After our visit to Maplewood Cemetery, we embarked on a nice leisurely drive back through Harrisburg and along a stretch of the Lincoln Trail through Mount Carmel and then over the Wabash River into Indiana for a quick run up to Vincennes.
Vincennes was where I’d originally planned for us staying overnight after the reunion but figuring that the reunion might run a bit over had settled on a hotel just over the Wabash River in Sullivan IN. Keep that in mind for later as it’ll definitely become important to today’s tale.
But for us, we were truly blessed with glorious weather that really showcased the terrain of southern Illinois and the farming (and occasional mining and oil extraction) that is the lifeblood of the region’s economic activity.
These farms aren’t just a few acres. The smallest operations are hundreds of acres that are sometimes split into many disparate parcels through years of inheritance and occasional trips to the estate auction.
Mom has told me of her adoptive family whose farm is just south of Hutsonville was an example of this and was complex enough to warrant having a big map where everyone had a unique coloured marker to indicate where they’d be working on a given day. Now imagine someone ringing you up from Illinois and asking where someone is on that farm when you’re in North Carolina and you’ve not got the faintest clue where anyone is!
At least Mom remembered the colour corresponding to the person she was being asked about!
We had a couple of hours of rolling hills with the occasional massive grain silos and in some cases huge piles of corn waiting to be either put on trucks or being hoovered up into the silos.
Before we really knew it, we’d reached the Wabash River which forms the border between Illinois and Indiana and we’d be doing the first of what would turn out to be four time zone hops across the river!
Once we were across the river into Indiana, the satnav took us through a small forest that was absolutely gorgeous and then the trees were gone and we could see massive silo operations along our route toward US-41.
We were waiting at the stoplight for a turn onto US-41 for the quick run to Vincennes when we saw a classic truck fly on by. There was no way I was going to miss bagging a few photos of that truck and it did take a bit of effort to catch up and do the overtake but it was well worth it!
Once we were close enough to see the truck, we actually had a bonus classic in the motorcycle that was being hauled in the bed!
Vincennes was named for François-Marie Bissot, Sieur de Vincennes who was a Canadian explorer and soldier who established several forts in the region including this one at a strategic crossing point across the river.
There were plenty of notable people who were born in Vincennes with the most prominent one being William Henry Harrison whose tenure as the 9th President of the United States remains the shortest in history when he died about a month after inauguration and thus became the first President to die in office and was succeeded by John Tyler who took the presidential oath of office and settled the question of whether the Vice-President was merely a caretaker or had the full powers of the office. President Tyler would also settle the border between Canada and Maine and in probably his greatest achievement would invite the Republic of Texas to take up statehood.
One notable citizen I didn’t know about was that it was also the birthplace of Red Skelton, a very famous comedian and actor which was noted on a sign near the hospital in the downtown area.
Vincennes isn’t particularly large and we passed by Xavier Cathedral and very quickly after that we were over the river and back into Illinois and again on the Lincoln Trail!
