2017 June-July - IL and IA

Tuesday, June 27th was a driving day, but a really nice short drive this time...just popping over to Springfield, IL, home of Abraham Lincoln. I've heard for years about how impressive the Presidential Library and Museum are, so that's the main reason we're here. There actually doesn't seem to be lots to do in Illinois. :-) We're staying at the Springfield KOA, just an average park, very rural ($38 night for my RVing friends). 

Wednesday - June 28th - We went into Springfield and what an impressive city! VERY tidy and meticulously maintained. I loved that! Beautiful flowers all over the city and we didn't see one store front (even the vacant ones) that didn't look well maintained. Kudos to the city managers, especially in light of the fact that we hear IL is going bankrupt. Hmmmm Much of the city has an almost park-like setting, with flowers and benches all around.

The Lincoln Museum exceeded all expectations!

It was very interesting how they separated Lincoln's life....here we have a section of the museum that depicted his boyhood years. Imagine you and your siblings all growing up in a one room cabin. Very humble beginnings.

I found it fascinating that with little formal education, he was such a well read educated man. It has been told that he read for hours, often long after the rest of the family was asleep.

This section of the museum sadly depicted the cruelty of slavery and the heartbreak of families being separated and sold into slavery.

Lincoln's political years.  Interesting that he ran for many different political offices and lost. He'd win, then run for a higher office and lose several times in a row. He lost his bid for the Senate and the next time around he won the Presidency! Talk about perseverance!

Lincoln and his wife recreated depicting a quiet evening in the White House.

Mrs. Lincoln was known for his sense of fashion....here are just a few of her beautiful gowns.

 I wish a photo could do justice to this sculpture. It so clearly shows the sadness in Lincoln's face.

I found it quite interesting to find out that politics back then were almost as nasty as they are now! Nothing new under the sun, I guess..... This is a display of several of the ads run in local papers. Lincoln was despised by Democrats and many in the south on both sides who wanted to protect slavery.

Earl and I have often remarked about how 8 years in office (even 4 years) noticeably ages a President. These photos clearly show the strain and aging during Lincoln's years in office, particularly during the war.

This is an eerie portrayal of Lincoln's last moments prior to his assassination.

 

The room where the President's body lay in state. 

The Lincoln Family

And then we were invited to join in the Lincoln Family Portrait - LOL

Right across the street was the Lincoln Memorial Library. I was very disappointed. Only saw one person in there and that was the librarian. If most presidential libraries are like this, I would not waste my time going to them. That's surprising too, as much as I like libraries. 

So we wandered around downtown for awhile.

 Next we drove over to see the house where the Lincoln's lived while in Illinois.

We enjoyed our day and the idyllic weather we're having. We came home and grilled chicken, squash, zuchinni and I tossed a salad, so we ate quite healthy for a change. Ha - it is seriously hard to eat well while traveling. Part of the fun is enjoying the local specialties, and I have to admit we usually indulge. 

Thursday, 6-29 - We stayed home today and did some housekeeping type stuff. I balanced our checkbooks, did a little cleaning, Earl fixed a couple little things in the RV, like our fan that was making a squeaky noise over our bed - those kinds of things still have to be done, even on the road.

Friday, we drove to Newton, Iowa,  a pretty little rural town within a 40 min drive to Des Moines.  We're staying at the  Newton KOA - ($48 a night). We had almost forgotton what it was like to get a site over the July 4th weekend, and when Earl called several days ago, they were almost booked up but said they had an overflow area that would have power, but no sewer. We went ahead and reserved it as he'd tried a couple other places nearer Des Moines and everything was booked. We are self contained up to about 5 days and we knew we'd be pushing it, but what can you do?  I'm telling y'all, this is one of the times we just know God is watching over us. We got here and Earl went into the office to hook up and someone had JUST canceled as he was walking in! So, we not only got a regular site, but the BEST site in the whole park! The largest site on the end so no neighbors, and farthest from the road, so we didn't hear the road noise. Wow....God is so good to us!

Saturday July 1st we relaxed, getting settled in here. The weather is so perfect for sitting outside, and we have a beautiful shade tree so we just enjoyed reading today. Trying to take a light day occasionally after days of a lot of activity to try to rest my knee a little. Late this afternoon we drove into Newton to check out the little town, get some groceries and we ate at a yummy Mexican restaurant! 

Today is Sunday and we enjoyed a delightfully quiet morning, reading and having our devotional time. This afternoon we rode into Grinnell as we needed to find a Wells Fargo to get some more cash. Quaint little town, with a lovely botanical garden and arboretum. Perfect for a Sunday afternoon stroll. This had a much more natural setting, less manicured, and reminded me of an English garden.

The gardens are several acres that run alongside beautiful healthy looking corn fields.

 On the way home, we passed this beautiful farm with flags on every other fencepost! Isn't this a gorgeous property. I wish someone had been out there for me to say thank you to. I love patriotic people!

 Monday, July 3 - long busy day! We started out by going to tour the Maytag Dairy Farms. Their signs say tours, etc. in several places we'd seen, so we thought that might be fun. Well....

We got in there and told the girl we'd like to arrange our tour of the farm. She looked so startled and she hemmed and hawed around for a few minutes and acted completely flustered. I think they must get this request VERY seldom, haha. At any rate, she took us through. This is really their off season - Christmas is their biggest ordering season, so there were only a few people in the call center.

 We listened to a very boring history of the founders, the Maytags (yes, originally the appliances that they sold off in 2006, and started to focus solely on cheese. They're particularly known for their blue cheese, and of course at the end of the tour she wanted to give us a sample, and I had to admit, I don't really care for that kind of cheese. Oops....

 After our kind of funny tour of the dairy farm, we headed on into Des Moines, our main Iowa destination. We went immediately to the Capitol Building and arranged a tour. They PLAN on giving tours. LOL and it was FABulous! Don't know when I've enjoyed a tour more! This is a photo as we were walking up. Too bad the large dome is under renovation, kind of spoils the photo but you can still see how magnificent it is! It's the only capitol building in America with FIVE domes, and the largest of which you see here in the center, with gold leaf on it! It stands 275 feet high and up until recently was the highest building in Iowa. This building was constructed between 1871 and 1886.

 One interesting note - as we entered the public entry doors, of course there were metal detectors there, and Earl suddenly remembered he was carrying. He was just about to turn around and take his gun back to the car, when we noticed a little sign that said, "We believe in the 2nd Amendment, and will allow entry with proper documentation." So.... Earl told them he carries always, and handed over his license and concealed carry permit. He carefully looked them over, handed them back to Earl with a really broad smile, and said, "Welcome, sir!" Pretty cool, huh?

This is looking up at the dome from the ground floor. Isn't it fantastic? And that's an orginal flag that flew during the Civil War! It is suspended on a wire frame up there!

Our tour guide was incredibly knowledgeable and articulate. She made the tour just fascinating. We started with information on the U.S.S. Iowa, now in harbor in San Diego, and available for tours (she said all Iowans could go for free.)

The amount of 23kt. gold leaf in this building is just astounding. VERY impressive!

There are all types of Iowa woods throughout the building. This is in the Supreme Court room and she told us how they were looking for a skilled, experienced wood carver back in the 1800's and had advertised for this opportunity. One day a young man came in and said "I'm your expert carver!" They asked how old he was, and he was only 26. They questioned his youth, but when he showed them some samples of his work they were sold. So these are his original hand carved mahogony panels. Exquisite! Back then they only had 5 Justices, and 40 years later, they changed that to 7 Justices, and they needed to extend the "bench" so they thought, hmmm he was only 26 when he carved the originals and they put out a search for him, and at age 66, he came back and completed the bench as it is here now. 

Our guide was informing us that the columns on either side of the staircase here are made out of 9 different types of marble. Aren't they beautiful?

The bases are carved to represent good vs. evil. The left side, shown below, are angels, doves and fruits (good things).....

....and the right side represents "evil" and is shown with snakes, skulls, demons, etc.

 This painting is entitled "Westward" and the artist is showing the whole mindset of the people moving west, leaving family and many treasures behind to go west to an unknown future, with hopes and dreams of making a better life. They commissioned this work for $10k back then. Our guide said today it would be worth millions.

This is where the House side meets....

And this is the Senate side....

Dome in the Senate side. Exquisite!

OH THE LIBRARY!!!  Oh y'all, I wish you could see this library! You know how I love libraries anyway, but THIS one....takes your breath away, all five stories of it!

 Check out this 5 story spiral staircase!

Check out the artwork below.... don't the corner pieces look like a relief? There is a masterful use of coloring here as it is a flat painting, but you'd swear it's 3-D!

 The mosaic artwork in these 6 panels is just breathtaking. Tiny little pieces of tile artistically designed to make these beautiful pieces of art. The first one is called Defense, and shows a young man putting down his plow, picking up a sword and going off to battle. Truly mesmerizing as his feet appear to "follow" you.... when you stand on the left his feet are pointing toward you - when you move to the right, his feet "change" and are then pointing there! Weird. And the center panel  of a woman was designed that her eyes follow you wherever you go!

Look at these TINY pieces of tile! Thousands upon thousands of them!

Ok, do NOT tell Dr. Radnothy, but I, along with our little group climbed up and then came down 131 steps to the top for a close up look at the dome. Uh, NOT the best thing for my knee! The steps were a tight spiral all the way up - this was about half way up - she warned us to be VERY careful of our phones. Haha

So after our Capitol tour, we got our lawn chairs out of the car, and picked out our spot on the hill right there on the Capitol grounds for our shady spot to watch the 24th Annual Yankee Doodle Pops, performed by the Des Moines Symphony! Excited to hear this awesome music and see the fireworks!

We had skipped lunch so by 5:00 we were getting hungry. The food trucks were just setting up, and one of them had famous Wisconsin fried cheese curds, which I've heard Earl talk about for years, and Jason and Dana and the family lived in WI when they were traveling, so Jason had said, "Whatever you do, don't miss getting some fried cheese curds!" OH MY GOODNESS, ya'll! These things have to be straight from the devil. LOL Seriously, they are scrumptious! Talk about "lead me not into temptation!" Yikes!

We were there early enough that we could have gone down on the flat section in front of the Symphony, but we decided we preferred to be up higher where we could see AND be under the shade of our tree!

Here we are....two of over 100,000 people! This is the 3rd largest patriotic assembly in the nation. The first being Washington, DC and the second, Boston, with the Boston Pops.

So here's a few snippets of the concert, for your listening pleasure.

 

 

It was about 11:00 when we got home, so decided tomorrow we're going to stay home and READ! Yay!! 

Today, July 4th, I woke up thinking today is America's Birthday! How grateful I am to live in this great country, with all it's problems and craziness right now, there's still no better place to be. And the more we travel, the more I'm convinced that the crazies we see on TV are not the mainstream Americans. We see and meet people from all over the place, and they're pretty much like us, have wholesome family values and are not spiteful and hate-filled. God help us to learn to get along and have unity once again. 

We stayed outside the entire day! Seriously awesome day - this was our view from the shade under the tree, reading most of the day! Loved it! 

Tonight I made ribs and Earl grilled them after I cooked them - YUMMY!! And after dinner, we read awhile longer and then went in and watched the fireworks on TV. Lovely day, and even now, we hear fireworks going somewhere nearby. Happy Independence Day, y'all!

Tomorrow is a travel day - we will head to Wisconsin! I'll get to add the Wisconsin sticker on my US map, and then the only blank spot will be Michigan! What a blessing it is to travel and see our beautiful America. Thanks for coming along with us!