Indiana and Kentucky

On Monday, I toured the Toyota assembly plant in Princeton, Indiana.  Over 4700 people and a lot of robots put together Toyota Highlanders, Sequoias, and Sienna vans.  It was very educational and enjoyable.  They only allowed pictures in the visitors center.

Abraham Lincoln was born near Hodgenville, Kentucky.  The site has a neoclassical memorial building with a log cabin from the original site.  It's probably not the cabin in which he was born, but it comes from the same property in the same era.  A nearby spring was the reason his dad wanted this particular farm, and that is located right at the foot of the hill which houses the memorial.

I spent the night in Bowling Green, Kentucky.  The Lincoln birthplace was in the Eastern Time Zone, but Bowling Green is Central.  I'm right on the line here, but I think I'll be in Central Time for one more day.

St. Louis, Springfield, and beyond

I spent most of Saturday in St. Louis as I had a few errands to run.  On the way out of town, I stopped at the beautiful Gateway Arch, also known as the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial.  Its outer covering is steel, and it's over 600 feet high.  At the base, I'm sure a football field would fit between the two footings.  The "legs" are about 50 feet wide at the bottom, but they narrow down to about 20 feet wide at the top.  I didn't ride the internal tram to the top or take a helicopter tour; those sorts of high adventures just didn't appeal to me that day.  The arch sits right by the Mississippi River with the city of St. Louis on the other side.  It symbolizes a gateway to the American West.  It's hard to imagine how big it is (or how hard it is to take a good picture of it) unless you visit.

I then traveled east back into Illinois.  I had crossed the northern part of this state, near Chicago, on the Lincoln Highway.  I spent Saturday night in Springfield, Illinois, the state capital.

Yesterday, I visited the Abraham Lincoln Home in Springfield.  His house and neighborhood have been restored, and you can tour the house where he lived before he went to Washington.  Some of the other houses have exhibits about the Lincolns and about archaeology and restoration.  It's a nice place to spend a couple of hours.

Then I traveled about 2 miles to the Lincoln Tomb state historic site.  It's in the Oak Ridge Cemetery, and it's very impressive.  All of the Lincolns are buried there, except for one son in Arlington National Cemetery.  There is a series of small statues of Lincoln at different stages of his career along the passageway inside the tomb that leads to the burial chamber.  Lincoln's monument is made of Arkansas granite and is a rust color.  He has flags around him representing states where he lived, states where his ancestors came from, and the presidential flag.

In Effingham, Illinois, there is a HUGE cross by the interstate highway.  It's called the "Cross at the Crossroads."  Christians in the area paid for it to be constructed as a ministry.  If you stop underneath it, there are 10 stations with recorded messages which represent the 10 Commandments.  I saw another one of these a few days ago in Texas, but the one in Effingham claims to be the biggest monument of this type.

Before stopping in Evansville, Indiana, for the night, I made a quick detour to Olney, Illinois.  They are supposed to be the home of the "white squirrels."  They are seriously supposed to have albino squirrels living in the trees of their city park, but my wanderings in their park produced no sightings.  A minor disappointment in an otherwise tremendous vacation!

George Washington Carver

My only sightseeing stop today was at the George Washington Carver National Monument.  This is in Diamond, Missouri, and is the location of his childhood home.  There is a nice museum, which includes a model of his classroom and lab at Tuskegee Institute.  They have a good film, which explains his accomplishments but helps you to understand his faith and motivation most of all.  Carver was the man who found so many uses for peanuts, sweet potatoes, and soybeans, and did pioneering exploration of plastics.  Finally, you can walk about a mile round trip to see the woods where he explored as a youth, the remnants of the farm where he grew up, and the plants he related to so well.  It was an out-of-the-way site that was well worth the time.

I crossed Missouri and got to St. Louis by nightfall.  There were several Independence Day fireworks displays visible from the hotel.