Lincoln Land

Date: Monday May 23

We crossed the Mississippi again, this time in St. Louis. It was quite swollen, but we saw no evidence of flooding.  We left Merritt Island in the middle of a terrible drought with a 25 inch rain deficit.  The weather reporters were always focused on the chances of any rain coming our way. It was interesting to watch the local news here in Springfield, IL and see how focused they are on NOT getting any more rain.

We were in Branson, about two hours away, when the killer tornado hit Joplin, MO a few days ago. We've had a lot of weird weather since we arrived here in the Springfield, IL area several days ago. Tonight we're sitting in the RV, watching the American Idol finale, and hearing reports that there's a tornado warning in the area where we're parked. And we're in an RV!

We spent the last two days immersed in Lincoln history.  Yesterday we visited the village of New Salem where he held his first jobs and the Old State House where Lincoln gave his "House Divided" speech and where he sat in the state legislature.

Old State House

 We also visited his law office. Today we visited the home that he lived in with his wife and children before he left for Washington,

Lincoln Home

and the new Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum. 

The new museum and library was amazing. A huge amount of money was spent by the state of Illinois to create a state-of-the-art high tech experience.  It almost felt more like a Disney attraction with lots of special effects and life-sized figures in dioramas depicting significant periods in his life.  There were lots of really well done exhibits about the civil war. It's not easy to explain, but my favorite part was called the "Civil War in Four Minutes." It was a map of the US with colors representing the areas controlled by the North and the South. Over the course of 4 minutes beginning with Lincoln's election and ending with the capture of Jefferson Davis, the dates clicked off by the week, the casualties for each side up to that date kept adding up, and the colors fluidly changed, kind of morphing into a graphic showing who controlled what territory at that time. Does that make sense? It was an amazing visual. You've got to make time for this museum if you're ever in this area. It's wonderful.

The Civil War in Four Minutes