Mississippi River Day 5: Springfield, Illinois

This article is part of a series about our recent vacation traveling down the Mississippi River. To see the introductory article in the series, click here.

We spent today in Springfield, Illinois visiting the state Capitol and various Abraham Lincoln historic sites. Fortunately, the heat wave broke overnight and it was quite a bit more pleasant. We began by parking and walking to the State Capitol. It was a Sunday morning, but Springfield seemed eerily quiet compared with other capital cities like Sacramento.

We continued to the Dana-Thomas house, a Frank Lloyd Wright house a few blocks south of the capitol that is operated as a historic site. The house was beautifully and painstakingly restored, and many of the original furnishings, designed for the house, were preserved.

We then walked to the Lincoln Home National Historic Site, where we were joined by Kenna’s cousin and his wife who live in Decatur, a bit to the east, who haven’t seen all of these sites since moving from California. The house, also beautifully preserved, also featured many of the original furnishings.

We moved on to the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Museum, learning a lot about his life from multimedia presentations and artifacts over a couple of hours. We finished the day at a local brewpub, which gave us a great opportunity to catch up with Jeff and Maria, our local relatives, with whom we hadn’t talked in quite some time. It was a pleasantly warm evening, such a welcome change from the heat of just 24 hours earlier.

Mississippi River crossings today: 0
July 8, 2012