Day two of the big road trip was more driving. We woke up in the morning after the major storm to find out that the massive rain had thoroughly washed our truck and trailer. All of the mashed bugs and dirt were all washed off and we had a clean vehicle to drive the rest of the way to Illinois. Awesome right!
Back on the road, we continued to travel through Nebraska, into and through Iowa, and finally to the Mississippi River.
The Mississippi River was HUGE!! The kids kept saying that it should have been called the Mississippi Lake instead of a river. Well it is indeed a river but a very big one at that. All of the rivers in Utah are small little streams compared to this beast. It was so cool to see and something I have wanted to see my whole life.
The panoramic picture makes it look even more like a lake rather than a river...
This is the bridge we drove across to cross the river. In order to let the big tug boats through, the bridge opens and closes. The second picture is of the bridge turning to open for a tug boat.
The Mississippi River was so cool. The best part was that on the other side of the River was Nauvoo!! We were almost there!
We stopped for a while at the River and took pictures and threw rocks. Now we can tell everyone we played and threw rocks in the Mississippi River! While Colby was finding rocks to throw, he found a fossil of a shell in one of the rocks. You can't really see it from the picture but it was there.
All we had to do now was cross the River.
Here we are on the bridge crossing the Mississippi! We were glad we lived in this time and could easily drive across rather than when the pioneers crossed on ferries, canoes, or even solid ice.
And we finally made it to Illinois and Nauvoo!
After two and a half days of driving, we had arrived! Finding our campsite was a little difficult because every road leading to it was closed for construction! Finally we moved the "Road Closed" sign and drove on. We stayed at a campground called Camp Nauvoo. The owners were so laid back that they didn't seem to care where we parked or when we paid. It was a nice little campground in a secluded little area up above the Nauvoo State Park.
We had a few hours before it got dark but instead of heading to the Historic Nauvoo Sites, we decided to just hang out at the trailer and relax after a long drive. As we were just chilling and watching the kids play and the sun go down, I kept seeing these weird little flashes of light in the grass. They would just randomly blink on and off. That's when we realized they were fireflies!! We had never seen fireflies before but suddenly we were surrounded by them. They were so cool! We decided to go for a little walk around the campground and through the woods to see if we could find more of them. We even brought along a jar to try and catch some. We managed to catch one and took it back to the trailer with us.
We named him Lightning and he was so fun to watch as his butt lit up and flashed light at us. The kids thought this was the coolest thing ever and wanted to catch more and more. They were pretty sad when we decided to let him go so that he wouldn't die.
The lightning bugs or fireflies were a great end to another fun day. We were glad to finally be at Nauvoo and ready to start our next adventure in the morning.
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