Frogley Summer Tour - Day 9

Day 9: Richmond, IN to Nauvoo, IL

We slept in slightly today as well. It’s good to sleep. J And again, I wish we could spend more time in this cabin, it’s so cute.

Indiana does NOT like us. In addition to me forgetting a turn in Indianapolis and a short detour we had to take through rural Indiana to get back on the right road, construction and traffic turned a 150 mile journey into a 5 hour drive. Not cool Indiana, not cool.

We pulled into Springfield, IL right at 3pm. We spent nearly two hours in the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Museum. It was smaller than I had anticipated, but really informative and easy to follow. I learned a lot about President Lincoln that I had never known before. Sadly, we didn’t have time to watch the two short movies they have on the President, but we did see his Stovepipe hat and went through two “journeys” explaining Abraham Lincoln’s “pre-presidential” life and his presidency. One of my favorite areas was an animation of a map that showed the entire 6 years of the civil war in 4 minutes. It showed how the boundaries between the north and south changed daily and weekly, showed explosions to indicate major battles, and showed a running total of casualties on both sides.

The kids enjoyed the museum too. When we walked into the museum they were given a “history detective” sheet that had questions they were supposed to find answers to throughout the museum. We managed to find all the answers to all the questions and the older five each got a history detective certificate as we left the museum. The younger kids were given bookmarks as we left. Ben’s comment, “Now I need a book to put my bookmark in.” J

We left the museum as they closed at 5pm, drove around Springfield briefly to see some random sites, like an Abraham Lincoln totem pole, a building side mural, and a deer made out of car bumpers. Then we stopped at a Subway on the way out of town and took super complicated orders from everyone. We finally arrived in Nauvoo around 9pm. Not bad. Our suite here has three rooms, one “master” with a queen bed, two nightstands, and a dresser, one room with a queen bed and nothing else, and a third room with three sets of bunk beds. The kids were super excited to each get their own bed, but there are continuing arguments over the top bunks.