Saturday - 4 states covered

Saturday was a long driving day. Scott and I were up by about 5:45 AM and after showering, we were on the road by 6:20. The kids were asleep when we arrived in Huntington Friday night and we were already on the road by the time they woke up and they wondered what happened to the campground. We stopped for breakfast in the camper at a rest area about 20 miles into Kentucky. Then we drove and drove through Kentucky and Indiana, which is possibly the most boring driving state I have ever been in. We got gas and stopped for lunch at a rest area west of Indianapolis and had a picnic on the grass under the shade of a tree. It was nice to get out and stretch our legs. When we crossed the border of Indiana and Illinois we picked up an hour because of the change in time zones. We pulled into Springfield, Illinois – Lincoln’s homeplace about 3:45 central time (4:45 ET). That means we drove for about 10.5 hours including stops.

We were all very happy to finally be doing something and our first park stamp of the trip was very exciting. Unfortunately we were too late to tour the house but we did catch the film and peruse the book store. We love souvenir shopping and we picked up some good stuff today. Luke got a President’s trivia game, Lorelei got a rag doll kit and Scott picked up “Buddy Bison”. Buddy, who has now been renamed Buffalo Bill is a bison that the National Park Trust encourages you to photograph at the national, state and local parks and send in to www.buddybison.org so folks can see where buddy has been. One of the cool things that the NPS does on Saturdays at 5 PM is, President Elect Lincoln comes out of his home and gives his farewell speech as he goes to Washington, then he leads a parade down to the capital building where he gives another speech and then greets visitors. He usually gives the speech on the steps of the building but because it was so hot they moved it indoors. It is as hot and muggy here as it is at home and they have had a ton of rain because every river and stream we have passed is over its banks. We listened to the speech and then took our pictures on the steps of the capital building before returning to the FunV and hitting the campground.

We checked in to the KOA which is in the middle of nowhere. You could almost hear the banjo playing if you know what I mean. We had a quick dinner and then went for a swim in the pool. The kids said that was the best part of the day. We can now check Illinois off our list because this is the only national park and we went to the capital. Sunday, we have another long day where we head to Mitchell, SD. FLICKR pics are loaded so check those out too.