A Week to Remember In Missouri and Illinois

Not often has our family been able to spend an entire week together on vacation. But that's exactly what we did in July, 2009.
We had wanted to visit Nauvoo, Illinois for several years. Laurel and I debated whether to go before Dayton left on his mission, or if we should wait until the younger kids were a little older to truly appreciate it. After weighing many scenarios, we decided to start planning the potential cost and possibilities.
Once we did that, things began to fall in place. After seeing that airfare to that part of the country was around $300 round trip, we leaned more toward driving, which wasn't so pretty with gas costs going up. But one day, Laurel was surfing and found a special airfare deal to Kansas City for $108 round trip!!! That made the decision to fly! Then we found an amazing $21 a night hotel deal in Kansas City. Slowly, our trip began to develop. And before we knew it, we were in Missouri!
The plan was to and stay in Kansas City on Monday, July 27th, and then make a triangle from there to Nauvoo by Wednesday, July 29th, visit there for 3 days and then make our way to St. Louis by Friday, July 31st, and then return back to Kansas City and fly out Monday, August 3rd. And that's exactly how it all came out.
Our first day of traveling took us to Independence and Liberty, MO. We visited the visitors center and replica of the Liberty Jail, where Joseph Smith was jailed for several months of difficult winter, and subsequently wrote several sections of the D&C, namely section 123. We then visited the RLDS (now called Church of Christ) church headquarters and temple, and what an interesting visit that was. The temple is a unique, nautilus style building that spins upward like and upside down tornado. The people there were very nice, and we spent about an hour touring the building. We then went immediately to the LDS visitors center, directly next to the property of the RLDS. It was an amazing difference in spirit, and we learned many new things about how the property is owned mostly by the RLDS, but is gradually giving way to LDS. Very interesting.