The actual land of actual Lincoln

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Welcome back! I am inspired by my good friend the HomebodyVoyager to try to see more of the areas where I travel (for my awesome relatively-new job with Northwest Cadence) and to blog about them.

Today, I'm in Springfield, Illinois. Because of my prior experience writing software for the University of Washington, I've been sort of designated our liaison for software development teams in the public sector, which means I'm going to get to see a lot of state capitals.

Springfield is one of those capitals that make it hard to memorize all the state capitals. I don't think folks outside of Illinois have much reason to know where it is or what goes on here. If you've heard of (or flown through) a city in Illinois, it almost certainly isn't this one. (See also: Olympia, Washington.)

However, it's a beautiful early-fall day here in Springfield, and because of flight schedules, I actually arrived in time to see the city before it got dark, so my preliminary assessment is: charming and delightful.

Trip basics

Flight: American Airlines SEA-DFW (shiny new 737, aisle seat in the back, wifi) and American Eagle DFW-SPI (Embraer, single seat, no wifi). Both perfectly acceptable and no labor unrest or other delays. Got much work done, on and off the wifi.

Lunch: Cousins BBQ in DFW airport. Meh. Wish I had had time for Dickey's BBQ in Terminal A!

Car: Nissan Rogue (free upgrade), it's fine but it doesn't make me want to buy one.

Hotel: Hilton Springfield, literally the tallest building anywhere around. Room is very nice.

Dinner: The fancy-schmancy restaurant on top of my hotel is closed on Mondays, which is a much more believable explanation for the fact that I couldn't get a table via OpenTable on a Monday. I will probably end up downstairs at Bennigan's momentarily. At least we don't have those in Seattle. (Update: yup, Bennigan's.)

Sightseeing

Abraham Lincoln practiced law and began his political career in Springfield. The area is packed with Lincoln-related things to see--the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum (which has a Halloween fright fest!!), the Lincoln Home National Historic Site, the Old State Capitol, the Lincoln-Herndon Law Offices, Lincoln's New Salem State Historic Site, Union Station, the Great Western Railroad Depot, and the Lincoln Tomb at Oak Ridge Cemetery--and, as I learned from the brochure I picked up at the airport when I arrived about 4:45 PM, they all close at 5:00 PM.

I decided to call the cemetery's bluff. I figured even if the Lincoln Tomb really gets locked up at 5:00 PM, from the photos it appears to be a very tall monument and, well, Illinois is really flat. They'd have to hide it behind a Hilton to keep me from seeing at least some of it. I headed out to the cemetery around 6:00 PM, feeling pretty good about my odds. Sure enough: the main gates were open and I had no trouble reaching the monument's parking lot. I was totally prepared with my "here from Seattle, only have one night in town, really love Lincoln" speech in case I had to charm my way into the monument area--or out of the cemetery gates later. Didn't need it. I had a really pleasant walk all around the outside of the monument. One other couple was there taking pictures. I tried to stay out of theirs and had very little trouble framing them out of mine. I hear the vault is nice inside, but that was in fact locked. I couldn't think of anything pilgrimage-like to do in honor of our 16th president. I thought about reciting the Gettysburg Address at him, but I got upstaged by a plaque of it mounted above the door to the vault, which probably did a better job of remembering all the words than I would have. In any case, it was a beautiful thing to do during an Illinois fall sunset, and I'm glad I visited.

More Trip Details

Breakfast: The hotel slipped a cute handwritten thank-you-for-staying-with-us card under my door overnight, along with a coupon for free full buffet breakfast. Pretty good. I do love an American breakfast.

Why I'm actually here: Delivered almost the entire day's worth of Visual Studio 2012 Launch event content for development teams from state & local government in Illinois. Went much, much better than last week and I'm overall pretty satisfied with it.

Lunch: The local Microsoft sales rep arranged takeout from Bentoh's, from which I ordered Pad Thai. It looked exactly like wide egg noodles in brown gravy, and tasted nothing at all like any Pad Thai I've ever had ever, but was surprisingly delicious.

Flight: I had barely an hour to make it to the airport before my flight, but I needn't've worried. There are only about 20 people in that entire airport at any given time. American Eagle SPI-DFW (Embraer, single seat, no wifi).

Dinner: With a 3:20 layover at DFW, it was a perfect opportunity to meet and catch up with my dear friend, the aforementioned HomebodyVoyager, who was a colleague at my very first software development job, in Dallas, in the dark ages. Back then we had lunch together nearly every day. This time, dinner at Joe's Crab Shack. I'll take a long layover there any time.

Flight: American Airlines DFW-SEA (737, paid $24 to get aisle seat near front instead of middle seat in back, wifi). It is sweltering in here, which never happens to me on planes. Time to sign out and catch a nap for the rest of the flight.

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Photos

Lincoln's nose
Apparently it is good luck to rub his nose. I don't even.

Respect from Rome
Randomly very prominently incorporated into the monument. I like it.

"ON."?
Bwah? Is this Oregon, or did they have designs on Canada when the monument was built?

Access: granted
I read online that it is absolutely, positively not permitted to walk around the walkway on the upper part of the monument. Here's the security system.

Temporary vault marker
This whole memorial was definitely produced by cemetery custodians. All over the place, there's more detail than you probably want about where and how and for how long and under what circumstances the President's body rested. Here's one.

Another vault
Another vault, from a different time, around the back. There's a marker nearby commemorating the slab upon which rested the President's body when it arrived, but it got too dark to get a photo of it.

View from my hotel room
After I got back.

Comments

[Mom]

Nice tour
Go see the Lincoln Home.... beautiful site! Glad you have nice weather. Have a safe trip home.

[Eliece]

Lincoln's golden nose and bennigan's
I'm so jealous! Best job ever.