We left the motel in Ottawa, Illinois at about 10 this morning. Before we left town, we went downtown to the site of the first Lincoln-Douglas Debate, which actually took place in August of 1858 and was for the Senate seat for Illinois. There is a memorial on the spot where the debate took place, right in the middle of a park that is a bronze sculpture of the two debaters. Really does give you a sense of the history of the place, as do all of the old buildings, especially old churches in the area (of which I have attached a couple of pictures).
After the tour of the park, we took off for Niagara Falls. At first our GPS was giving us fits – it kept trying to send us back to Wisconsin and up through Minnesota and Canada. We tried to trick it, but it kept giving us really bizarre routes, getting off the freeways and into neighborhood streets and then back on the freeway further on. Finally we figured out what was going on: it had been programmed to avoid toll roads, and all of the direct roads were toll roads! After we figure that out it was a fairly simple matter to reprogram it to accept toll roads, and we were off.
So today we passed through Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and New York. At a rest area in Pennsylvania we noticed the gorgeous sunset, so I took a picture of it, too!
It was a longer drive than we expected, so we are spending the night in a small town called Dunkirk, about and hour and a half from Niagara Falls. AAA helped us to find a really nice hotel. It was actually the least expensive of those that they recommended (and within our price range), and it’s the nicest hotel we’ve stayed in so far! It actually sits right on the shoreline of Lake Erie (which was too dark to see when we finally got close enough, so we’ll be able to see it in the morning).
Tomorrow we will (hopefully) get an early start and spend most of the day at the Falls. There’s a lot more to do there than we originally had thought.
Good night and God bless!