Tuesday, May 10, 2016 – Work, Peonies

Elder Heslop is the mission videographer. I asked him what his “Day Job” is. He said he works at FM (Facilities Management) in the carpentry shop. For the past several months he’s been making Handcarts!  The Nauvoo Mission offers a “handcart Experience” to families, groups of families, family reunions, scouts, Wards and Stakes.  The group can choose the length of handcart treks from one mile, two miles or three miles. All treks are completed on the same day. The mission’s handcart route is not all easy, it includes some very rugged terrain, up & down steep hills and it has 8 water crossings. 

The group can choose how much weight the cart will be loaded with. A handcart family can have from one hundred to five hundred pounds of weight but usually carts weighing over 200 pounds are discouraged.

Elder Heslop said last year a handcart family of young and tuff teenage boys wanted to show off how macho they were and said they could handle 400 pounds. Later after their group’s trek was done they were the last to come in and they were beaten and tired. When they put away the handcarts Elder Heslop discovered a lot of the weight in the cart was missing. They discovered that the boys had unloaded most of the extra 50# bags of sand along the trail to lighten their load. Departing from Iowa City in 1856 the real handcart pioneers took up to 600# of supplies per handcart. And, they didn’t walk 3 miles; they pulled their handcarts 1300 miles.

I didn’t even know there was a handcart trek available here in Nauvoo, this would really be a great experience for a family when they come to visit this historic place.  Elder Heslop said the available dates for handcart treks in Nauvoo are filling very quickly. He said they already have one day in July booked with 19 different groups to use the handcarts on the trek trail.

I asked Elder Heslop why the mission was making new handcarts. He said the old ones were poorly built of soft pine and falling apart. Elder Heslop’s new handcarts are all solid white oak. The box bottoms are tongue & groove construction and the box corners are all dovetailed. He is building 24 standard size and 2 smaller handcarts for children. They will all be done in time for the summer season. He is using the church’s original designs and diagrams. They are very well built and solid. They should last for years.

This morning turned out to be a beautiful day. We were afraid it would rain all day but the sun came out early and we got a full day of work done. Sis. Johnson worked at the Carthage Visitor’s Center while I worked at the Bushnell house. She did all of the sidewalks, hedges, racking and cleaning. I got all of the mowing done, sprayed weeds, trimmed with the weed eater and cleaned all of the sidewalks. It was a good day.