We had originally planned to leave on Sunday, July 25th, head to Chicago and stay with the friends. But since they were under the weather a bit, our plans changed! We let Carter play the rest of his weekend baseball tournament - which they ended up winning - and decided to leave Monday morning. Getting up really early has never been so easy! We left on our journey at 6:45 am on Monday!
The goal.....get to St. Louis, with a stop in Springfield to see some of the Abraham Lincoln history. I started to keep a journal of our trip so here is an excerpt from it.
Our plan for Springfield was to see Lincoln's home and to head to the cemetery to see his burial site. The cemetery was amazing. Lincoln, his wife and 3 of their sons are buried there. I had never realized how young his sons were when they died. It saddens me to think of how many kids died of diseases back in the 1800's, that now days are curable. After the cemetery we headed back to Lincolns home. After his death, his oldest son Robert owned the house and rented it out. But when he found out that the renters were charging a fee and allowing people to walk through the house, he sold it to the state of IL with 2 conditions....1. it would be kept in good shape and 2. they would never charge people to go in it. In the 1970's the national park service took over ownership of it and tore down everything that was not original to the neighborhood. Today the only buildings standing are the ones that made up the neighborhood Abe Lincoln lived in for 17 years. The house was fascinating - to hold the stair rail that Lincoln would have held, to see the desk he wrote on , the stove Martha cooked with, the (horrendous) wallpaper / carpet combos - all of it was very memorable. We finished up the day by heading to St. Louis, eating supper at Denny's (the boys new favorite restaurant), swimming at the hotel and look
ing forward to Tuesday and our visit to the St. Louis Arch!
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