November 13: Indianapolis, Indiana, to Fairview Heights, Illinois

I drove a lot more of US Route 40 this morning. On the west side of Terra Haute, just before the Illinois border, I opted for even smaller roads. At one point I was driving on a dirt road -- County Route #1 -- but I have no idea what county it was. I got a little lost, even with my GPS, and stumbled on the tiny town of Vermillion, Illinois. It has a large old grain elevator located next to the single railroad track and has maybe 30-40 houses clustered nearby. All of the buildings have seen better days. It apeared today that many have been abandoned.

The endless fields are quite barren now, the harvest of corn and hay having been complete for some time. I would love to drive some of the same route during the summer when the fields are filled with green. In November the fields are brown and full of stubble.  One advantage right now is that you can see for miles across empty fields. With tall corn in August and no ability to see cars on distant roads I would have felt even more lost.

One goal I had today was to visit a few of the historic sites related to Abraham Lincoln. I did stop at the Abe Lincoln Log Cabin in Lerna, Illinois, and the old State House in Vandalia where Lincoln was first served in the Illinois legislature. What I did not know is that everything - and I mean everything - in this part of Illinois is closed on Mondays. I was the only visitor to the Log Cabin site. The parking lot had spaces for hundreds of cars and some buses. The State House in Vandalia was closed as were all the stores on the main street. Many were totally empty or boarded up with signs indicating that the buildings themselves were for sale. I did take a few photos as a consolation.

This is the log cabin of Thomas Lincoln, Abe's father. Abe bought it from his father for $200 and then deeded it back to his father for him to live in for the rest of his life. Abe visited here but did not actually live here.

The second capital of Illinois was Vandalia, very much in the southern part of the state. The reason for this was that in its earliest years much of the territory further north was still considered Indian territory and little of it had been settled. By the time Abe Lincoln was elected to the legislature, however, that had changed and Lincoln was part of a group that desired to move the capital northward. The citizens of Vandalia, of course, were not happy at that prospect and built a new State House to entice the legislators to stay in town. It didn't work.  The photo below is of the State House that was abandoned by the legislature in 1839 when they moved to Springfield. Vandalia was also the original terminus of the National Road that had been built to open the midwest to settlement. Today it appears as if most of the world has passed it by.