Jumping Off Points

There's something oddly symbolic about it: we finally received our Oregon license plates by FedEx today. So I put them on the car... in Kansas City, which is next to Independence, which is where so many treks west on the Oregon Trail started out. Surely you remember starting each game of Oregon Trail by outfitting your wagon in Independence! Mounting my Oregon plates at the start of the Oregon trail before heading west. Deep.

We then left the Kansas City/Liberty area and headed northwest to Council Bluffs, Iowa and Winter Quarters on the outskirts of Omaha. We started our visit here at the Mormon Trail Center at Historic Winter Quarters. It's a beautiful visitors center next door to the old Mormon Cemetery and the Winter Quarters temple.

Winter Quarters was the center of the church after leaving Nauvoo. But there were lots of settlements around the area, mostly on the Iowa side of the Missouri river. As I look at some of my genealogy, I know that we have ancestors who were there, and some who died there. In fact, the mortality rate was very high for the saints who were camped out there, mostly from mosquito-born illnesses and scurvy, and mostly because there were already weakened by illness and malnutrition. But the Legacy podcast we listened to pointed out that it's about more than the suffering and death. There was incredible hard work  to create a well-laid out city in just a few weeks. There was sacrifice to prepare crops and ferries and roads for the emigrants who were to follow.

The missionary who gave us the tour, Sister Mortensen, was very enthusiastic and taught a gospel principle or bore her testimony at every display we stopped at. I enjoyed going back through a second time to read some of the displays. BTW, I can't help but wonder if I may be distantly related to Sister Mortensen. She's from Vancouver, Washington, but she mentioned that her ancestor Peder Mortensen was baptized in Denmark and made the trek to Salt Lake City with a handcart company. Isn't that the same as my ancestor?

Speaking of ancestors, I don't think my ancestors who died in or near Winter Quarters are buried in the old Mormon cemetery we visited. Most of the records I can think of for the McClellan's talk about Pottawatamie county, which is on the Iowa side.

After the visitors center and meandering through the cemetery and around the temple, we checked into our hotel on the Iowa side. It turns out it's connected to a big casino. We didn't visit the casino, but we did check out their several restaurants. We ended up choosing - believe it or not - the place with the buffet. It was so much better than the buffet places in Nauvoo, which reminded us of a Mormon potluck. This place even had prime rib in the buffet! Very tasty.

Oh, one more thing I forgot to mention about all the churches we saw in Independence and Liberty the other day. I was joking about seeing so many churches called First Presbyterian or First Baptist, and wondered why they were all called "first." How could they all be first? Does that mean there's a second and a third? And then I saw it: the Second Baptist Church. Made my day.