Today was to be our first capitol visit in a while. After our long stay in the Illinois area, it felt good to be back on the road and visiting a capital. We arrived in the capital around 11:30am and found some street parking, though when I put my coins into the machine, nothing showed on the little display to indicate it had worked. Though when looking at all the other parking meters, they were all blank as well, so I figured I wouldn’t get a ticket especially since I put 3 quarters in.
The Illinois Capitol building is incredible, it definitely now tops the list of best capitols I’ve been to. The front has immense pillars, a staple of a good capitol, while stepping inside greets you with a huge centre room with views up all three floors into the artwork-laden dome. As we were looking around, we came across a guestbook which I happily filled out. While doing that, we were approached by an employee that offered us a free 20 minute tour of the capitol, and as we weren’t in a rush, we chose to accept.
The tour was pretty good, she was very friendly and explained all the history of the capitol to us, while showing us all the different room and explaining details about the artwork we would otherwise not have known. For example, the huge painting on the wall was painted over the course of a year directly onto the wall, rather than painted somewhere else and moved into the building.
After our tour of the capitol we made our way a few miles out of town to Lincoln’s Tomb, where president Abraham Lincoln was buried. Other than his tomb, it’s largely a normal (if a bit fancy) cemetery, where you can drive in and park in a small parking lot near the tomb. Out front of the tomb there’s a statue of Lincoln’s head with an extremely gold-coloured nose! Apparently it’s good luck to touch his nose, so people over the years have slowly worn down the coating and revealed the shinier material underneath. Inside the tomb is a simple one way loop that brings you past a few small statues of Lincoln in different scenarios, along with plaques with his quotes on them. In the back is the actual tomb where he was laid to rest under, along with most of his family, except one of his sons who by request of his wife was buried in another state.
After the tomb we were feeling a bit hungry, so we made our way to an I-HOP, a first for this trip, and got some brunch around 1pm. The food was good, if not a bit too much, and I find I can never finish more than 1 pancake whenever I get them as they tend to fill me up faster than most other foods. I also got a milkshake which only added to my full stomach and took away from my cash reserves.
Finishing brunch, we headed further south towards Missouri on our way to Kyle’s parents house. On the way, we passed through St Louis and saw the gateway arch on the horizon. Impulsively we decided to stop and take a look around. Being local to the area, Kyle has been a few times, but it’s my first time experiencing it. We parked downtown where the machine wouldn’t let me park for longer than 35 minutes which felt odd, but it was close enough to the arch that we could walk there and back with time to spare.
We walked the few minutes to the arch, where we walked around as Kyle captured street view imagery and I had a short call with my mum. It was super humid outside so we decided to go into the lobby of the museum below the arch for a few minutes, which felt great because of the AC. After our short break in the museum lobby, we walked back to the car and got ready to carry on to Kyle’s parents. Unfortunately, upon starting the car we noticed that the AC buttons green light was flashing, which is not generally a good sign. The AC also wasn’t pumping out any hot air, and on such a muggy day that’s a real bummer.
We got to Kyle’s parents around 6pm where we hung out for a while before deciding to finally put the drone up in the air. We got my certifications quickly by doing a simple online test from the FAA and paying $5 to register the drone, and then got to flying. The drone didn’t have a ton of battery, so we couldn’t fly for too long, but we got some nice photos of the sunset (I’d share them, but it would expose where his parents live) and had fun finally flying the drone after almost 2 months.
We then got some dinner and hung out at home for the rest of the evening, doing various things on our devices to wind down before heading to bed.