Lincoln Presidential Museum

It was raining today so I was glad that I saved the Lincoln Presidential Museum for today and did the outside things yesterday. This is the 7th Presidential Museum I have visited and is by far the best. Of the official Presidential Museums that are part of the National Parks, I have been to the Kennedy, Truman, Clinton, Johnson and Eisenhower. The Jackson and Lincoln Museums are state run. What makes the Lincoln so good is the diorama exhibits that depict his live from childhood to death. I learned a lot that I had either forgotten from school or never knew. An examples is that I didn't know he was re-elected to a second term.

 The Lincoln family standing in front of the White House. 

 Abe as a boy in his log cabin home. He taught himself to read by the fireplace. 

 Lincoln reading this Emancipation of Proclamation speech to his cabinet. The man on the right is a real person but you could not tell it until he would make  subtle move. 

 This painting that covered an entire all was amazing and so life-like. Since I have found out that my Great-Grandfather was in the Civil War, I look at the war differently. 

Lincoln's tomb where he, his wife and three of their four sons are buried. 

The long awaited conference starts at 8 a.m. in the morning. I checked in this afternoon and got my packet so have to figure out tonight what time my classes are and which room they are located in. I will be attending 19 classes/lectures/dinners with speakers/workshops over the next 3 days. I have decided to go home Saturday morning instead of staying for the last 3 classes on Saturday afternoon. By then my brain will be fried anyway and will be past the point of retaining anything more. Plus I want to get home to get unpacked, etc before Darryl arrives on Sunday. I do plan on going back through Hannibal and will stop to take some pictures of Tom Sawyer, etc along the way. A busy 2 weeks....

New Salem and Botanical Gardens

I had a great time yesterday sightseeing but last night was nothing but frustration with computers!  I don't use the laptop except when traveling so I was several upgrades to Windows behind. Yesterday seemed like a good day to just let the computer upgrade while I was out and about. I get home in the afternoon and the upgrade is still going on. So I didn't get to start the blog until about 9:30 last night. THEN after the Windows upgrade, there was several things I had to do on the computer to get it set up the way I wanted it. THEN the hotel WiFi was acting up, affecting the whole hotel,  so I couldn't access the blog. As you know from my past rants, I do not have patience when computers don't do what they are supposed to do when I tell them to do something!!!!!!  Anyway, this morning everything seems to be working 8-)

New Salem, Illinois
Lincoln's New Salem State Historic Site is a reconstruction of the former village of New Salem in Menard County, Illinois where Lincoln lived from 1831 - 1837.  While in his twenties, the future U. S. President made his living in this frontier village as a boatman, soldier in the Black Hawk War, general store owner, Postmaster, surveyor and rail splitter, and was first elected to the Illinois General Assembly. It was during his years in New Salem when Lincoln became a lawyer. Lincoln left New Salem for Springfield in 1837, and the village was generally abandoned by about 1840, as other towns developed. In the 1930s, the Civilian Conservation Corps built a historic recreation of New Salem based on its original foundations, establishing a state park commemorating Lincoln and Illinois' frontier history. The village is located 15 mi northwest of Springfield. I got to the park when it first opened and was the only person strolling through the village for a long time when 2 other people joined me on the streets.

 One of many log building in the village. 

Food for the soul....

Perfect timing!

It was hot at the village and got hotter as the day went on. The heat index was 101 and the humidity was a killer!   But, I wasn't going to let that stop me so the next stop was the Washington Park Botanical Gardens in Springfield. 

 Besides the park and gardens, there is a Carillon in the gardens. 

A carillon is a musical instrument that is typically housed in the bell tower of a church or structure. The instrument consists of at least 23 cast bronze, cup-shaped bells, which are played to produce a wide variety of music. This particular carillon is one of the largest in the world's largest. It has 67 bronze bells covering a range of 5 octaves. The total weight of the bells is 82,753 lbs; the largest weighs 7.5 tons and the smallest weighs 22 lbs. The bells are all played manually by means of a special keyboard located on the 8th flower of the tower. I heard them play twice while I was wandering around and the sound was beautiful.

I think this is a type of hydrangea but the shape, color and bloom size is different than any I have ever seen before. The blooms were probably 10-12 inches long and the color on one bloom ranged from pick to white at the tip. Beautiful! 

Most of the roses in the garden are way past their peak but there was still a few pretty ones to be found if I looked hard enough. 

For dinner last night, I went to a nearby restaurant that was the recommendation of a person at the hotel.  I had a glass of wine and a good dinner while enjoying the music from the early 50's on their sound system. 

The restaurant was a saloon back on Nov 6, 1860 when Abraham Lincoln was elected President. 

And it is the same building where Lincoln celebrated his election on that night. Pretty cool!

Today is the Lincoln Museum, Tomb and Church he attended. Then I can check in for the conference after 3 p.m.

On the road again....

Today I drove to Springfield, Illinois to attend the Annual conference of the Federation of Genealogical Societies which is one of the top 3 genealogy conferences in the country each year. Going to a national conference has been on my genealogy bucket list for several years and here I am. The conference starts Wednesday morning at 8 am and goes until 6 pm Saturday. But, until Wednesday morning, I will be playing tourist in someplace new!

During the time I was planning my route here, I found out that Darryl's brother is buried in Carlinville, Ill. Carlinville is only 12 miles off the freeway so I made a side trip today so I could get a picture of the cemetery and a picture of his brother's grave for Darryl. It turned out to be more of an adventure than I anticipated......  I ate lunch at a Cracker Barrel in the St Louis area and then gave Samantha the cemetery address we wanted to get to. Now I assumed that she would take me around the city, connect with the freeway to St Louis and make then the 12 miles side trip to the Carlinville.  But no.......she wanted to take a leisurely Sunday drive on multiple 2-lane roads winding through corn fields, past farms, through little towns, etc before we got to Carlinville. She has always taken the fastest, shortest route until today! Anyway, she takes me to the address which turns out to be not the cemetery but the funeral home. Then I look up "Mayfield Memorial Park" and Google takes me to the charming town square - no cemetery in sight. I decide to find a police station for directions but on the way, go by a church with some people standing out in the parking lot talking so stop and ask them for directions. They gave me directions - go back to the 3rd stop sign, make a right, go past the Shell station, vere right at the Y and go to the 2nd cemetery on the left - the first one is the Catholic cemetery and not the one you are looking for. I followed their directions and found it!  After getting the pictures for Darryl,  I went back the the town square to look around.

Carlinville is on the original Route 66 and is 1,796 miles from Los Angles at this corner of the square. 

This is the gazebo in the town square. Very pretty and well maintained. I noticed these lawn chairs setting in various spots around town, including one in front of the old, historic jail - not sure why. 

This beautiful building is the Macoupin County Courthouse. The picture doesn't do it justice. 

It was a very pretty, small Midwest town and an unexpected surprise. Then it was back to the freeway and 30 more miles to Springfield, IL. Tomorrow I will be a tourist and learn all about Abraham Lincoln.

Life's next chapter.....

I started this blog on Oct 23, 2006 just to write about life after Larry and I moved to Tucson. The blog then became a way for me to chronicle our travels so friends and family could follow along with us. Then it became my journal when Larry got sick with cancer and passed away 4 weeks later. The blog because a way for me to express my gut-wrenching feelings and get them out. Never in a million years did I think I would be that open with my feelings for others to know what I was feeling. Next the blog chronicled my life without Larry, travels with friends, travels by myself, Morris and I moving back to the Midwest to be near family and then loosing Morris 2 years ago. During the almost 10 years of writing the blog, I have written 666 posts that have been viewed 12,569 times. As most of you know, I'm starting a new chapter in my life and have been debating whether or not to continue the blog. However, after thinking about it for a couple of weeks and talking it over with Darryl, I am going to continue the blog. 8-)  Over the last 10 years it has become my journal and I enjoy it - plus it is a way to chronicle my life. To me, it is like writing a book in which I cover the good, the bad and the routine parts of my life. There is software available that will let you take a blog and turn it into a book which I'm thinking about doing it. Anyway, here goes with...

Life's Next Chapter....
You have a lot of heavy conversations with your spouse when they are sick and know they only have a few more days/weeks to live. There was two things that Larry was adamant about in those conversations where he talked and I listened because that was nothing I could say to him. First was that I would rely on my friends in Tucson who he knew would help me get through the next few weeks/months. I did and they got me through the hardest time of my life. Larry's second request was that I be open to love again with someone else down the road. Little did we know that it might come by way of the man I married at 17, divorced when I was 32 years old and them reconnected again with him when I was 71 years old. The chain of events that led to us reconnecting is far too complicated to try to explain but only could have happened with the guy upstairs having a hand in it. Darryl and I don't know for sure where it is going but time will tell. We have spent many, many hours on the phone since early last May and last weekend we met in Hays, Kansas for a face-to-face meeting. Darryl is coming here for a week in September and then I am going out to Denver in last September for 10 days to visit him. Time will tell....

Hays, Kansas
Hays was chosen as a place for us to meet because it is a 4 hour drive for me and a 5 hour drive for him so kinda in the middle. It is a small Kansas town, population 21,044, home of Fort Hayes State University and the largest town in northwestern Kansas. Here is some of what we found there.

There is a heard of about 40 buffalo next to the Old Historic Fort Hays Army Post. Here is two of the adults and the calf that was born this year. They were nice enough to come over to the watering hole that was near the fence and then went back to a far corner of the pasture.

Fort Hays Historic Site: The original fort was established in 1865 in the land of the Cheyenne and Arapaho, the fort protected railroad workers and travelers on the Smoky Hill Trail. The US Army operated Fort Hayes on this site from 1867 to 1889. The fort also served as a military supply depot for forts south and west of here. The fort consisted of 45 building on 65 acres of land. Only a few of the original buildings still exist. This building was built in 1872 as a guardhouse replacing the original wooden guardhouse.

On Sunday morning we drove the Smoky Valley Kansas Scenic Byway - one of 11 in the state. I had never heard of this particular one before. I had hoped to get some sunflower pictures so was delighted to see fields full of them along the drive.

This is an old church is set back in a grove of trees along the road. The carved stone sign above the door says: Swedish Luthern [not a misspelling] Emmanuel Church Trego Co. Kansas 1902.

These bluffs are along the banks of the Cedar Bluff Reservoir that was built in 1949 for flood control.
The bluffs were a landmark for wagon trains and contains name carvings dating back to the mid-1800s, and some are still visible today. Many of the inscriptions were carved by the "Pike's Peakers" in 1859 and U.S. cavalrymen (3rd Wisconsin and 13th Missouri) traveling along the BOD in 1865.

And then there is my favorite - The Basilica of St. Fidelis located in Victoria, Kansas - about 10 miles east of Hays. It is know as the Cathedral of the Plains and is one of the 8 wonders of Kansas. The town was settled in 1876 by immigrants, known as Volga-Germans,  from southern Russia. They built 3 smaller churches after outgrowing each of the previous ones. Construction on this building was started in 1908 and completed in 1911.

The exterior is constructed of native limestone. The stone for this massive e structure came from a quarry seven miles south. The extracting of the stone, loading it, hauling it, and then dressing it was a gigantic task and an amazing feat considering that it was accomplished without automatic lifts and power tools. The church structure is a cruciform, or built in the shape of a cross 220 feet long and 110 feet wide at the transepts and 75 feet at the nave. The massive twin bell towers are 141 feet tall and dominate the prairie landscape.The stones are about 8 inches in height and weighs 50-100 lbs each. The church was built entirely by the town members. Some families are recorded as hauling as many as 70-80 wagon loads of stone from the quarry to the church.

During my recent years of travels I have seen a lot of large, beautiful Catholic churches.  This one if right up there near the top. It is just magnificent! Besides being so beautiful, it is large and seats 1,100 people. Certainly not what you would expect out in the middle of nowhere in Kansas.

So, yes it was a good trip and we will see what the future holds for us. Stay tuned.... 8-)

Yes, I'm still alive...

I knew it had been awhile since I did a blog but didn't think it had been over a month... Life has been busy!  I had company from Arizona for 2 weeks in July. Then last weekend I was at the Missouri State Genealogical annual conference for 3 days. This this weekend I am over in Hays, Kansas. In between all that, I have coordinated one of Skill Building Classes and worked on the Quarterly that is due Sept 1st. Then I leave Aug 28th for Springfield, IL to attend a national Genealogy Convention. This will be my first national convention so really looking forward to it.  I don't know how I ever found time to work.....

I had the laser procedure last Tuesday to get rid of the film that appeared after the cataract surgery on my left eye back in January. I couldn't believe how simple the procedure was. I thought he was just checking the eye and then he says "all done." I got my new glasses on Wednesday and cannot believe how much better I can see after having the cataracts taken off both eyes. I put them on, looked across the parking lot and said "WOW!" The difference is night and day. We were hoping that I would not have to have computer glasses but am going to need them after all. It is either that or set with my head up, so I can see the screen out of the bottom of my glasses which will hurt my neck. I have noticed that I my eyes are much more sensitive to sun and light since I had the cataracts taken off. I have to wear my sunglasses more when driving where I didn't used to have to.

More later...