Day 2

Years ago, G3 decided he wanted to visit every president’s house. Therefore, on every trip we look for which presidents had a home where we are traveling. Last summer, we wanted to detour to Springfield to see Lincoln’s home, but it was closed due to COVID. This year, it was our first stop.

Inside the house Lincoln experience unimaginable grief — it was where his son dies. But he also had happy moments as well — countless hours rough housing with his sons and the arrival representatives from the GOP asking him to run for President.

Every since G3 was little he has liked Lincoln. In first grade, he dressed as Lincoln for Halloween. He wore his costume when we took him to Gettysburg and to the Lincoln Memorial in D.C. The costume no longer fits.

Next we traveled through countless cornfields and empty roads — I love the lack of traffic — up to West Brach, Iowa to see Herbert Hoover’s birth home. The ranges were friendly and chatted with us for more than a half hour recommending other National Parks for us to visit on our trip. And even though they don’t officially do tours, one of the rangers gave us one.

Hoover’s two room cottage was tiny — a humble start for a future President. I knew little about him going into the tour but learned quite a bit. His dad was a blacksmith. One day as a young kid, he was curious as to what would happen if he tossed a stick into a barrel of hot tar. He nearly set the village on fire. He was orphaned at age 9. And worked tirelessly on so many humanitarian causes — most of them regarding young children — that he was nominated for the Nobel Peace prize 6 times but never won.

Hoover’s parents were Quaker. He grew up learning how to be silent and still for hours at a time by attending the Meeting House.

Despite getting in some site seeing, we did spend at least for hours in the car. G3 made use of his time reading. He is two thirds of the way through the sixth Warrior Cat book.

The weather was dry, no rain so we found a campsite and settled in for the evening with a campfire.