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LincolnOct 25, 2007
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Oct 25 51330 8:25
First stop fuel, diesel here is $3.03 but the prices are not as bad as we figured. The RV likes running on Interstates, our fuel mileage was up to nearly 9 miles per gallon on yesterdays run. Today is mostly interstate also so hopefully the mileage will stay up.
I have figured out the stops for the rest of the way home and we should be there by Nov. 8 around noon if there are no snow delays.
Oh, we got the results of the x-rays back and it is definitely arthritis in the hip. I will get the x-rays sent to the house and I have already gotten an appointment for the 19th of Nov. to see a doctor at home. By then I should know if the Celebrex is controlling the pain sufficiently or not to delay any other action at least until after the first of the year. Right now I am still pretty limited on how much I can do with it. I guess the stairs at home will be the test.
West Virginia was very hilly with lots of rivers and streams and trees. Kentucky is more open, a little flatter, with gentler rolling hills. The trees still have good color but not as much deep red as Virginia and West Virginia.
Kentucky, horse country, racetracks, horse farms, lots of white board fences, horses in the fields, horse transporters, lots of Kentucky bluegrass. There are a lot of French names here, Paris, Bourbon, and Versailles.
Second stop is the Abraham Lincoln NHS in Hodgenville, Kentucky. Lincoln's ancestors came to Kentucky from Scotland via Massachusetts, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Virginia. Lincoln's grandfather moved west to Kentucky in 1782, where he was killed in an Indian raid. He father Thomas moved to a more secure and populated area in Washington County in 1786.
Thomas was uneducated, honest and no driving ambition. He fulfilled the duties of a frontier citizen serving as a militiaman, county prison guard, paid his taxes, and sat juries. He labored alongside slaves who may have helped shape his antislavery views.
In 1803 he settled in Elizabethtown and with his carpenter's trade had earned enough money to buy a 230-acre farm in Elizabethtown. In 1806 he married Nancy Hanks and brought home to the farm.
In 1808 Thomas and Nancy bought the Sinking Spring farm, 348 acres of stony land on Nolin Creek, their daughter Sarah was 1 year old and Nancy was pregnant with Abe with they moved to the new home.
Lincoln was born February 12, 1809 and remembers little of this time and he only lived here in the small 16 X 18 foot cabin for 2 years.
The memorial here covers a structure believed to be a cabin just like the one in which Lincoln lived. President T. Roosevelt laid the memorial's cornerstone in 1909 and in 1911 President Taft dedicated the memorial. The memorial and farm were established as a National Park in 1916 and designated a National Historic Park in 1956.
The other half of this site is the Lincoln Boyhood Home, 8 miles away where the family moved when Lincoln was 2. Lincoln lived here for only 6 years. It was added to the park system in 2001. The building is in bad disrepair and is currently being restored.
Lincoln feels that many of the events in Kentucky helped prepare him for the presidency years later. Here he learned reading, writing, arithmetic and the value of friendship. It was here that he encountered a wide diversity of ideals to shape his mind and a wide diversity in the land to shape his senses.
In 1816 the family moved again to Indiana, more about this later.
