This is a typical barge on the Mississippi. Each of the individual barges hold enough stuff to fill 18 big-rig trucks. There are three barges across and five down. River transportation is still very efficient.

Montrose

We were given a tour of Montrose, Iowa. Montrose is directly across the Mississippi River from Nauvoo. There was a Mormon settlement called Zarahemla right next to Montrose. When the Saints left Nauvoo, many of the people living in Zarahemla went with them. Montrose is important because a year after the exodus from Nauvoo, the only people left were poor immigrants from Europe who had spent every penny they had getting to Nauvoo. Once there, they found the Saints had left. They were very poor and since they were Mormons, living in Nauvoo, the mobs came to clean the city out. They wreaked havoc. They burned homes, went into the temple and broke up the furniture, broke windows, destroyed the baptismal font with its 12 carved oxen. Then they turned on the poor people and demanded that they leave. They couldn't go anywhere, so the mobbers picked women and children up and literally threw them into the river and told them to swim. There were a few barges left and so the people escaped with only the shirts on their backs. When they got to Montrose, there was no food. Then the Miracle of the Quail. Just as the children of Israel were fed quail in the desert, quail appeared and were easily caught and the people did not starve to death. It took a while for news to travel to Winter Quarters (near Omaha, Nebraska) but when Brigham Young heard about it, he sent wagons to rescue the people and bring them to Winter Quarters.

Our tour guide taught us about dowsing. He said he has found wagon tracks by dowsing and cemetaries full of the dead by dowsing. No one knows how it works, but it does. He had dowsing wires for each of us and we tried it.

Handcart Pioneers

 
 
 
The capitol building and the red brick church are both landmarks that the early pioneers would have seen. The statue commemorates the handcart pioneers and stands in front of the Marriott hotel (on property that was once part of the encampment. They have planted prarie grass around it so that it looks authentic.

Iowa City, Iowa

 
 
 
Iowa City was the gathering point for church immigrants to build handcarts and move west. We were given a tour of the city by a Brother Murdoch, who is a CES Coordinator and an Iowa City expert. We moved in a caravan of five cars. He gave each car a walkie-talkie, so we could hear his commentary as we went. He was also able to tell us where to turn. It was a wonderful day and we enjoyed it very much. The picture where he is pointing is the railroad terminus, where the immigrants came to the end of the railroad line (This was in the 1850s - not the Nauvoo expulsion). There were 3000 people in the camp. The population of Iowa City at the time was 1200, so the Mormons were nearly double the locals. The second picture is of a train crossing the river. It gives you an idea of where the train ended. They got off the train, regrouped, forded the river and went up the hill to the camp. The camp was laid out neatly in rows of tents, just like Nauvoo and Salt Lake City. We learned to admire and respect the territorial governor of the time, Robert Lucas. When asked about how he was going to treat the Mormons, he remarked that he remembered they lived in Ohio for a while (Ohio was part of the territory) and that he had not heard anything bad about them. He said that they were citizens of the United States and as such, had a right to practice their religion, own property, not be molested by anyone and he would see to it that they were not bothered while they were in Iowa.

Barber Shop in Keokuk

 
One whole wall of the barber shop is devoted to the barber's collection of Hot Wheels cars. They are all sitting in front of their boxes and have never been played with.

The Livin' is Easy

 
We now have a barbeque. Wayne is having a wonderful time cooking and I love it.

Ellen's Quilt Shop

 
This is a wonderful quilt shop in Burlington, Iowa. It is where we bought my sewing machine. I try to drop in every time we go to Burlington.