History and the end of the reunion

On Thursday, we started at the local cemetery, very close to the farm. This is where Hap is buried. Some of the graves date back to the mid-1800s.

Our next stop was a visit to "Aunt Sally's House". This is the house that Nick lived in until he was 5 years old. The house is as if somebody moved out 50 years ago and left their photos and furniture behind. One photo showed a young Hap and his father fishing; Hap looked very much like Lucas.

We later drove to New Salem, where Abraham Lincoln owned a store. We talked with reenactors about life in those days, and were amazed by the oxen-powered mill, where the oxen walked on a large inclined turntable, which drove the mill.

We ate an excellent meal at a local Italian restaurant.

On Friday, we headed to the new Lincoln museum in Springfield. Besides the usual enlarged newspaper clippings and artifacts under glass, there were high tech multimedia presentations. An excellent museum. We had our picture taken with wax figures of the Lincoln family. In the afternoon, we took the girls to Walmart, to buy paints and a T-shirt to make a special reunion T-shirt.

After our usual good dinner at Teresa's house, we said goodbye to Tim, Cindy, and Hadley, who had to leave early Saturday morning to start the long drive to Montana. The severe weather alarms started going off before we went to bed, but the storm passed south of us.

On Saturday, Nick and Teresa drove Dennis, Roxanne, Ari, and Erica to the St. Louis Airport. Ron, Judy, Richard, and Donald drove to Lincoln, looking for the Antique stores that Marianne remembered, but found only the old courthouse, used by Lincoln when he was a circuit riding lawyer.