastimes for close to three hours. It was wonderful to let the kids run and play and get some good energy out, while I was mostly able to sit and enjoy the day. The rain had let up more and it was mostly just overcast. A perfect Nauvoo day.

About 4pm we packed up the kids, drove back to Mulholland, parked near the temple, and walked to Hotel Nauvoo. While we waited for our 4:30 reservations Dave took most of the kids to the nearby bookstore.

Dinner was wonderful. Lots of great options for food and the kids mostly ate everything they took. I did my best to take small portions. I only did one trip to the salad bar, one trip to the hot foods, and one bowl of Apple Crisp. I still ended up super full… my three glasses of lemonade may have helped with that. Also, baby girl is taking up more and more room every day.

After dinner we said goodbye to the Kalls and headed west. We drove through Keokuk and the southwestern tip of Iowa pretty quickly, then proceeded across the northern edge of Missouri.

We stopped briefly in Kahoka to take pictures of an adorable “tiny church” and to get gas. Then we stopped again in Trenton to go potty and call Grandma Frogley to wish her a happy birthday. From there it was only another 30 minutes to our rental in Jamesport.

This rental is awesome. It doesn’t have a lot of privacy between sleeping areas, but it is very well decorated including 5 TVs. It is very obviously a man-cave.

As it was just after 10pm when we got here, and as we are quite literally in the middle of nowhere, we took the opportunity to do some minor star-gazing with the kids. Most of them have never seen the Milky Way before and it was quite obviously visible. They all thought the sky was quite beautiful.