{Road Trip} Day Ten - The VPs of Indiana and HOME!

We will just call today. "VP Day"...

Continuing on down through Indiana, we stopped at the birthplace of Vice President Thomas R. Marshall...

Thomas R. Marshall served as the 28th Vice President of the United States under President Woodrow Wilson.

From there, we continued on to Indianapolis, and made a stop at Crown Hill Cemetery.  It's really a beautiful cemetery.  On our last visit back in 2014, we had no idea that along with President Benjamin Harrison, THREE Vice Presidents are buried there, too...

our 21st VP, Thomas A. Hendricks, who served under President Grover Cleveland...

our 26th VP, Charles W. Fairbanks, who served under President Theodore Roosevelt...

and our 28th VP, Thomas R. Marshall, who served under President Woodrow Wilson...

We checked in on President Benjamin Harrison again, too...

Also in Indianapolis, we found the final home of VP Fairbanks, right close to the children's museum...

as well as the birthplace of our 44th VP, Dan Quayle, who served under President George H. W. Bush...

 

Last, but not least, we swung by the Indianapolis Colts stadium on the way out of town...

Though we got back home quite late (err, early the next morning), we are thankful for another family adventure in the books!

Until next summer...

More {Road Trip} 2016 Fun

Day One - Kicking it Off in Kentucky, Ohio Presidential I and Charleston, West Virginia

Day Two - Oh, Buffalo...

Day Three - Ohio Presidential II and Columbus, Ohio

Day Four - Ohio Presidential III + A Little Football

Day Five - Ohio Presidential IV

Day Six - Ohio Presidential V + State #40!

Day Seven - Soo Locks and Mackinac Island

Day Eight - Sleeping Bear and President Ford

Day Nine - Lansing, Michigan and The Henry Ford

{Road Trip} Day Nine - Lansing, Michigan and The Henry Ford

After a swim in the hotel pool, we started out the day in Lansing with a rainy (and therefore, solo), run up some state capitol building steps!

Lansing, MI

Michigan State Capitol

B's 33rd set of state capitol steps scaled...

#capitolstepschallenge

From Lansing, we headed over to Dearborn, MI (right outside Detroit) to spend some time at The Henry Ford... 

Wow!  We could've spend days upon days in here exploring...  What a collection!

Among a ton of other things, we saw...

the chair that President Abraham Lincoln was sitting in when he was assassinated at Ford's Theatre...

the car that President John F. Kennedy was riding in when he was assassinated...

the Wright Brothers' first aircraft...

and the actual bus on which a brave lady named Rosa Parks made history...

 

 

We can't wait to come back and visit again one day.  There was so much to see in the museum alone that we didn't even make it outside to the Greenfield Village portion of the museum!

On the way out of town, we stopped at the apartment complex where President George H. W. Bush and his wife, Barbara, once lived many years ago...

and on down the road at the grave of Vice President Schuyler Colfax...

 

Schuyler Colfax served as the 17th Vice President of the United States under President Ulysses S. Grant.

Tomorrow we make our way home...with a few little stops along the way, of course!

 More {Road Trip} 2016 Fun

Day One - Kicking it Off in Kentucky, Ohio Presidential I and Charleston, West Virginia

Day Two - Oh, Buffalo...

Day Three - Ohio Presidential II and Columbus, Ohio

Day Four - Ohio Presidential III + A Little Football

Day Five - Ohio Presidential IV

Day Six - Ohio Presidential V + State #40!

Day Seven - Soo Locks and Mackinac Island

Day Eight - Sleeping Bear and President Ford

Day Ten - The VPs of Indiana and HOME!

{Road Trip} Day One - Indianapolis, IN

Well, we arrived at our first stop, Indianapolis, IN, ahead of schedule (which NEVER happens!), so we were actually able to add on one more stop, much to B's excitement...

So, we spent a FULL day... 

smiling with the ones that we love the most at the original LOVE sculpture by Robert Indiana in the outdoor gardens at the IMA...

exploring the grounds (and running up & down the steps) of the capitol building...

visiting the racing museum and taking a lap around the famous racetrack at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway...

touring both the home and the grave of President Benjamin Harrison...

and spending the entire afternoon at the Children's Museum Indianapolis, the largest children's museum in the world (the traveling "China's Terra Cotta Warriors" exhibit happened to be on display, as well)...

More on this amazing place in a later post...

We ended our day in Indianapolis with dinner at the Slippery Noodle Inn...

before continuing on down the road to our next stop.

It took about 3 seconds for all 3 littles to look about like this...

More {Road Trip} 2014 Fun

Day Two - From Springfield to Madison

Day Three - Playing Games and Winning Sights

Day Four - To the Northwest Angle and Back

Day Five - Winnipeg and the Center of North America

Day Six - Bismarck, Theodore Roosevelt and the Center of the Nation

Day Seven - Mount Rushmore and The "Street Corner" Presidents

Day Eight - Cruising Through a Few Capital Cities

Day Nine - St. Louis and HOME!

{Weekend Adventure} Day 2 - President Abraham Lincoln Birthplace and Boyhood Home

Continuing on our quest to visit as many U.S. Presidential sites as possible, after a quick (drive-through) tour of Fort Knox for our resident Lieutenant Colonel, we started off bright and early with a visit to the birthplace of President Abraham Lincoln...

Though the cabin inside is a replica, Abraham Lincoln is said to have been born on this hill, here on Sinking Spring Farm near the current town of Hodgenville, KY...

There are 56 steps to the top ~ one step to represent each year of Abraham Lincoln's life...

I visited here with my family as a child, and I credit that visit as the reason that I've always known that Abraham Lincoln was NOT from Illinois!

The sinking spring for which the farm was named (and where the family members more than likely gathered their water)...

From Sinking Spring Farm, we continued on to Knob Creek Farm, where President Lincoln recalled his earliest moments, to take a look around...



We grabbed a late lunch at Moonlite Bar-B-Q Inn in Owensboro, KY...

 

before crossing the Ohio River and into Indiana...



We thought it'd be a pretty quick visit to the Lincoln Boyhood Site in what is now Lincoln City, IN, but this turned out to be our favorite park of the day and we literally closed it down...literally...

We decided to go ahead and hike the (not strenuous at all) 1-mile loop that included the gravesite of Lincoln's mother, a working farm site, the bronzed foundation of the Lincoln family cabin and the Trail of Twelve Stones...

They were making maple syrup at the farm site...

 


The place where Lincoln's family home once stood...

They evidently discovered it, excavated the site and bronzed the existing foundation...

The loop concluded with the Trail of Twelve Stones which included stones, bricks, logs, etc. from important buildings and sites of Lincoln's life...

 



 
 


concluding with a memorial to his mother made from leftover material from Lincoln's gravesite in Springfield, IL...

The littles completed the Junior Ranger program, and by the time we got back to the visitor's center, it was about time for it to close.  The park ranger asked if we would help her take down and fold the flag...

Well, we couldn't exactly say no!

 
 
 


Well, we could use a little bit of practice on the folding, but it was a BIG flag!


 


Though we left Indiana a few hours behind schedule, it was well worth it.  We continued on to Louisville, KY and stopped at a couple of sites related to our 12th President, Zachary Taylor, including one of his homes (currently a private residence)...

 


and his gravesite...

before grabbing a superquick dinner and hightailing it on home.

Again, I'm quite thankful that all 3 of our littles fall asleep easily in the car, so Hubby and I enjoyed a very quiet ride home (and ended up being the only two in our family lacking a good solid night's sleep)! 

It was definitely a whirlwind of a weekend, and Hubby and I were (understandably) quite tired on Monday, but we had a blast.

I'm really looking forward to our Road Trip this summer!