Monday July 25th We stopped in the town of Amana, Iowa last night for dinner, It is an Amish town and community. It is most interesting to see all the different shops they have selling their products; like cheese, home made jams and jellies, meats and colorful clothing. I wasn't very hungry, so I had the soup of the day and hot bread. Kent and our friends all had the same meal that was cottage cheese, corn, veal, potatoes and gravy and hot bread. it was all you could eat or they called it family style. We spent the night in their RV park and we played our board game again.
Tuesday July 26 Today we are traveling to Springfield, Illinois and staying at the Illinois State Fairground for 2 nights and will visit the Lincoln Presidential Library and museum. It is about 260 miles and the weather is so humid and hot, there are dark thunder
clouds in the sky, I think we will be getting another hard rain storm. The first day we went to the Lincoln Tomb which is the final resting place of Lincoln, his wife Mary Todd and three of their four sons, Edward, William and Thomas. Every Tuesday evening during a part of the summer, civil war re-enactors from the 114th Illinois Infantry conduct flag lowering ceremonies at the site. There are a lot of ladies in their beautiful dresses of the period and men in their wool suits. They wander through the crowd and talk to you and answer any questions you might have.
Wednesday July 27 We are back at the Lincoln library- museum. It is absolutely breath taking when you walk into the first room where you see Lincoln, Mary Todd, Edward and William dressed in their finest, standing there like they are greeting you. The White House is in the back ground and it looks huge with the ceiling looking like the sky. In another area, is Lincoln's log cabin in a setting of very tall trees and a yard like in the forest. The cabin is built to scale to the exact size of his cabin he grew up in. There
is a fireplace with a log burning with Lincoln reading a book in front and with all the home made
furniture they had. They have all of the dresses like the ones Mary wore, they have a room where Lincoln was a lawyer and the two small boys tearing the room apart having fun. It will take a few hours to see everything, but very interesting and so well done. One section shows how hard it was for him to get the States to free the slaves and the amount of men that were killed in the many battles. The total war killed over 1,000,000 solders on both sides. The Lincoln Library is one of the best Presidential libraries and we have seen and we've seen a lot of them in our travels. It contains a treasury of carefully preserved Lincoln documents and artifacts, including more than12 million items from the Illinois historical library. The Lincoln museum boasts more than 40,000 square feet of galleries , theaters and historical displays . His signature stovepipe hat, an original hand written copy of the "'Gettysburg- Address", the evening gloves from his pocket the night he was assassinated and the quill used to sign the Emancipation Proclamation are part of a rotating display of some of the most precious Lincoln artifacts. There is so much to see and it was past our lunch time when we finished seeing it all. We looked outside and saw it was pouring buckets of rain, we debated waiting until it stopped or go for it. Everyone took off running, so I guess that meant Go For It Sharon! The rain was as warm as a shower and we didn't mind it. The humidity is 100% here most of the time. We ate lunch and we headed over to tour the neighborhood that Lincoln lived in Springfield. The Natl. Park service restored one square block of the homes to its 1860's appearance, where you walk on wooden sidewalks past the homes of Lincoln's neighbors and friends, where Lincoln lived and where he spoke to a crowd of friends and supporters as he prepared to depart for Washington, DC from a platform at the train Depot in Feb. 1861, in a voice filled with emotion for the city where he had lived, worked and called home for 30 years and where he raised his family. He left Springfield on that day never to return in his lifetime. Springfield is more than just a museum, it takes you on a journey from Lincoln's humble beginnings to his rise to the Presidency.
Friday July 29 We drove 360 miles to Scottsville, Kentucky today, stopping at "Buffalo Wild Wings," one of our favorite places to eat dinner in Bowling Green, KY, before heading to a campground for the night. We got waited on right away and the we waited and waited and waited see more for our food to come. We were busy talking about the drive and what we had seen on the days drive and our plans for tomorrow in Bowling Green. Our waiter kept checking in saying it would be here in a few minutes. Linda could see where the kitchen puts up the food when it is ready to be taken to the tables.She said to the rest of us to look at all the food sitting at the kitchen counter. She said one of the hamburgers had been there for half an hour. By now we were talked out and real hungry and called our waiter over to explain the long wait and all the food siting there. He said ours would be right out, there was a problem in the kitchen with the orders, we asked for the Manager and this very young girl came and apologized and said our food was ready. It was ready all right if you like cold food! Kent and I sent ours back, John and Linda thought theirs would be OK as they didn't want to wait any longer. We received our food almost immediately and they ate barely warn wings. We know we won't ever eat at Buffalo Wild Wings there again. Our campground here is a Corp of Engineers and was very nice and we met some really nice people that live close by and like staying there on weekends. They had us come by their camp site for Ice Cream. I took some pictures of the tobacco fields that are all over here and one of an old tobacco drying barn. Tomorrow we head to Bowling Green, Kentucky.
