Day #26 Driving, Carthage

We ate dinner in the visitors center parking lot last night and decided to get a head start on the long drive to Nauvoo, about ten hours or so. We've discovered that when we have long stretches to drive it works well to get a start in the evening and drive til midnight or so. The girls fall asleep by 9-10pm and the boys read quietly with headlamps. We made it all the way to Columbus, Ohio, and left early this morning for Nauvoo. Eric just picks them up from their bed on the couch and straps them in and they go back to sleep for at least an hour or so. Nice!
We slept in a Walmart parking lot last night and there was a Burger King nearby with a drive-thru open 24/7. I heard a few people in the middle of the night shouting their order into the microphone. We should've been more selective where we parked I guess. :)

Today was mostly spent in the car. When we were nearing Nauvoo we stopped for gas. Eric swiped his card but it didn't work so the cashier told him to fill up and then come in and she'd do it. He filled up and went back in to pay but she was busy. He then checked on Adam in the bathroom and came back out to the RV, washed the windows and we left. We were about 15 minutes down the road when he said, "I don't think I paid the lady for our gas". I googled the gas station and he called the lady. She answered and when he told her he didn't think he'd paid she passed the phone to the police officer in the gas station! He said we should come right back or else the state police would find us down the road. Yikes! We offered to pay over the phone and not have to backtrack, since we'd been in the car all day. The lady said she couldn't do it over the phone. Grrr! So we headed back and he went in to pay. The cashier saw his AMEX card and said, "oh I have to enter those manually, our machine doesn't read American Express." Grr! So we could have done it over the phone. Oh well! It all worked out because as we were passing through Carthage we saw a large gathering outside the jail and visitors center. We hadn't realized that it was June 27th, the day the Prophet and Hyrum Smith were murdered in Carthage Jail. The days all run together and we were thinking it was the 26th. We were just in time for the program put on by the young performing missionaries commemorating the 170th anniversary of their deaths. It was really good and I'm glad we happened to be driving by at the right time, thanks to the gas mixup.

I should say... I don't think it was coincidence that we were delayed by the gas thing-- since we were unaware of the commemoration we would have driven right through Carthage an hour earlier and probably wouldn't have seen any crowds yet and wouldn't have stopped.  All things happen for a reason!  :)