Moonshine and Marshall

Oh, the adventures today! First off though, the first picture you see here is from a couple of weeks ago when we had Disability Awareness Day in Museum Administration. I just barely got the photos from Kristen, and I thought that this one captured just how ridiculous we all looked! Thankfully I didn't have to walk around school being both hearing and visually-impaired, but I did have to walk around with those headphones on--I certainly got some strange looks!

Now, about today--after Museum Exhibits class this morning, Laurie, Catherine, and I took off for the little town of Marshall, Illinois, which is a member of Illinois's Main Street Preservation program. We have to do a report on the Main Street program this Thursday, so we thought we'd go take some pictures and gather information today. We took a little detour on our way down because we wanted to stop at this place out in the boonies south of Martinsville (which is south of Marshall) to eat at this place we'd heard about called Moonshine. I know what you're thinking--a place serving strong drinks? That's what I thought at first, but it's actually a world-famous burger place. They serve what's called the Moonburger. It is literally out in the middle of NOWHERE!! My GPS was guiding us through the farmland to get there, and we were going down dirt roads, gravel roads, through cow pastures, and we finally made it . . . only to find that they closed at 1:00 (it was 1:30)! :-( We were so sad. But, we want to go back another day and try it out--it is a hilarious little place, and usually it's the places like that where you'll find the best food. So, we drove up to Marshall for lunch. A lot of places there had already closed too, but we were able to eat at the Marshall Family Diner. It was a hilarious little place, and the food was really good. They had Mexican decorations all over the place, which we thought was funny, and all of the locals were there shootin' the breeze and drinking lemonade. They were telling each other funny stories, and my favorite comment was when this older lady said, "Bill, will you internet me that picture?" That's way more fun to say than "e-mail." We had some tasty grilled cheese sandwiches there, and then we went out to look at buildings. They have some really cool buildings there, and it's great that the Main Street program is helping them restore and preserve them all. We were cracking up today because Marshall has to stretch a bit to tie themselves to Lincoln, but as is the case with all Illinois towns, they've done their darndest. They have an inn there downtown (which is for sale--anyone looking for a business?), which Abraham Lincoln supposedly slept in one night. And our favorite was a brochure that featured a stone well from which Abraham Lincoln supposedly drew water one time. They're stretching it with the well! We met some really nice people who let us come in and look around their buildings. They've got some great restoration projects going on, and it was neat to see the work they're doing up close. When we were back inspecting the rear of one of the buildings, we couldn't help but notice some brick pieces on the ground that had fallen off the building's exterior. We broke all historic preservation laws and took one of the little brick pieces--we just wanted a relic to show we'd been to Marshall! :-) Later we went out looking for bridges along Route 40--also known as the National Road (which we will be featuring in our corridors exhibit next spring). We were looking for one bridge in particular, and we ended up doing a little off-roading to try to find it. We never found it, but we did find this old road made of bricks--maybe an older version of the National Road? Since we were gathering relics, we decided that we needed to just take one little piece of brick that had been chipped off of the road--and we can say that it's part of the National Road! It was a beautiful fall day today. The leaves were soooo pretty, and it was nice and brisk outside. We were gone much longer than we had planned, but we were having so much fun that we just lost track of time. On our way back to Charleston we had to stop at Dairy Queen in the town of Casey to get pumpkin pie blizzards--which were delicious. Also on the way back, we had to stop at the World's Tallest Abe Lincoln statue since Catherine and Laurie had never seen it before. You can see from the third picture up there just how tall Abe really is in comparison to little Laurie down there by his feet. They thought the statue was hilarious and decided that it is the ultimate Land of Lincoln icon. Well, I'm off to bed. It's been a fun day but I'm pooped!