Presidents, Philosophy, Cheese and Clowns. What a strange combo.

Dawn asked me to write and addendum to the last blog entry:  We did see a ton of small, black bats in the caves. We were very excited to see them since it is a fairly rare sighting.

On Tuesday morning we crossed the boarder into Illinois. We drove to Springfield where President Lincoln lived before he became president. The museum in his honor was very interesting and had a lot of cool memorabilia. They did a good job of keeping it engaging with a lot of videos and interactive displays.

Afterward, we went over to the street where he lived. They have refurbished all the old homes along the entire street. It was like you were walking back in time. Some of the houses were open with displays inside, but most were not open to walk through. Lincoln's was the only one that you could take a full tour of and many of the original furnishings were still in the home. They did let you take pictures which is very unusual.

We then continued onto DeKalb where my Uncle Neal and Aunt Michelle live. Dawn constantly has to be subjected to my family, and I get such a kick out of it!
I am just kidding. My family is so wonderful. I am always so proud to introduce my friends (and they usually stay my friend afterward). :) We had a great time visiting over a steak dinner that was to die for! Then the following morning got together with a couple of Neal's friends for breakfast. One of his friends had written a book about history and the Bible which sounds super interesting, and Neal gave both me and Dawn a copy which we had signed by the author at breakfast. We then got to have a discussion about everything from religion to economics with these people who are much more intelligent then I. It was a unique experience that I can honestly say I have not had on any of my other travels. I loved it! I could sit around and talk all day if I were able. But alas, it had to come to an end.

When Dawn and I left we continued north into Wisconsin and drove around the University of Wisconsin's campus. Then, headed to a trail we thought would be cool, but it was closed, and finally we went to a couple of cheese "factories". The reason I put factories in quotes is because they claim to be "factories where you can watch cheese being made!" and "have free samples!" and "self guided tours!" but when you arrive you realize they are a regular store with a little window overlooking a cheese vat, two samples, and the self guided tour is a display on the wall telling about their founding. There is some false advertising here as far as I am concerned. We did, however, get some "squeaky" cheese as instructed. It is cheese curds that are super fresh. They have to be made the same day you eat them in order to squeak. It really does squeak in between your teeth. So strange.

At the second place we went the women was very helpful and described how all the cheeses differed from each other, and how they were made. We tried a sample of their award winning cheese which tasted like dirt, and she told us that was because they store it in "caves" so it gets an "earthy" flavor. Which is just Dirt flavor if you ask me. Weird! They had some cheeses that you could buy in very small portions, and so Dawn and I picked four not knowing what we would get. We also got some wine so we could have wine and cheese at the hotel that evening.
The four types of cheese in order of our favorite to least favorite were: Bread cheese Garlic, Virgin Pine Native Blue, Raclette, and Aged Cardona. The first two were really good, the third... edible, and the last... completely inedible. It smelled like the worst toe jam you could ever imagine and tasted terrible too.
We had a good laugh about that one.

 One random stop we made as we were driving through Wisconsin was at a Circus Museum that we saw a sign for on the highway. We got there too late to do the whole tour, but the lady was nice enough to let us walk through the museum part. I think it would have been cool to see the outdoor area where they had tents and elephants, but we could see across the river from the outside and did spot some elephants! So random. :)

Today we are onto the Mall of America!!