This has been a FUN long President's Day weekend! Because of my work schedule, I usually never even get two days off in a row (including weekends), but thanks to the President's Day holiday, I got a three-day weekend. Yesterday I had a very fun day visiting Tuscola, Illinois with my good friend Laura Atkins. We had lunch at the best restaurant in the whole world: Flesor's Candy Kitchen. And we of course ate the most delicious thing on their menu: the Reuben! It was as tasty as ever. Then we had a fun afternoon visiting the outlet mall. It was a great day!
Today Greg had to attend a class in Alton, Illinois (close to St. Louis), so I decided to tag along and go exploring. I have always wanted to visit Alton and see the Elijah P. Lovejoy Monument at the Alton Cemetery, so that was my first stop after dropping Greg off. Mom, Dad, and I first learned about Elijah Lovejoy when we were visiting St. Charles, Missouri in 2004. Lovejoy's wife's family lived in St. Charles, and we saw a plaque about him when we were walking downtown one day. He was an abolitionist newspaper editor who was killed by an angry mob in Alton in 1837--just seven years before Joseph Smith was killed by an angry mob in Carthage (Illinois was a rough place if you had ideas that went against society's norm!).
I wrote a paper about Elijah Lovejoy in college and was interested to find many similarities between his and Joseph Smith's families. (I realized that a lot of my cool college paper ideas came from things I first learned about on trips with Mom and Dad--Elijah Lovejoy, Sterling Price, etc.) Lovejoy's murder inspired people like John Brown and Abraham Lincoln to stand up against slavery. Lincoln even went so far as to say, "Lovejoy's tragic death for freedom in every sense marked his sad ending as the most important single event that ever happened in the new world." So it was really cool to visit the Lovejoy monument today!
Elijah Lovejoy is buried at the Alton Cemetery, but when I realized that his grave was not at the monument, I wasn't sure how I would find it. But after driving around the cemetery for a few minutes, I only saw one plot with a fence around it--and sure enough, it was his. When I got back into the car after visiting his grave, I typed my next destination into the GPS, but then the GPS just turned off for no reason. This happened several times, and I thought it must be Elijah Lovejoy trying to contact me from beyond the grave . . . until it happened again later in the day :)
My next stop was the Lincoln-Douglas Debate site. Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas had seven debates throughout Illinois when they were both campaigning for the senate in 1858, and today there is a statue on the site of the debate in Alton. The Stephen Douglas statue looks super mean and scary!
Stop #3 was the site of a Confederate prison during the Civil War. Unfortunately there is only a small portion of the prison left, and it stands in the middle of a parking lot across the street from a grainery, but at least there's a remnant of the prison. 11,764 Confederate soldiers were imprisoned here during the war, and 1,534 of them died from sickness and exposure to weather--yikes!
Next I visited the National Great Rivers Museum, located next to this lock, the Melvin Price Lock and Dam, on the Mississippi River. I arrived at the museum just in time to join a tour of the lock. It was SO COOL!
We went up to the top of the lock, and it was REALLY windy. Being up so high, we had a nice view of Alton and the very wide Mississippi River.
We got to watch a barge come through the lock, which was really neat to see. Here is the barge first entering the lock. It took about 20 minutes for the barge to get completely inside, and then it took about 10 minutes for them to fill the lock with water.
This was the point at which the water inside the lock reached the same depth as the water level outside the lock, so they could lower the gate . . .
. . . and the barge could be on its way. It was really cool to see the entire process! I remember that one time in Clarksville, Missouri, Mom, Dad, and I watched a boat go through a lock, so it was neat to see it up close again today. I am totally fascinated by the Mississippi River!
The museum was also really cool. My favorite part was their fish tank full of different types of fish that live in the Mississippi and Missouri Rivers. This guy with the long nose was really funny. He was very intrigued by my camera and kept wanting me to take pictures of him (at least I think that's what he wanted). After three hours of non-stop adventures, it was time to go pick Greg up. What a fun day I had exploring Alton!
Today Greg had to attend a class in Alton, Illinois (close to St. Louis), so I decided to tag along and go exploring. I have always wanted to visit Alton and see the Elijah P. Lovejoy Monument at the Alton Cemetery, so that was my first stop after dropping Greg off. Mom, Dad, and I first learned about Elijah Lovejoy when we were visiting St. Charles, Missouri in 2004. Lovejoy's wife's family lived in St. Charles, and we saw a plaque about him when we were walking downtown one day. He was an abolitionist newspaper editor who was killed by an angry mob in Alton in 1837--just seven years before Joseph Smith was killed by an angry mob in Carthage (Illinois was a rough place if you had ideas that went against society's norm!).
I wrote a paper about Elijah Lovejoy in college and was interested to find many similarities between his and Joseph Smith's families. (I realized that a lot of my cool college paper ideas came from things I first learned about on trips with Mom and Dad--Elijah Lovejoy, Sterling Price, etc.) Lovejoy's murder inspired people like John Brown and Abraham Lincoln to stand up against slavery. Lincoln even went so far as to say, "Lovejoy's tragic death for freedom in every sense marked his sad ending as the most important single event that ever happened in the new world." So it was really cool to visit the Lovejoy monument today!
Elijah Lovejoy is buried at the Alton Cemetery, but when I realized that his grave was not at the monument, I wasn't sure how I would find it. But after driving around the cemetery for a few minutes, I only saw one plot with a fence around it--and sure enough, it was his. When I got back into the car after visiting his grave, I typed my next destination into the GPS, but then the GPS just turned off for no reason. This happened several times, and I thought it must be Elijah Lovejoy trying to contact me from beyond the grave . . . until it happened again later in the day :)
My next stop was the Lincoln-Douglas Debate site. Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas had seven debates throughout Illinois when they were both campaigning for the senate in 1858, and today there is a statue on the site of the debate in Alton. The Stephen Douglas statue looks super mean and scary!
Stop #3 was the site of a Confederate prison during the Civil War. Unfortunately there is only a small portion of the prison left, and it stands in the middle of a parking lot across the street from a grainery, but at least there's a remnant of the prison. 11,764 Confederate soldiers were imprisoned here during the war, and 1,534 of them died from sickness and exposure to weather--yikes!
Next I visited the National Great Rivers Museum, located next to this lock, the Melvin Price Lock and Dam, on the Mississippi River. I arrived at the museum just in time to join a tour of the lock. It was SO COOL!
We went up to the top of the lock, and it was REALLY windy. Being up so high, we had a nice view of Alton and the very wide Mississippi River.
We got to watch a barge come through the lock, which was really neat to see. Here is the barge first entering the lock. It took about 20 minutes for the barge to get completely inside, and then it took about 10 minutes for them to fill the lock with water.
This was the point at which the water inside the lock reached the same depth as the water level outside the lock, so they could lower the gate . . .
. . . and the barge could be on its way. It was really cool to see the entire process! I remember that one time in Clarksville, Missouri, Mom, Dad, and I watched a boat go through a lock, so it was neat to see it up close again today. I am totally fascinated by the Mississippi River!
The museum was also really cool. My favorite part was their fish tank full of different types of fish that live in the Mississippi and Missouri Rivers. This guy with the long nose was really funny. He was very intrigued by my camera and kept wanting me to take pictures of him (at least I think that's what he wanted). After three hours of non-stop adventures, it was time to go pick Greg up. What a fun day I had exploring Alton!
