DAY ONE: We headed out the end of June on a cross country trip, driving our 15-year-old Honda minivan. It was pouring down rain as we drove from Virginia to Pennsylvania, but amazingly enough, it stopped when we got out to see the Flight 93 Memorial.
This wall is part of the memorial. I believe it follows the path of where the plane crashed.
Not far from the flight 93 Memorial is the Johnstown Flood Memorial. As we were driving Kent and I were listening to the book on CD that David McCullough wrote about the Johnstown flood, which happened in 1889 and killed over 2,000 people. The flood was caused by heavy rains which led to the breaking of a dam many miles away from Johnstown.
This is the stone bridge in Johnstown that stopped the mountain of debris that was raging down the river during the flood. It was very interesting for Kent and me to see the places McCullough mentioned in his book.
DAY TWO: We'd spent the night in Columbus, Ohio. Our first stop on day two was at the Aviation Heritage park in Dayton, Ohio.
We walked through the Wright brothers cycle shop and learned many interesting facts about the Wright brothers and their experiments in flight.
Our next stop was in Indianapolis, Indiana, where we stopped to look at the brand new temple that was going to have it's open house during the month of July.
We drove through Indiana to Springfield, Illinois, and arrived in the afternoon.
We went to the Lincoln Home visitor's center, but it was too late to take a tour of Lincoln's home. Instead we looked at the outside of his home and the surrounding neighborhood.
We decided to see Lincoln's tomb, which is a state park, not a national one.
It's quite an impressive landmark.
Pres. Lincoln's nose is shiny because people rub it for good luck.
We were able to go into the monument to see Lincoln's actual tomb just minutes before it was closing for the evening.
We then left Springfield and drove down to Saint Louis, Missouri. The picture below is pretty fuzzy because I took it as we were driving over a bridge to get into the city. You can tell it was a cloudy night. There were severe thunderstorms later in the evening, and a tornado warning in the city after we checked into our hotel there.
DAY THREE: It was a beautiful clear morning, and we were up bright and early to go to the city center. Until this trip I didn't know that the St. Louis Arch is officially called the Gateway Arch, and is a part of the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial.
The arch was opened in 1965, so this is the 50th anniversary of the arch.
We had reservations to ride to the top of the arch, which I didn't know was an option until I started planning this trip! Here's Kent waiting in line to go up to the top.
We rode to the top in little pods that seated four people. It was reminiscent of a theme park ride.
Up at the top you can get out and look out the windows at the view.
One of the views was of the St. Louis Cardinals baseball stadium.
On the other side we could see the Mississippi River, which was overflowing it's banks in some places.
We thought this was a pretty good view of Saint Louis.
We had a bit more time to spend in St. Louis, so we toured the Scott Joplin House. I've played music by Scott Joplin since I was a teenager, so I liked seeing his home.
Kent and I were the only ones in the museum, so we had a private tour. Afterwards they let me pump a player piano with one of Scott Joplin's ragtime songs on the roll. It was a good workout for my legs!
DAY FOUR: We'd spent the night in Topeka, Kansas, and were driving on Interstate 70 through the state of Kansas when I noticed that we'd be driving right by Abilene, which is the home of Dwight Eisenhower's Presidential Library and Museum.
We stopped in at the visitor's center and watched the film about his life, then walked around the property.
There was a chapel on the grounds where Dwight and Mamie Eisenhower are buried. It was a nice stop on our long day of driving through Kansas on our way to Fountain, Colorado, to have a family reunion with all of our kids and grandchildren.
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