May 19th - Springfield, Illinois

Westward Ho! We departed from our hotel in Bloomington rather leisurely by first having breakfast at Denny’s (Slim Slam for me and omelet for Monika) and then buying skim milk and Band-Aids at a Wal-Mart Supercenter (where else?—see Wanderung 1) before driving south on I-55. Both of these are essentials for our travels, albeit in very different ways. Skim milk is really impossible to get in restaurants, the best they have is 2% fat which is still way too high for someone on a low fat diet, so I have to buy or make skim milk for our campground meals. We have dried milk along, but have you ever tasted that stuff? I can abide by dried eggs and dried fruit, but dried milk just never seems to come very close to the original product so we buy it wherever we can. Besides, I was antsy to try out the 12-volt electric cooler and see if it was going to work or if I had wasted $40.00. Fortunately it worked.

Band-Aids are an essential for my feet. We do a LOT of walking on these trips and I’m continuously bandaging one toe or another. If you catch tender spots early, you can prevent blisters and keep on truckin’ pretty well but once you really blister up and every step is painful, well that’s another story. The worst case scenario is starting to feel a blister and then finding out you don’t have any Band-Aids, so I carry them in my hiking belt. It was a relief knowing I now had a good supply and could just walk my socks off without worrying about it. Our first stop was Springfield, Illinois, which is a State Capital and is also on the Historic Route 66 corridor. We are trying to do a Volksmarch in all 50 State Capitals and also trying to do walks in every state along the old Route 66 corridor, so this was a natural choice as it counted for both! In the vernacular, it was a "two fer" walk. All that aside, this really is a nice walk with several highpoints.

We first walked north to the cemetery with Lincoln’s tomb. An obelisk that resembles a smaller version of the Washington Monument surmounts the tomb, but inside are a number of small statues that capture different phases of Lincoln’s life. I found these fascinating because they traced his career from rail-splitter to the military to congress and ultimately the Presidency, which was quite a career! The tomb itself is plain, but I rather imagine that is the way that he would have preferred it. Compared to the other tombs of comparable age in the cemetery, the simple ornamentation of Lincoln’s tomb has stood the test of time much better, in my opinion.

From Lincoln’s tomb we curled around past Viet Nam and Korean War memorials before returning thru the city to the State Capitol building. As we passed by the capitol we noticed they were open for visitors so we decided to take the route directly thru the building and I’m very glad we did. The interior has to be one of the grandest and prettiest of the state capitols I have seen. The central dome has an inner surface of stained glass at the top that is lit from behind for a beautiful effect. Around the walls are the usual set of bronze statues, but this capitol also features large wall murals of scenes from Illinois history and I thought they were well done. The House and Senate chambers were also open and we thought they were very nicely decorated as well. So all in all, if you are touring Springfield, you might want to include the Capitol building on your visit.

As we worked our way back to our truck we also passed a small area which contained Lincoln’s home set in a block of preserved houses from the mid 1800s. The sidewalks are the typical plank boardwalks of the time and the streets are the original gravel type of pavement, so the whole effect is to take you back to the Springfield of Abe Lincoln’s day. The nearby National Park Visitor’s Center is also very nice if you’re in the area.

We zigzagged back to the truck and passed a very large museum about Lincoln that is scheduled for completion in 2004. It certainly looked interesting and I look forward to coming back next year and checking it out. The Illinois History Museum near the capitol building also looked very interesting and may be worth a future visit. The Museum of Funeral Customs that we found just outside the cemetery, on the other hand, is one that we probably just won’t ever get into—a little too macabre for our taste.

We were relieved to find everything still in the truck; I get nervous when I read signs like "Targeted Robbery Reduction Area". I mean, have you ever seen those "Dunk Driving Enforcement Area" signs? I don’t know about you, but they make me become mighty vigilant for cars wandering out of their lanes or weaving around. In this case I started to wonder how frequently the robberies are occurring in the area and exactly how effectively they’ve been reduced! Our stuff was just fine, however, so we drove on southwest to Pere Marquette State Park on the Illinois River for the night. We set up the tent and had a wonderfully balmy evening outside—shirtsleeve temperatures with no bugs of any kind and a pretty sunset.

It was great weather, almost too perfect, and sure enough it changed that very night. We woke up in the middle of the night to heavy rains drumming on the rain fly and gusts of winds blowing the tent around. But the tent stayed dry and the electronic gear was locked safely in the truck, so I could just lay back and enjoy the sound of wind and rain without any worries. I found I liked hearing the rustle of the wind in the trees, kind of a soothing, friendly shushing sound—it was something I’d missed during our winter camping trip in Florida.