Saturday, June 4, 2016

Springfield, Illinois

We drove to Springfield on May 20, and stayed at the Illinois State Fairgrounds.  This is a great place to park - full hookups, access to all the Lincoln sites, great place to walk - all for $20 per night.  The grounds are very pretty and not much going on right now.




We only had one drawback at this campground - on Saturday night there was a concert and our campground is next to the performance arena.  Pretty noisy until around midnight.  Reminded me of our stay in Rocky Point.
During our time in Springfield we saw a lot of historic sites relating to Lincoln.  The first day we walked to Oak Lawn cementary and saw Lincoln's tomb.




This was an easy walk from the campground and the tomb is very impressive.

Day two, we drove to downtown, which was just a short distance from the fairgrounds.  First we toured the Lincoln Museum which Dean and I both enjoyed.  It was very nicely done showcasing different periods of Lincoln's life.  


You can see from the above picture, to the left, a log cabin and to the right, a replica of the White House.


I thought I would have my picture taken with the Lincoln family.

Since this was Saturday, there were two events going on - farmers market and art show.  We wandered through the busy streets and over to Lincoln's neighborhood.  This is a street devoid of car traffic, set up like when Lincoln lived there.  Below is his house.  I wanted to tour the house but I would have had to wait over an hour.  Oh well!


That afternoon, back at the fairgrounds, I walked over to two shows that we're going on at the fairgrounds.  One was a horse show with some very young girls handling some very big beautiful horses.


Next, was a dog show.  There were some very cute dogs but, of course, my favorite was the Shih Tzu.  She did not win but I thought she was the cutest.


Sunday we drove over to see the Dana Thomas house, designed by Frank Loyd Wright and realized that we had seen it before when we came through a few years ago.  

On Tuesday, May 24, we drove to Wabash, Indiana and spent three nights at the Wabash City RV parks.  This campground is run by the city, located close to the water treatment plant.  $15 per night for electricity and water.  Located very close to the campground was a very nice walking path that we used everyday we were there.



There was only one other rig when we stayed there and he left our second day.  Not too many people know about this park.  And the town is very old and charming.  

On the walking path we came upon this rodent looking animal.  I posted it on Facebook and the best guess is a groundhog.  Still don't know for sure.


On Friday we took off for Nappanee, IN, to the Newmar service center for work on our rig.