Honest Abe

We took a day trip and visited the Abraham Lincoln Museum in Springfield, about an hour and a half south of Peoria. It was a day very well spent. The museum does a superior job of mixing entertainment and education. The first audio-visual presentation "Ghosts of the Library" used a real actor in a 3-D environment. In fact, I thought the actor could not be real because I could not figure out how he interacted with rest of the scenery so seamlessly. Ron thought he was real, and we found out later, he was right.

The next presentation "Eyes of Lincoln" shocked us with the sounds and sensation of the Civil War. It turned out that our seats were wired to shake with the rocket booms on the screen. Later, we saw an animated Blue/Gray map of the United States that showed one week in the war with each second -- and the resulting casualties that ultimately surpassed one million lives. It was sobering and stunning.

The rest of our time was wandering through the displays and the very life-like figures. You can see that we took out photo with the family. (They had four sons, but one had already died by the time they were in the White House. In the end, only one son survived Mary Todd Lincoln.)

Abraham Lincoln Museum