bobanddenisewanderlust

Saturday-  We had a quiet day in the MH. Bob took the sheets and towels over to the laundry at the park and did them a day early. I did some work around the MH.

After lunch, we went to Atchison to the Walmart for some groceries. It is a brand new Walmart! We had driven past the old one yesterday, which was no longer there. The old one was the first Walmart I had ever been to! I went there with my mother-in-law, Dora. The grocery store I had gone to with her was also gone, as was a restaurant where we met up with the family for lunch on day…. times and towns change!

We took a short nap. Then met Bob’s brother Joe in St. Joseph at the Texas Roadhouse for a nice dinner.

Sunday- We left around 8:45 after dumping the gray tank. We continued east on I-70 around Kansas City and across Missouri. We drove east of St. Louis, crossing the Mississippi River,  to Granite City IL,where our destination was the Elks Lodge. They have two sites, water and 30 amp electric . We took one of the sites, parking on gravel. We had a quiet evening at home. The weather was nice, the temperature was in the upper 70’s so we opened all the windows.

Monday-  We left around 9:45 and and continued east on I-270 until we reached I-55 north. We traveled about 2 hours to Springfield IL. Our destination was the State Fair Grounds. We have stayed here before.

We arrived to find a sign which said that the Camp Host was off Sunday and Monday. So I called security, and the guy said take one of the handicap sites, as they have dumps.

We both remembered that this had happened before. We parked in a nice asphalt site with FHU, 50 amp. The security guy said just pay Mike, the camp host, in the morning. Okay!

It was noon, so we set up and ate lunch. After a load of laundry, we left and went to downtown Springfield. Our first stop was the Lincoln Depot. It was from this depot where  President Elect Abe Lincoln departed on February 11, 1861. It took him 9 days to get to Washington DC. 

Above is the Lincoln family. Below are houses in town that the family lived in .

We left and went to view the Lincoln Family Pew at the First Presbyterian Church.

 

Too bad we could not see the pew! The church was locked up.

We went to see the Lawrence Educational Center, which was designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. Nothing unusual. It is a working school.

We drove to Walmart then back to the MH. We had a quiet evening at home.

Tuesday-  We had to pay the camp host after 11, so I did a Webinar at 9, then we did some other tasks like laundry. We ate lunch at home, and left at about 12:30 to go to the Dana-Thomas House, a Frank Lloyd Wright designed home. It is listed as the most unique and lavish structure designed by FLW during his early Prairie period. The home was built for Springfield socialite Susan Lawrence Dana. She wanted a home for parties. Ms. Dana gave FLW a blank check to design and build the home. The Thomas part of the name is for the Illinois governor who saved the building from demolition.

We arrived and went right to the 1 PM tour, led by a nice guy named Chuck. The tour started with a movie about FLW and Dana. The home is 12,600 square feet and has 16 levels! The building has not been significantly altered and has over 100 pieces of Wright-designed oak furniture, 250 examples of art glass light fixtures and lamps. The barrel-vaulted dining room and gallery/ballroom are two of the most photographed spaces in the history of American architecture. Connecting the main living quarters to the gallery and library is a 60 ft. long pergola hallway beneath which is a bowling lane, billiard room and walk-in vault.

 

Notice how the edges of the gutters are tilting up? That is an optical illusion. They are actually flat, and are designed to give an oriental flair. Ms. Dane liked butterflies so there is a butterfly theme throughout the home. FLW liked Sumac, so that is also a theme throughout the house. Photography is not allowed in the house, but Chuck did let me take a picture of a model of the house which is in the basement.

We drove past the new State Capital. The statue is of Lincoln.

We were driving down Rt. 66.

We left and went to the Old State Capital building where Lincoln served in the Legislature.

We walked in the door right behind a bunch of kids on a field trip. Fortunately, they did not stay too long as they were loud and wild!

This was the working area.

Below is the court room.

The Governor’s Office, which was very small and connected to some public areas.

Below is the Representative Hall, where Lincoln served. This is also where they held is 2 day wake when the body was returned to Springfield for burial. He must have been pretty ripe, as the body traveled for over 15 days on its way to Springfield. There were many wakes held upon the route.

Below is the Senate Hall.

Finally, the staircase.

 

There were other rooms also.

We left and went to Obed and Isaac’s Microbrewery & Eatery for Bob to sample some local beers.

Bob had an Upside Down Coffee, a Hefe, Cascade Ale, and a Ditzy Blonde. He said that all the beers were good. I tried a sample of their homemade root beer.

We returned to the MH. The weather was really iffy today, with drizzle and later some rain.

Wednesday- We went to the Lincoln Presidential Library. Well, we tried too.. we parked in the parking garage, and walked to the Library. When we walked in the Security guy told us that it was really for research and that we needed to back track across the street to the Museum. Below is the LIbrary.

Below is the Museum. They look just alike and are across the street from each other!

It cost $12 senior rate/ea for the Museum and Union Station which has an exhibit of the movie Lincoln by Steven Spielberg. We paid and a docent met us and gave us directions. School kids had taken over the place for the day! They were coming in by the bus loads! We started at a replica of Lincoln’s one room home in Indiana.

The lady in the black costume welcomed us to Indiana. We wandered through the house, which was an actual one room log cabin, that had been moved here, just not Lincoln’s original cabin.

There were a number of exhibits on his life and slavery. We then went to the 10 AM movie. It was very well done, talking about the Civil War. Then we progressed to some more exhibits.

There were a number of political cartoons, all which made fun of Lincoln or the first lady. We continued to another exhibit about the war, including pictures of soldiers.

Below are yearly pictures of Lincoln. You can see how he aged during his time in office.

Ford’s Theater: what you cannot see is John Wilks Booth sneaking into the box.

There were more exhibits, then another movie, called Ghosts. It was about why there are Presidential Libraries. The movie/show was really well done. It was so life like, I thought the narrator was live. Nope, he was a ghost! It was much more realistic than the exhibits at Disney!!!

We ate lunch, after standing in line behind some of the school kids, at the Subway in the museum.

We walked across the street to Union Station. I am glad that we only paid $2 each, as an upgrade to our museum tickets for this exhibit!

All these were pictures and costumes from the Spielberg movie.

We walked back across the street to the parking garage, paid our $6, and left. We stopped at JoAnne’s to pick up the works for our clock, which had stopped working. We returned to the MH.

I wanted to add a day to our TT reservation and discovered that I had forgotten to make the reservation. I was sure that I had. The reservation is for Clinton IN, and they were booked solid. Instead, I ended up making a reservation for a town on the other side of the state. We will be staying there for 9 days.

Thursday-  We drove out of Illinois and into Indiana. We passed through Indianapolis and continued east on I-74. We followed the GPS directions to the Indian Lake Thousand Trails/ Batesville KOA. There is a KOA in the center of the TT park. Those sites are nicer than the TT sites, but then you pay for them.

Our  GPS had the directions wrong. It took us out into the countryside. We arrived at an empty field.  We ended up on a dead end road and had to turn around. So we disconnected the car and drove back. We found Hwy. 46, and followed it to the park.

We pulled in and found that there was a minimal selection of sites available. The park is large, but there are a lot of annual sites. We drove to the area that the Ranger told us to go to. We found a number of empty sites, but all were water logged from all the rain. We sank in some, just in the car.

We found a pull thru, one only, that was available. A guy raced past us and drove right into the site. So we had to start looking again. We finally decided on a 30 amp/water site. So Bob stopped the motor home to dump the tanks. As he headed around to the site, he found that the site that the guy had raced into was now empty.

So we moved into the 50 amp FHU pull thru site. The problem for the other guy is the location of the sewer and the electric. Because we are larger, and have longer tubing, we were able to reach the sewer and electric, but the guy in the smaller unit could not. So we settled in.

We had a quiet evening at home.

Friday- We left early to go into Batesville to the Kroger. We grocery shopped, along with every little old lady that lives in the area! The grocery store was very busy.

We returned to the MH and ate lunch. Then we settled in for the afternoon. We watched Manchester by the Sea on Amazon Prime. We were not impressed with the movie. It was okay, but the ending was kind of lame.

We ate dinner at home and watched TV.

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