IA to IL / Lincoln Home NHS
Driving from Eastern Iowa to Central Illinois | Visiting Lincoln Home National Historic Site | Lincoln Tomb State Historic Site | Springfield, IL | May 2024
After a refreshing week in Iowa, it was time to kick off this summer’s travels. Curtis has a few work assignments scattered throughout the summer which will dictate where we’re able to go, but we knew we wouldn’t have any trouble finding fun places to go between those dates. And at least the assignments are spread out between a few different cities — some familiar, some new to us. To start things off, we were going to be taking a week and a half to drive back to Wilmington, NC, for our 6th time in a year and a half. I know that may sound excessive, but luckily we’re still far from running out of different routes to take, unvisited counties to enter, and new attractions to see!
We left my parent’s home on a Thursday afternoon, planning to drive about 3 hours the first day. We drove to Burlington, IA, and made a quick stop at a riverside park to walk around and stretch our legs. It was pretty warm that day, so Charlotte preferred to loiter in the shade. After that, we crossed the Mississippi and continued driving another hour and a half to tonight’s campsite, a free spot in Ebaugh County Park just North of I-72. As we were driving, we could hear the screaming cicadas even over the sound of the engine and audio book we were listening to. Thankfully they weren’t too loud overnight! Tonight felt like the first true night of ‘summer vanlife,’ where it was necessary to run both our overhead fan and another 12-volt one to stay comfortable.
The next day, we planned to drive another 4-5 hours to get to our next campsite. It was the Friday before Memorial Day Weekend, and we were trying to stay ahead of the potential weekend crowds. We thought it would be best to find a spot and hang out there for a few days instead of trying to find a new spot every night. After breakfast and a short walk, we got on the road, heading East on I-72.
Since we were going to be driving through Springfield, IL for our first time since marriage, we decided to make that the focus of the day and visit a few significant sites. We started by driving to Lincoln Home National Historic Site. It was hot and humid, and the skies were overcast with storms on their way, but we still got out for a walk around the historic street. We admired the different homes and sat and listened to tour guides outside of the Lincoln home. I had toured the home and been inside others when I visited with my family 20 years ago, so I let Curtis go and check out what he could without having to do any tours. Walking around the historic village kind of reminded us of visiting Herbert Hoover NHS in Iowa.
Next, we went for a longer walk to go see the state capitol building. We probably should have driven given the weather, so we decided that once we arrived that Curtis would run back and grab the van so Charlotte wouldn’t have to walk in the heat. It finally started to rain right as we arrived, so Char and I hid under a tree while Curtis made the long walk back. Because of all that, I don’t feel like we gave this building a proper viewing, but I will say we were impressed by how tall it was as we were approaching it.
We still had one more stop we wanted to make, so we drove North to go see Lincoln’s Tomb State Historic Site. We were pretty sure we had visited this site in 2012 with Curtis’ family, but honestly couldn’t remember if we actually saw the tomb or if we had gone to a different part of this cemetery for a letterbox? Anway, today we can officially say we’ve seen it, and have photographic evidence. It was another quick stop in the rain, then it was time to get back on the road and continue our road trip East.
Or…was it? Curtis received a call while we were in Springfield saying that they might need him to go to Quad Cities in the next day or two for some quick maintenance. He said he could, and given that it was a holiday weekend and the weather forecast was turning unfavorable, we started to actually hope that it would happen and we could spend a few more days in Davenport. But nothing ever came of that, so our plans remained the same. We drove East into Indiana, ultimately heading to a campsite in Hoosier National Forest that was free and surprisingly not too crowded for a holiday weekend!
