Vacationing in the Land of Lincoln

Specifically, Springfield, IL -- and what might you ask is in Springfield? Well as of 2005 the new Presidential Lincoln Library and museum are located in the downtown area near with the Old Capitol Building. Part of the reason for going was for my wife and daughter to do genealogy research at the Lincoln Library (which by the way led to some very fruitful findings).

We also went on several of the typical tours; Lincolns home, Lincolns Tomb, the Old Capitol building and some of the surrounding buildings, such as Union Station (also recent renovated - 2007) and the old Lincoln-Herndon Law Offices .

One non-Lincoln site that we toured (which luckily was re-opened recently as part of the re-opening of Illinois historic sites - no thanks to the ex-Governor Rod Blagojevich) was the Dana-Thomas Home (a Frank Lloyd Wright designed home from circa 1902-04). It's in remarkable condition, again thanks to tax payer money and a previous owner - Charles Thomas/Thomas Publishing who preserved it even while using it as office space for almost 40 years.

I did manage to get some bike riding in by contacting a local club (Springfield Bicycle Club) and rode with some of its members. On one of the routes I even crossed the historic Route 66.

This week will be a "tapering down" training week, with the Horribly Hilly Hundreds coming up this Saturday.

Safe riding all