Everyday in the Life of the Harts: August 2011

When we were in Springfield (IL) 2 months ago, we noticed a sign with a medallion on it. A while later, we were looking at some brochures at Lincoln's New Salem Village and found more out about the medallion and sign. It is one of 215 plaques around the state of Illinois commemorating the life of Abe Lincoln. The medallion is 4 inches round and the image can be transferred to paper via a rubbing. Matt & I both loved the idea behind this and decided that this was something we were going to do over the next year or two. There are so many wonderful stories and pieces of history on these signs - things we've never heard about Lincoln before. We want to give this kind of "hands on" history to our kids - as well as the adventure of looking for them and traveling to see the different areas of Illinois.

We started our hunt the first weekend of August. Here is Alex practicing her hand at rubbing the medallion. This one was the first one we found - Galesburg, IL. We started by using charcoal but quickly learned that didn't give us a good impression on the paper...and it was extremely messy! We next stopped at Walmart and bought a box of pencils and a manual sharpener!

Continuing down I-74 to I-155, we stopped in Lincoln, IL at the train depot. The city has done a wonderful job of embracing the history of their namesake. The kids LOVED the big penny! There is also an old train car beside the museum - the kids climbed onto the stairs and made some silly faces for us. The watermelon was the picture used on the medallion to commemorate the commissioning of the town of Lincoln. Abe Lincoln was asked to commission the town by cutting a watermelon, squeezing some juice into a cup and pouring the juice onto the ground.

We next headed down to Springfield for the remainder of the weekend. Springfield has 48 Looking for Lincoln medallions. The majority of them being downtown. We headed out Sunday morning with the sole purpose of getting all of the rubbings. It was great to be downtown on a Sunday morning. The only traffic we dealt with were church goers! We didn't have to pay for parking either! We started on foot and found @20 of the rubbings. We were all pretty hot and ready for a break at this point. We headed to a nearby restaurant to sit in the a/c, get drinks and lunch. This refueled us! We also decided to try to find the remaining ones via car. With very little traffic, we were able to pull up to a plaque. Matt would take pictures of the stories and medallion (for future reference) and Becki would take a rubbing of the image. We were able to complete the ones downtown within a few hours.

Maddie in front of the Lincoln's Springfield home.

I laugh at this one every time I see it. If you know Will, you can see his pout. He didn't want his picture taken. Matt has another picture of this pose and Will is looking at him with a huge frown...because Matt asked for a smile. Then this one...Matt asked Will to look at the camera!

I love this picture - this is the old capital, where Lincoln would have worked!

Bonus! 2 Plaques at one location!

After a while, the kids were pretty tired and bored. I decided to race them. I challenged them to get this picture (complete with smiles...well sort of!) before I could get the rubbing completed. It seemed to work!! And yes, they did beat me back to the van! The new capital building is in the background.

The next two pictures were taken at an outdoor art museum - isn't this artwork beautiful! The kids loved all of the rocks and beads!

We stopped and read this plaque while in Springfield in June. This picture, as well as the next one, was taken at Lincoln Memorial Gardens. In June, we went letterboxing here.

We tried to find the rubbing of Lincoln at the cemetery where he is buried, with no luck. We ended up meeting a fellow letterboxer, Topcollector (from Springfield) at this point. We hunted for a few boxes together - including a few in this park...Lincoln Park. Are you catching a theme yet?? Will and I stayed behind and enjoyed the pond, complete with waterfall.

Another Looking for Lincoln - Rochester, IL

We stopped at Southwinds Park on the south side of Springfield. This is a newly developed park. We fell in love with it as soon as we saw it. The only thing it was missing was shade from trees! We were looking for a letterbox. Unfortunately, we skipped through the clues and spent a lot of time walking back & forth...with nothing making sense! We finally started over and found it somewhat easily! Here are the kids checking out Abe's top hat. The bottom portion is corn, top portion is blue sky.

We pulled up and told the kids that they could play in the water...but try really hard to not get your clothes wet. We didn't have a change of clothing with us and we were only half way through the day. I felt so bad - a mean mom - not allowing them to play...but I knew we'd all be miserable if we sat in wet clothes the rest of the day! Didn't matter what we said anyways...at least two of them ended up completely soaked!

We spent a LONG two hours at Southwinds Park. We drove into a McDonald's parking lot on the way to our next stop. We needed a restroom break and a drink! As soon as we entered the parking lot, we noticed that the police had blocked off the main intersection (just outside of McDonald's). We then saw 20+ policemen on motorcycles followed by 100s of motorcycles. It was a sight to behold! We pulled into the parking lot to see all of the bikes close up. I love how the police motorcycles are uniformly lined up. I also love how God gave us this neat memory! It was the perfect timing too. We needed this after our time at the park.

On our way home from Springfield, we stopped in the town of Atlanta for a Looking for Lincoln sign. Across the street from the sign, we found Paul Bunyon holding a hot dog!!!

We ended our time in Springfield and headed north to Athens, Elkhart, Mt. Pulaski, Atlanta, Bloomington & Normal. We missed a few (one was indoors, a few we couldn't locate) but totaled 68 rubbings for the weekend. A pretty good start!

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2 weekends later, we hit the road again. We had a few letterboxes that we wanted to find...as well as some more Looking for Lincoln rubbings. Here are the kids at an overlook heading into the town of Hopewell. Isn't that an amazing sculpture!

Next stop (after lunch!) was Metamora.

Look at those stained-glass windows!

Pontiac, IL - Swinging bridges. Lots of fun to walk/run across.

Washington Square Park, Ottawa, IL. We met a reporter from the Ottawa newspaper at this park. A mutual friend of ours recommended this story (Looking for Lincoln) and it all fell into place. The reporter was so generous and brought each of the kids a squirt gun - which they quickly used up and ran to the fountain to refill! Look on the next post for the link to the nice article!

Ottawa is a beautiful, patriotic city. We loved driving through the downtown area seeing all the flags, flowers, murals. We actually drove around and did it again!

The kids enjoyed playing at this playground. Will didn't leave this train! This park also had another Indian sculpture.

Our last Looking for Lincoln for the day. This one was right on the river.

82 Down, 133 To Go!!

It's been years since we visited the Peoria Wildlife Prairie Park. Matt & I went a time or two after we got married...and again when Katie was a baby, nine years ago! We've said (pretty much every year since) that we need to head down to Peoria again to visit the Park.

This past weekend, we woke up to a beautiful, mid 80s summer day. We realized that it would be our last day trip for a while with school starting the next week. We debated on going to Rockford for the Children's Museum or to the Wildlife Park. We opted to be outside at the park.