Spring Break Report 2012 – Iowa, Nauvoo Ill. and Laura Ingalls Wilder!

You might have already had spring break, or maybe you are going this week. So I wanted to give you my annual spring break trip review. *If* we go somewhere for spring break it has always been a frugal trip, there are too many of us to fly somewhere fancy, but we always have such a good time on a small budget I wanted to share what we did with you.

Past spring break trips: 

Arkansas Diamond Mines – OMG this was the funniest trip! Who remembers Paul’s Coke bungied on the back of the truck, or my rant about cold nights in a tent with a baby?! Plus all the child labor laws we broke making the kids dig for diamonds!

Camping in Destin FL.  – Oh man! That was a longer drive then we thought it would be! But it was beautiful! Remember the tick club? It was back! I still have a scar from the tick I had…

Sea World in San Antonio – Our first spring break we didn’t camp. Wow, that was weird! We had a really good time and still managed to keep it cheap. Plus we have been back to use our SW passes a few times this past year.

This is our trip this year… It has been the best one yet! You might have read the kid puking story last week, despite this little bump in the trip IT WAS A BLAST!

We were supposed to leave at noon on Friday. At about 4:30 we were getting on the highway, pretty typical Ivanovsky time! We drove to Oklahoma City and spent the night. I will give you that story another time, but it has to do with a cheap hotel room and my husband saying, “Sometimes the extra $20 for a room is worth it baby!”

We made it to my Aunt and Uncles house in Iowa the following evening. We spent the next 3 days there, hanging out with family, visiting the Amish and eating a lot of food!

We left Wednesday morning, had the puking episode and made it to my Aunts in Des Moines. We left Thursday morning for Nauvoo, Ill.

Nauvoo, Ill. is a beautiful old city on the Mississippi river. It is a very historical city with lots of significant meaning for our church (we are LDS or The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints). The early members of the church had built a beautiful city (which rivaled Chicago at the time) and were driven out by mobs and made the trek to Salt Lake City.

Nauvoo has been restored and is a beautiful tribute to the 1840’s. If you are NOT LDS, do not let the religious aspect scare you away from visiting this place. You will not be “converted”, grow horns, or otherwise be accosted by missionaries! 🙂 It is a REALLY COOL pioneer experience!

We stayed in the cabin above. There is a street in Nauvoo that has about 12 restored pioneer cabins that you can rent and stay in. Many were in disrepair in Utah, taken apart and restored here in Nauvoo. The stories of the families that built them are in the home and we spent an evening reading about our cabin, the Stephen Nixon Cabin, that  was built in 1859 by Stephen Nixon, his 16 year old daughter, Margaret, and their friend, Henry Roper. Next door was a cool little museum.

There is also camping in Nauvoo at Camp Nauvoo that is inexpensive. We have stayed there in the past  as well.

The best part? Everything is FREE to do all day long!! There is a large visitors center, where you can watch movies about the pioneers, see displays and get tickets (free also) for all the other activities you can do.

In the summer, there is a large pageant called The City of Joseph you can see for free that is very popular. Tour buses come from all over the midwest to see it. My parents and siblings were in this pageant a few times and it is AMAZING to watch. It is also very crowded, but still fun to see.

There are more then 40 historic sites, free entertainment, handcart treks, wagon tours, pioneer pastimes and more. AGAIN ALL FREE! 

You can easily spend 2 full days trying to get in everything! It is really fun for kids, they can make bread, see how to make bricks (plus make one yourself) make rope and candles, do a few different hay rides, play all kinds of pioneer games and more. Paul’s favorite place was the Browning house. We are big fans of Pawn Stars and so the Browning guns were cool to see!

I have been many times to Nauvoo in the summer. It is a great time to go, but it can get hot and crowded. Spring break was PERFECT! The weather was amazing and no one was there! We got to do everything by ourselves and spend as long as we wanted talking to the people there and asking questions.

After 2 full days, we got up early and headed out hoping to make it to the Laura Ingalls Wilder homestead site in Mansfield Mo.

My poor husband, he has 5 daughters and 1 wife who are rabid Little House fans! We booked it through all the little MO towns and 2 lane winding roads to make it with enough time to enjoy the tour and museum.

That is the house that Laura and Almanzo build themselves and lived in for 60 years. Almanzo built the counters really short for Laura to kneed bread on comfortably because she was only 4’11 tall. It made me cry. 🙂 And Almanzo made the hook rugs all over the house in the winter when it was cold and they would sit by the fire. I was bawling at this point. I want my husband to sit with me by the fire and make rugs while I kneed bread on the perfect hight counter tops! O.K. my husband does put gas in my truck for me all the time AND listened to 36 hours of The Little House books on CD in the car…

This was one of the best trips EVER, because we had no schedule. We just did whatever we wanted to do, whenever we wanted. We ate at rest stops, with a loaf of bread, jelly and peanut butter. The kids refilled their water bottles from drinking fountains, and we made muffins and trail mix for the car when we would stop. We didn’t spend very much money at all for the amount of time we were gone. We saw good friends and family and some of our favorite places. But most importantly we were all together and that is what made it just perfect!