Illinois: The Land Of Lincoln (+ More!)

This trip has been full-immersion in all things Lincoln, and we’re starting to feel like experts in Sir Abe. We have visited his birthplace in Hodgenville, KY, walked where he gave his famous speech at Gettysburg, PA, etc etc etc, with all of the expected monuments and markers and statues.

But Illinois takes Lincoln worship to a whole new level, with license plates and roadside signs proudly proclaiming “Land of Lincoln.” Everyone wants “in” on the Lincoln action, even if he looks a little like Sasquatch.

In Lincoln (of course there is a town called Lincoln!), the World’s Largest Covered Wagon sports a 12-foot tall Honest Abe with severely narrowed pupils, hard at work studying “LAW.”

The Railsplitter Covered Wagon is 25 feet tall, and was built in 2001 by a guy who was just passing time recovering from surgery. And to think all I can manage to do while recovering from a simple cold is a 90 Day Fiancee marathon on the couch.

In downtown Springfield, you’ll find the Lincoln Home National Historic Site. This is a great way to appreciate him not only as an upcoming star-on-the rise lawyer and politician, but also as a husband and family man.

Built in 1839, first opened to the public in 1887, and currently beautiful restored to its appearance in 1860, it was the Lincolns’ home for 17 years.

Springfield is also home to the Abraham Lincoln Museum and Presidential Library, which we visited on our very first RV trip in 2013. Nine presidential libraries later, the Lincoln remains one of our favorites: don’t miss it! It has jussst enough info to be authentic, but not so much that you are drowning in factoids.

Lincoln’s not the only (figurative) giant around here … there are also (literal) giants in the form of Muffler Men! Right here in Springfield, our ongoing nationwide hunt for these mythical, magical statues was rewarded with Patriotic Muffler Man, outside Lauterback Auto Repair. Yes his flag is tangled, yes he could use a shave, but isn’t that kinda what our country is like right now, too? A little rumpled, a little disheveled, but hanging in there.

These ginormous attention-getters were all the rage in the 1960s, originally clutching mufflers in front of auto repair shops, but many otherwise retrofitted for their later-in-life careers. Earlier in this trip, we found a cowboy in Amarillo TX, and an Indian in Calumet OK. In Atlanta, Illinois, on one single crossroads, we found not one, not two, but THREE looming wonders.This guy originally stood atop a hot-dog stand in Cicero, IL.

This guy is called the Snerd Giant after famed ventroliquist Edgar Bergen’s dummy, Mortimer Snerd, but we have seem similar versions also called the politically-incorrect “Happy Half-Wit.” Of course, it also bears a strong resemblance to Alfred E. Newman of Mad Magazine.

And this guy may be a Muffler Man imposter … his hands don’t match the others: the Walmart version of a Target original. But he’s still mighty beautiful, anyway. Local police officer, or gas station attendant of old, what do you think?

In an admirable bid to grab local Route 66 traffic, Atlanta IL has recently added an American Giants Museum in tribute to these roadside wonders. They have even poured five giant concrete pads and added picnic tables in preparation, but so far 4 out of 5 slots remain available. This is how I feel whenever we throw a party … what if I plan it, and nobody comes?

But come they will, as Route 66 mania runs strong throughout the country, and a nearby sticker board attests to the travels of many through this area.

Lincoln isn’t the only character of mythic proportions to spring from the loins of Illinois. We cannot forget about Joliet Jake Blues! That’s right — John Belushi’s character in the classic movie Blues Brothers came right outta these gates at the Old Joliet Prison to meet his brother Elwood (Dan Aykroyd).

I visited with my Uncle Brian and Aunt Dotty, who live close to Joliet but had not yet visited the prison inside its 25-foot-tall limestone walls. Opened in 1858, it was closed in 2002 after nearly two centuries in operation, but saved and currently undergoing preservation.

A lot of the prison is now destroyed from arson, vandals, or straight-up decay. But back in the day, nearly every inch of the prison was choked with workhouses, shops and factories, wherein prison labor was leased to private companies who just set up shop inside the prison grounds for boots to cigars to mattresses.

Like in most prisons, the early years featured rampant diseases like TB, frequent accidents and ongoing death from violence and more, and the 4×7′ cells (set up for 2 but often housing 3) did not even have running water until the mid-20th century.

My favorite part of the prison was the painted message inside the North Segregation and Death Row building. Meant to encourage personal reflection in those poor souls who had little reason to hope, it’s a stirring message in a lot of different ways, incarcerated or not. “It’s Never Too Late! To Mend.” In a shameless Lincoln tie-in, you can imagine that woulda been a good slogan for the Civil War.

We had also hoped to visit the interior of Joliet’s beautiful circa-1926 Rialto Theater, but they were refinishing the floors and therefore denied us entry. You can’t get out of prison, and you can’t get into the Rialto. Oh well.

Beyond the Land of Lincoln, Illinois can also sometimes be the Land of Tornadoes, but that sounds bad as a marketing slogan. When we survived an Oklahoma tornado touching down less than five miles from us earlier in this trip, we thought we’d statistically be tornado-free for the rest of this trip. Not so fast! Here near Joliet, a 500-mile derecho (code word for “really really bad storm”) with an associated EF-1 tornado touched down. Once again, the sirens screamed, our phone alerts went bonkers, and my aunt started texting “TAKE COVER NOW!” Not again!!

Thankfully, this time we were at an RV Park associated with a casino/hotel. We grabbed the dog and beelined through the driving rain into the hotel lobby, where they were herding not only RV’ers, but also hotel guests from upper floors, into the lower level hallway. We spent a couple hours listening to the wind and rain howling outside, checking weather maps online, eavesdropping on others, and wondering what germs were living on the hotel floor, before finally getting the all-clear to go home.

The next day, power remained out for more than 24 hours (thankfully we have a generator on-board), downed trees and power lines made many roads impassable and traffic lights inoperatable, flooding was rampant and many businesses were closed down, including the hotel/casino in which we had sheltered just the night before. But we had survived our third RV tornado (two on this trip alone) and have a whole new appreciation for Arizona, where the only real threat is rattlesnakes. I don’t have a photo of a rattlesnake, so here’s a photo of Finn.

Lincoln might have made his home in Illinois, but he wasn’t amongst the first to do so. Our final Illinois adventure was a visit to Cahokia Mounds State Historic Site, the largest prehistoric (AD 700-800) Indian community in America north of Mexico, located just across the Illinois border from St. Louis MO.

Look for the little people at the right in the above photo for scale. The largest of them, Monks Mound, has steps to the top, which many people use for their early-morning workout.

There are more than 120 mounds throughout this community, which housed the homes of the elite on top, proving that the more things change, the more they stay the same. Mere mortals like you’n’me would have been relegated to thatch houses made of poles like these instead, way down below.

So, in summary: Land of Lincoln, Land of Giants, Land of Jake Blues, Land of Tornadoes, Land of Prehistoric Indians. And there ya have it — our “landmark” Illinois visit in a nutshell! Next, we will “land” in St. Louis!

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