What a full day we had yesterday. Both of us spent the morning doing work on our website. I made a new video about using our members' forum while Jim handled some member data records issues. Then we reluctantly stowed our stuff and left the beautiful 'Lincoln's New Salem' park. Oh yeah - I haven't posted any of the pictures from the day before have I?
Here ya go:
Click the link to the June web album for more.
Ok .. Now we're leaving New Salem - after learning a lot about Lincoln's life as a young man. Now - Sunday afternoon, we're headed into Springfield to visit the Lincoln Presidential Museum. It was a gorgeous day.
This was by far the most extravagant of all the Presidential museums we've been to. And the most crowded. It was impressive. Very well done. Here's the lobby where the Lincoln family themselves obligingly posed for photos with the visitors! And, this was the only part where photos were allowed.
We spent almost 4 hours with eyes wide open and jaws dropped taking in so much information presented in normal displays, multi-media theatres where the seats jumped when the cannons hit and sparks and smoke, and even holographic images. Probably the display with the most impact was 'The Civil War in 4 Minutes' . As you watch the screen you see the boundaries of the Union and the Confederacy continuously move as the days tick by, the battles rage, and the casualties add up, and add up, and add up. Over 600,000 ... it makes me wonder if it was truly the only way.
It sure was memorable to visit the museum of the man who freed the slaves at a time when a black man is now holding that same office. It is also Lincoln's 200th birthday. Heavy.
Then we got back in the rig to go to dinner ... in Champagne/Urbana - 84 miles away. A place called 'Jim Gould's' !! One of our members called us a week or so ago because he and his wife had just had dinner at Jim Gould's and he thought we should know about it. We looked at the map and yeah! we should go there. And we did!
Ever parallel park an RV?
We looked it up on the web and saw that it was a pretty nice restaurant - so we even got dressed!
And here's Jim Gould and Jim Guld! The restaurant owner was very tolerant of Jim's misspelling - he said there had been a few other Jim Goulds that had visited - he gave us all t-shirts. We were the only Guld. Jim was quite forgiving of the owner's misspelled name as well and we had a great coversation about restaurants and traveling.
Thanks Glenn - it was a great dinner and a fun evening.
