Santa Claus and Lincoln City, IN--Lincoln's Boyhood Home NHP

After leaving Joe's house, we headed to Abraham Lincoln's boyhood home.  First stop, however, was in Santa Claus, IN.  There is an amusement park and gift shop, and all the streets are named after Christmas things....Christmas Blvd., Rudolph Lane, etc.  In late November they will have a mile-long display of LED lights which will tell the story of Rudolph.  Even the post office was fun!

Lincoln's boyhood home is a National Park, not Grand Canyon or Yellowstone, but a treasure none-the-less.  It was completed in 1943!!  There are so many smaller national parks which are wonderful and should become better known. 

One of our favorite parts of this day was a trail of 12 stones......one stone was from the Anderson Cottage, where Lincoln wrote the Emancipation Proclamation.  Another was from the old Capitol Building where he wrote his 2nd Inaugural Address, another was from the Mary Peterson house in DC, where he died......and my favorite:  the rock that stood where he gave his Gettysburg Address on November 19, 1863:

The building itself was a gem, with five different bas reliefs depicting different moments in Lincoln's life:

We also visited the grave of Nancy Hanks Lincoln, Abe's mother, who died when she was only 35 years old.

After our visit, we were "On the Road Again" passing by many cornfields, farms and more!

So here we are now in Springfield, IL, where tomorrow we will visit the Abraham Lincoln Memorial Library and Museum, his homestead and more.  I am so excited to walk where he walked and actually be right where he once was!  Stay tuned!

--Karen

From Mike:

FIELDS OF POPCORN

Indiana and Illinois had corn. Lots and lots of corn, interspersed with Soy. On the way from Huntingberg we saw fields of corn with signs saying some of it was Wearever popcorn.  Nice!

      

   For lunch we stopped at an  Amish buffet (Stolls Country Inn) near  Evansville, IN.  It was great food, but there weren't any Amish-- the food was homemade from Amish recipes.   It definitely did not help my waist line. Piles of vegetables, sauerkraut, pulled pork, roast beef, fried chicken... the cherry pie was so good, with a bit a vanilla ice cream...and of course I had to try the blueberry cobbler.

These "Kentucky Fences" were actually in Indiana, just before we arrived at Lincoln Boyhood National Park.   Many early settlers, including Thomas Lincoln and his family, had moved to Indiana across the Ohio River from Kentucy as it was a new territory opening up with better taxes.

Lincoln's boyhood  National Historic Site was really interesting.  I never knew his mother died of milk sickness, which is when the cows eat too much white snake root and the poison passes to the milk.  Many settlers died of it before they figured out what was happening.   It was primarily during droughts when the cows ventured into the cooler forest to find shrubs to eat.   I forgot to take a picture....Google it. http://www.nps.gov/archive/libo/white_snakeroot3.htm
It was neat walking where Lincoln walked as a boy and young adult.
A rooster.	Real glass in the windows was a luxury.
The actual foundation of Lincoln's boyhood home	Walking on the actual homestead of Thomas Lincoln, Abraham's father.

Tomorrow we get to see where he spent much of the rest of his life in Springfield, IL:

--Mike