At Home at Thousand Trails

From Geeks on Tour 200906 (June)

We always feel at home when we come to a Thousand Trails/NACO preserve. You check in at the front gate by showing them your membership card only. We don't get out *any* money and we can stay for 2 weeks. Of course, we paid for the membership - but, for that we get a *home* in many of the most beautiful places in the country.

From Geeks on Tour 200906 (June)

We are looking forward to 2 weeks of R&R and website/membership work. Our next obligation is the FMCA International Convention in Bowling Green, Ohio July 20. See our schedule for more detail. Since the Thousand Trail parks are in natural areas, Internet access can sometimes be a problem. They usually have a free Wi-Fi hotspot at the adult lounge, but here, it's in the game room where kids are watching TV and playing video games and air hockey. Luckily, even though we only have 2 bars of Verizon access, it is a Verizon area and not Extended Service. The Internet connection is working fine from our RV using the tethered cell phone. BUT - we may not be so lucky next time. It worried me enough to tell Jim that I think it's time to get our Datastorm Satellite dish operational again. A new controller is on its way.

Further your computer education **Subscribe to the Free Geeks on Tour Newsletter**

Land of Lincoln and Jim Gould's

What a full day we had yesterday. Both of us spent the morning doing work on our website. I made a new video about using our members' forum while Jim handled some member data records issues. Then we reluctantly stowed our stuff and left the beautiful 'Lincoln's New Salem' park. Oh yeah - I haven't posted any of the pictures from the day before have I?

Here ya go:

From Geeks on Tour 200906 (June)

From Geeks on Tour 200906 (June)

From Geeks on Tour 200906 (June)

From Geeks on Tour 200906 (June)

Click the link to the June web album for more. Ok .. Now we're leaving New Salem - after learning a lot about Lincoln's life as a young man. Now - Sunday afternoon, we're headed into Springfield to visit the Lincoln Presidential Museum. It was a gorgeous day.

From Geeks on Tour 200906 (June)

From Geeks on Tour 200906 (June)

This was by far the most extravagant of all the Presidential museums we've been to. And the most crowded. It was impressive. Very well done. Here's the lobby where the Lincoln family themselves obligingly posed for photos with the visitors! And, this was the only part where photos were allowed.

From Geeks on Tour 200906 (June)

From Geeks on Tour 200906 (June)

We spent almost 4 hours with eyes wide open and jaws dropped taking in so much information presented in normal displays, multi-media theatres where the seats jumped when the cannons hit and sparks and smoke, and even holographic images. Probably the display with the most impact was 'The Civil War in 4 Minutes' . As you watch the screen you see the boundaries of the Union and the Confederacy continuously move as the days tick by, the battles rage, and the casualties add up, and add up, and add up. Over 600,000 ... it makes me wonder if it was truly the only way.

It sure was memorable to visit the museum of the man who freed the slaves at a time when a black man is now holding that same office. It is also Lincoln's 200th birthday. Heavy.

Then we got back in the rig to go to dinner ... in Champagne/Urbana - 84 miles away. A place called 'Jim Gould's' !! One of our members called us a week or so ago because he and his wife had just had dinner at Jim Gould's and he thought we should know about it. We looked at the map and yeah! we should go there. And we did!

Ever parallel park an RV?

From Geeks on Tour 200906 (June)

We looked it up on the web and saw that it was a pretty nice restaurant - so we even got dressed!

From Geeks on Tour 200906 (June)

And here's Jim Gould and Jim Guld! The restaurant owner was very tolerant of Jim's misspelling - he said there had been a few other Jim Goulds that had visited - he gave us all t-shirts. We were the only Guld. Jim was quite forgiving of the owner's misspelled name as well and we had a great coversation about restaurants and traveling.

From Geeks on Tour 200906 (June)

Thanks Glenn - it was a great dinner and a fun evening.

Further your computer education **Subscribe to the Free Geeks on Tour Newsletter**

Serendipity and Christmas in June

I recently read a biography of Mary Todd Lincoln (thanks Joline!) and I loved it. What a multifaceted character she was. And what a detailed glimpse into the times of Abraham Lincoln. I was particularly struck with the role that illness played in those times. People didn't just get sick ... they died. Mary Todd Lincoln suffered the death of her mother when she was a little girl, 3 of her 4 children, and of course, her husband. Is it any wonder she went a bit insane?

Anyway ... after reading that book, we took a look at the map and figured we could visit Springfield, Illinois on our way east and visit the Lincoln museum .. oh boy! We don't like to travel more that 200 miles in a day, and we didn't see much in Springfield for campgrounds. Jim found a city park listed in Havana, Illinois about 50 miles northwest of Springfield so he plugged Havana into the GPS and we set off.

Well, we didn't see any signs of a city park, so we continued on towards Springfield. Microsoft Streets and Trips showed us a promising park about 25 miles on called Lincoln New Salem Historic Site. It showed it with the little camping symbol, but we weren't too sure.

Wow!

From Geeks on Tour 200906 (June)

It's a beautiful campground! And good Verizon signal too. But, not only that, this is a tourist attraction with all sorts of exhibits and history about Lincoln.

From Geeks on Tour 200906 (June)

Including a Theatre in the Park. And guess what's playing? A monologue including the character of Mary Todd Lincoln! OK, let's stay two nights. You would think that life couldn't possibly get any better than this, but, we're also having Christmas in June. As you know, we make most of our living from our website. We call it an online classroom with Computer Education for Travelers. Lots of information is free, but in order to watch all the tutorial videos on Blogging, Picasa, Google Earth, Internet on the Road, and Computer Essentials, you must become a paying member. We normally charge $39 for a one year membership and we get 20-30 new members each month. For the month of June, we have it 'on sale' for $29 and we've gotten about 100 new members! Almost that many have taken advantage of the sale to renew and add a year to their membership as well. We get a notice every time someone signs up. Jim said that opening his email was like waking up to Christmas morning! If you'd like to watch all the videos, you can sign up too! Just click on the link for New Member, or Renewing Member. Thank you Santa :-)

Further your computer education **Subscribe to the Free Geeks on Tour Newsletter**

Herbert Hoover and Iowa

We love visiting Presidential museums, they are the perfect combination of history and biography - my two favorite things to learn about, besides computers that is! So, when we were told that Herbert Hoover's museum is in Iowa not too far from our route ... we had to go. This is our 8th presidential museum. You can see all our blogposts about them by clicking on 'Posts About ... Presidential Libraries' in the right sidebar.

btw - I'm sure glad I'm writing this rather than speaking ... I find it almost impossible to speak 'herbert hoover' without getting tongue tied or dyslexic and coming out with herver hoobert or something :-) Just try it ... say Herbert Hoover 3 times fast!

Herbert Hoover's birthplace, museum and library are located in West Branch, Iowa.

What a pretty little town.

From Geeks on Tour 200906 (June)

From Geeks on Tour 200906 (June)

The little white house in this next photo is Herbert Hoover's actual birthplace. It's been restored, but it is the actual building in it's original location since 1874 when he was born.

From Geeks on Tour 200906 (June)

Hoover was a Quaker and we had a great tour guide who made us experience the Friends Meeting house the way the Quakers would have ... in silent meditation. She told us that Quakers believed that we all have a light within and the purpose of Sunday services was not to listen to a preacher talking about God, but to sit in silent meditation and find our God within. So we sat on the benches .. Jim on the men's side and Helen (the park ranger/tour guide) and I on the women's .. for a moment of silent meditation and then she continued the tour. That was great - thanks Helen! I didn't know I was a Quaker!?

From Geeks on Tour 200906 (June)

I was fascinated with Hoover's biography.

• His childhood started out idyllic in West Branch with 2 siblings and happy parents. Then his father died when he was 6 and his mother when he was 9.
• He was sent to an uncle in Oregon, ended up graduating from Stanford with an engineering degree and went to Australia to manage mines.
• He came back to the states to marry Lou Henry - a fellow Stanford student. They moved to China with his engineering career, then to many places all around the world, becoming quite rich in the process.
• After WWI, Hoover organized the relief efforts American Relief Administration which fed 350 million people in 21 countries in the aftermath of the war. He became known as the Great Humanitarian
• He was elected to the Presidency in a landslide by an adoring electorate
• His first year of office was 1929 - the Great Depression hit and he took the blame. He was defeated for re-election by about as great a landslide as that which elected him!
• After a kind of exile during Roosevelt's administration, he worked closely with Truman to help Europe recover after WWII.

What a full life! And full of such huge ups and downs.

The museum also had an exhibit about Iowa A-Z which I thoroughly enjoyed. Who woulda thunk there'd be so much interesting stuff in Iowa! I could have spent a lot more time in that museum (I always say that) but Jim reminded me that the Lincoln museum in Springfield is next on our agenda and we'd better get going.

whew!

meanwhile, I need to take a 'work' day. I need to get our newsletter out in time to remind folks that our $29 special on new and renewing memberships is over on the last day of June. I also have lots of new 'show-me-how' computer videos I want to make, but that can wait till we get to Indian Lakes Thousand Trails where we'll stay for 2 weeks of catch-up before heading to Bowling Green, Ohio for the next FMCA convention where we'll be presenting 7 different seminars plus our hands-on Boot Camp during the evenings. See why we need to rest up? For our complete schedule see our website.

Further your computer education **Subscribe to the Free Geeks on Tour Newsletter**

Mississippi River and Iowa County Parks

When we visited Field of Dreams, we stayed at a nearby county park called 'New Wine.' Great name ... very nice park. We had it almost to ourselves.

I especially like it when there's a trail in the woods.

From Geeks on Tour 200906 (June)

Next stop was the Mississippi River Museum in Dubuque, and we found another county park, called Mud Lake, right on the river.

From Geeks on Tour 200906 (June)

From Geeks on Tour 200906 (June)

A note about the photos in this blog: I first upload photos to my Picasa Web Album, then I select the ones I want and embed them in this blog. If you click on the link below the photo, it will take you to the album for this month. There are quite a few more photos in the album than what I add to the blog. If you click on a picture, instead of the link below it, you will see the larger sized photo from the Web Album - you will need to click 'Back' to come back here. We went to Dubuque to see the Mississippi River museum. We heard that it is quite worthwhile and they were right.

From Geeks on Tour 200906 (June)

This exhibit demonstrated how the river floods. You could see the water level for the 1927 flood and how it would be over the bridge.

From Geeks on Tour 200906 (June)

Jim tried his hand at the controls of a barge pilot simulator. One tug pushes 22,500 TONS on up to 15 barges. They don't move very fast or respond very quickly to the controls.

From Geeks on Tour 200906 (June)

I enjoyed learning about the issues of cargo transportation. The grain from Iowa farmland gets loaded on these barges and they go downriver to New Orleans where they're loaded onto ocean going freighters bound for other continents. What takes 4 barges = 15 train cars or 60 trucks. River transportation is obviously the least expensive, but the river and surrounding environment suffers. So much to learn. I always feel overwhelmed when I visit museums like this.

Next comes Herbert Hoover museum in West Branch.

Further your computer education **Subscribe to the Free Geeks on Tour Newsletter**