Springfield Tour

[Gene C]

We started our day on Friday with a visit to several small cemeteries near New Salem. We found everyone we were looking for, which can be a real challenge as some of these older grave markers can be hard to read due to the effects of time. John MacNamar's was a bit difficult to find as it was broken in half, very weathered, and hard to read. Tried washing off several headstones with some water and scrubbing the carvings with my fingers which helped a little bit. For some reason my fingers turned green. Next year I may just borrow my wife's toothbrush for that. (old toothbrush)

We were unable to visit the burial site of Ann Rutledge. It is located in a small cemetery in the middle of a farm field that could not be seen from the road, and the tractor path was a bit muddy. We had a very light misty rain a good part of the morning. Personally, I think Joe's new car could have made it up the hill, I've heard you can take the floor mats out and place them on top of the mud under the tires to get traction if you get stuck. Dave, Scott and I could have pushed, but it's probably for the best as I had on white tennis shoes which would have been hard to clean.
However, we did visit her second grave site, but she wasn't there.

Dave had to leave us after the cemetery tour, Joe had a visit scheduled at the Lincoln Library, so Scott and I had a nice lunch at the Feed Store, where I can recommend the Wisconsin Cheddar Cheese soup and the pumpkin cheesecake. Then a quick tour of the Lincoln Museum, where on for a temporary exhibit titled "Rare and Rarely Seen" was a black dress of Marilyn Monroe's. Evidently she was very petite, or the dress has shrunk over time. It took a little stretch of the imagination, and a whole lot of stretch in the dress, for her to have slipped that on. Evidently, Abe was a big fan of Marilyn's, or perhaps it's the other way around. Maybe Dave can fill us in on that.

This from the blog of Lincolnman (Bill Nash)
http://abesblogcabin.org/the-abraham-lin...connection

Then a trip to the Prairie Archives book store. I was quite restrained where I only purchased one book on a follow up visit the next day.
We all (Dave and Janice, Joe, Scott, Gene & Joy) gathered back for a nice dinner where the food was almost as good as the time and conversations we shared. What a great group of people to be with.

More (including photo's) later.