Sangchris Lake in IL

We left a nice lake in Kansas and traveled to an even nicer lake near Springfield, IL. Sangchris Lake State Park is about 30 miles south of Springfield and has two campgrounds, Deer Run and Hickory Point. I had read that Hickory Point has sites right on the water or with views of the lake even if not directly on the water. So we headed there. The park is just lovely. In fact, the whole area is so nice and green. It is nice to camp with grass after being desert dogs for quite awhile. Savannah really loves the grass, jumping around the sniffing everywhere. There weren't any open sites right on the water but we were just across the road with great views.

Remember I talked about getting a new gps. Well, one day we drove into Springfield and found a best buy and bit the bullet. We now have a new 7 inch Garmin Nuvi GPS with lifetime map and traffic updates.
We can use it in the MH and jeep. In fact we used it the rest of the time there and so far we just love it.
We also stopped at Bed Bath and Beyond for new sheets and then some grocery shopping.
The next day Joe and I went back into town, driving partly through some backroads that we were directed to use by Gracie, our gps voice. So pretty and some really nice houses with lots of property.
This is the land of Lincoln and so we headed to the Lincoln Presidential Museum. We noticed the museum was having a Annie Leibovitz exhibition. She is a famous photographer who is known for her great portraits of rock stars and other famous people. Below from a description of the exhibition.

"The pictures, although there are no people in them, are in a certain sense portraits of subjects that have shaped Leibovitz's distinctly American view of her cultural inheritance. Visiting the homes of iconic figures including Thomas Jefferson, Emily Dickinson, Georgia O'Keeffe, Pete Seeger, and Elvis Presley, as well as places such as Niagara Falls, Walden Pond, Old Faithful, and the Yosemite Valley, she let her instincts and intuitions guide her to related subjects—hence the title "Pilgrimage." Some of the pictures focus on the remaining traces of photographers and artists she admires, such as Julia Margaret Cameron, Ansel Adams, and Robert Smithson."

The photos were very interesting with many of the pictures taken of the people mentioned above's houses, focusing on something in the house that seem to tell something of that person. After we went through that area, we then continued onto the galleries on Lincoln. The Museum and Library was built in 2005 and is the largest of all the Presidential Libraries in the US. There are many interesting exhibits and artifacts detailing the life of Lincoln in two exhibits, one his pre-presidency days and the White House years. We found one section that had quotes from the newspapers of that time with many very negative political statements about Lincoln. Nothing changes, does it. There were also two very state of the art theater experiences. One of them called Ghosts of the Library used special effects called /Holavision that used smoke and vapors so it looks like you are seeing ghosts of civil war soliders and Lincoln and his wife Mary.
Unfortunately no taking of pictures was allowed other than outside and in the main hallway.

When we bought our tickets, there was an option, which we took, for another exhibition in another building built around the making of the movie "Lincoln" . It was a small exhibition but including costumes and sets from the movie. One of the sets was of the library in the White House where it really shows all the little details used to make it authentic. There were several flat screens, which included one showing a scene from the movie.

A couple of pictures below of the historic downtown are of Springfield.

We enjoyed our short time in this area but we need to be in Goshen for the Escapade on Sunday and so we left Illinois, making one overnight stop at a Casino a few hours from Goshen. Sunday we arrived in Goshen, Indiana at the Fairgrounds were the Escapade is being held. My next post will be on that experience.

Stay tune.