Route 66, Grant's farm and homestead, Mounds State park

On the day after our marathon day in St Louis (5/25/12) we took a day to act retired-we hung out
at the rig and went out to lunch at the Ariston Cafe in Litchfield, Illinois. One of the oldest, if not the oldest cafes on the Old Route 66 hiway that went from Chicago, ILL. to Santa Monica, CA
It is a family owned third generation restaurant with delicious food.

Not only are we going to every state capitol and playing golf in every state we are visiting as many National Parks as we can. The National Park Service has a book that we bought  and we get the book stamped whenever we can. When we were in St Louis we did not have time to go to Ulysses S.Grant's National home to tour, so on the morning of 5/26/12 we set off with our GPS in tow and we went on a 70 mile mini road trip. We were not aware that attached to Grants home was a "farm" sponsored by AnheuserBusch, and that our GPS took us to the farm. We should have known that we were not in the right place when the majority of the tourist were under 30 years old with strollers and toddlers in tow. We parked ($12) and followed the crowd. Waited in line for a tram and went for a tram ride through a beautiful park with wild animals (deer, goats etc) It was a great place for children and those folks that were not familiar with wild life. In the mean time the temperature is climbing and no wind in sight and I forgot to get a picture of the entrance sign. The flamingos below were just beautiful so we figured a picture of them was good and a picture of us standing in front of them was ok too. It was quite a long walk to catch another tram back to the parking lot and this time there was no shade to stand in while waiting. We are starting to heat up!!!1

After we finally got back to the car, the Grant's home was 1/2 block from the farm. Again I forgot to take the official picture. We watched a very interesting film on Grant and his life on the farm and then with the park ranger we went for a walking  tour--still the temp is climbing.
The picture below is taken in Grant's office at the farmhouse.

We left from there and drove to a a state park called the Cahokia Mounds. This was a community of 20,000 to 40,000 early (600AD-900AD) Indians that lived in this area. they built large "mounds" that resembled the pyramids for the leaders to rule from. The museum was great, but
 to tour the mounds you had to go outside-at that point the temp was over 95 and the humidity was
even higher. We decided that we had had enough of the heat and humidly for the day.

We came home and yikes with the heat and the humidity we were both done in. Today was a laid back day, went for walk, did the laundry, ironing and just sat around in the air conditioning.

 Now this is what retirement is really about.!!