Mackinac Island, August 2014 - Day 2

We had ups and downs yesterday.  Before we left Springfield we visited Lincoln's home.  The night before we had gone through the neighborhood.  We felt like the homes were very nice for the late 1850s and early 1860s.  The Park ranger said the Lincolns would have been considered to be upper middle class in today's societies.  Amazing when you considered that he had started life in a one room cabin the size of the kitchen in this house.  The Lincolns had cash.  To be upper class, you needed land.  This would include plantation owners.  We also learned that people of that era slept sitting up.  The beds were shorter for this reason.  Interesting bit of information, I thought.

From the home we traveled to Lincoln's tomb.  We almost skipped this but I am so glad that we took the time.  It was a very impressive sight.  A very appropriate memorial for such a great president.  I am going to include a picture inside the tomb.  Lincoln is actually buried behind this and below ground.  Mary, Tad, Eddie, and Willie are buried in normal mausoleum tombs facing Lincoln.

From the Springfield, we traveled to Lafayette, Indiana.  We were wanting to visit Purdue and maybe see where we lived while James was in school here.  Well, this was a complete bust.  My fault.  I didn't even give thought to the fact that it was 40 years ago when we lived in this town. Yes, where our oldest child was born.  Needless to say, things were totally different.  West Lafayette had grown.  Purdue had grown.  We were totally lost.  If I had taken the time in advance to have James look at a map of the campus, he might have remembered the building.  Oh well, lesson learned.  

We traveled from Lafayette to Wyoming, Michigan.  This is just south of Grand Rapids.  The drive between these two towns was on two lane roads and raining.  Naturally, I was driving for the first time on this trip.  Never hard just a nice steady rain.  Wishing it had been doing that in Lawrence where we need the rain.  The ground in this area is really saturated.  Finished the day with a supper at Arnie's.  Every meal gets a cupcake.  We had soup and sandwiches which were very good.  Then finished with a carrot cupcake.  Yum, yum good.  Great way to end the day.