Vacationing in Summer. Part One.

I should have named this series: "Vacationing any time other than Summer." Because that's what I mean to promote.

But not too vigorously, mind you, because I'm counting on the world to keep following each other on vacation the same three or four months of the year. So we can have good vacations. :) Yessss!!!

My testimony of off-season travel began in Nauvoo, Illinois.

It's an historical site for our church—a place where Mormons built a beautiful city from swampland before they were forced out to trek to the Salt Lake Valley. Like many members of the church, we have several ancestors who had lived there. And one of the restored homes open for tours belonged to my 3rd-great-grandfather! He built it himself and lived there with his family. When he left for Salt Lake he gave the home to Joseph Smith's mother. It's billed as Lucy Mack Smith's house, with secondary billing to my gramps Joseph Bates Noble. Very cool.

My parents had always wanted to go, and it worked out for us to take a trip in . . . December.

Illinois.
In December.

We were all a little skeered. :)

Can I just say.... It was AWESOME!!! We were in Nauvoo for four days, and all but one afternoon when another family came through for just a few hours, we were the only ones there. Sure we were cold! Who cares?! We were the only ones there! (As in, really, the only ones.) It was awesome. We'd go up to the brickyard to make bricks, or the masonry shop, or a restored home, or wherever, and the senior missionary couple would just light up, so excited to have people come by! They'd put down their cards (how many people get to see missionaries playing cards? ;)) and swarm us, giving us the best tour ever. We became friends with everyone there. We lingered. Pictures and journals were pulled out for us to look at. By the end of our stay, the missionaries even organized a piano recital for everyone's entertainment. It was the most charming thing of all time, strolling around this restored town (that was fabulously decorated for Christmas, no less—1800's style!) with no one there but ourselves and a bunch of cute, lonely, cold senior missionaries who loved us.

We loved the cafe we kept frequenting, too, and became friends with plenty of non-Mormon Nauvoo residents, which was fabulous! What a wonderful experience to truly experience this quaint, charming place—not at all as a tourist attraction, but a real town with real people.

We went to several other church history sites—Liberty Jail, Adam-Ondi-Ahman, the Far West temple site, Independence, Carthage Jail—and in each place, we were alone. I especially loved being able to talk so much with people at other churches—splinter groups that believed in, say, The Book of Mormon, but not in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. We had a particularly wonderful experience at the temple for the formerly-known Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (now The Community of Christ), and became fast friends with the woman showing us their building and sharing her testimony.

Contrast that with the stories I remember hearing from friends the following Summer: tales of waiting in two-hour lines, of picking and choosing which places you can hit on account of the crowds, of a line being ushered quickly through a building.... They all had a good time! But...we were the only ones there!

Was it worth the extra pairs of gloves to see a totally empty Nauvoo...? OH my goodness, YES.

It was an experience we'll never forget. Authentic. Not at all contrived. And complete with new friends, from LDS missionaries, to normal ol' residents, to volunteers from other religions.

My testimony of non-Summer travel was born! BIG time.