He insisted that we make our temple session, so he gave us the keys to his wife's car to drive, and he made the arrangements for the car while we were at the temple. The temple was BEAUTIFUL! It's so big, everything is amazingly intricate... it just amazes me that the Mormon pioneers (pre-pioneers I guess) were able to build it.
We spent Saturday night at Gary and Kathy's in one of their spare bedrooms. The next morning they took us on a driven tour of Nauvoo... including the modern day tour (this is where Dr. so and so lives, etc.) and the olden day (Joseph Smith's house, burial site, original temple quarry) and other fun things (like where the film Legacy was filmed). We then went to sacrament meeting with them, their ward was amazingly nice, at least 8 or 9 people greeted us before the meeting. Then we skipped out on the rest of church to do a tour of historic Nauvoo. I think I'll try to figure out how to make a slideshow of my pics of that.
When we got back to the cabin, Gary had found out that the problem with the car was a bad water pump and it the part would hopefully come in on Monday and be fixed shortly thereafter, so we spent another night with Gary and Kathy. They are truly wonderful, fun and smart people. We were SO blessed that he listened to the spirit that told him to stop and that we were people he could trust. He gave us all sorts of financial tips, he's a bank president, which we are very grateful for. And we heard all sorts of fun stories about their family; one son works for Dreamworks and worked on movies like Shrek and I Robot; one son that's a Navy Seal; and another son who's a lawyer with a cute little red head daughter. Woke up in the morning... got to put on the SAME clothes for a 3rd day in a row :). And got dropped off at the car place (Gary and Kathy had to go back to their 1st home for the work week). We then found out that the part didn't come in and we got to spend another day in Nauvoo! Hooray! We watched the movies at the visitors center, did more touring and spent the night at the Hotel Nauvoo.
The next day, Tuesday, found out that the car also needed a new radiator on top of the new water pump... but all got fixed for a mere $100 thanks to the extended warrantee on Paul's car. Then we got off... at 1:30pm... 72 hours after we stopped on the side of the road.
I passed my Illinois law exam! So I am now officially a licensed pharmacist in Washington, Iowa and Illinois. Hooray!
Our long trip across the U.S. let us make a fun stop at Mount Rushmore in South Dakota... it was good to have a stop like that before the rest of South Dakota, because let me tell you the rest of that state is a whole lot of NOTHING! Just miles and miles of prairie. Not much to say about Mount Rushmore itself, I did learn that Pres Lincoln was orignally supposed to be on the LEFT of Pres Washington, but the rock was too unstable and he kept falling apart. AND the artist that designed the monument was LDS, like me. :)
Our other South Dakota stop was in Wall, the direct result of a deluge of media. Starting about 30 miles before Wall, SD there were little billboards every mile or so reading: Fresh Pie; Homemade Ice Cream; Free Ice Water; 5 cent Coffee; etc. all at Wall Drug. The media did it's job and we made a fun stop at Wall Drug... where there was not a single Pharmacist on duty, just one big tourist trap. Got to ride a jackelope and a bucking bronco though.
The next day we had planned to go skydiving... would have been so cool! But it was raining and apparently you need to be able to see the ground when you jump out of the plane, so our appointment was cancelled. I had said a prayer the night before that if it was a dumb idea for us to go that Heavenly Father needed to let us know in no uncertain terms. But the rain wasn't enough for us. Paul proceeded to call every single town up the coast between Monterey and San Francisco to find out it any of them were planning on doing jumps, we finally found one in Holister CA (not really as cool of a surfer town as you would think by thy way... really just a lame farm town no where close to the ocean!) we got there and it started raining as we pulled into the airport. I told Paul that this was our final sign... if we ignored this one we weren't getting anymore warnings. So we cancelled our appointment and we're alive! Happy day! Still planning on doing it someday... so stay tuned.
From there we went to Chinatown... and let me preface this by saying I was REALLY hoping for a dragon parade and the like. But alas no dragons, it was still pretty cool. We got me another purse, a pillow, and some chopsticks AND ate at a restaurant where Jackie Chan filmed Rush Hour. Food wasn't so great... but Jackie Chan was once there!
And my personal favorite part of Chinatown.... Chinatownland! :) loved it!
From LA we drove north to Paso Robles where Paul's aunt and uncle live. LONG drive! But the Paso Robles area is beautiful! I could handle living in THAT part of California. We stayed at my favorite motel there... funny part was that it was STINKY! It smelled like sulfur the whole time. We had a hot tub/spa tub in our room that was fed by mineral water= stinky sulfur water! Gross! But it was super pretty.
