It's Sunday | Father's Day | Gummy Day | Big Things in a Small Town Day

 I will tell you... This has been a day. This has been a day unlike any other I have every experienced. And it all began with this. 

That's right, Friends... This is the World's Largest Gavel, located in Marshall, Illinois. We caught this on our way to Casey, Illinois, that is a "Small City with Big Things" (or "Big Things in a Small City" - can't remember). You will be amazed at the World's Largest (or sometime just Big things) that we saw today in 95-degree heat. (Okay, to be fair, it was only 85 at 8:30 AM, but it got up to 95 pretty quickly). Here they are (and the photos are as good as I could make them given the sun and the ingested gummies, which I needed to keep myself from grumbling the entire morning):

Big (not World's) Largest Anvil

[Dan here - that anvil is plenty big. It weighs 5530 pounds.]

World's Largest Pitch Fork

[Dan - I was having a really good tine sitting there!]

World's Largest Wind Chime (don't know where Dan is)

[The answer, my friend, is blowing in the wind....]

World's Largest Golf Tee

Big (not World's Largest) Antlers

[Dan - Didja hear the one about the buck who shed its antlers? Oh, never mind. It's pointless.]

Not World's Largest Spinning Top

World's Largest Taco

[My joke about tacos was too cheesy.]

World's Largest Key

Not World's Largest Pencil

[I just didn't see the point.]

World's Largest Mailbox

World's Largest Swizzle Spoon

[Ready to mix the world's largest cocktail!]

Big (but not World's Largest) Cactus

World's Largest Teeter-Totter

Not World's Largest Bird Cage

[You know she would have locked me in there if she could!]

Not World's Largest Yardstick 
(but it's not in real inches, so is it a yardstick???)

World's Largest Barber Pole

Not World's Largest Mouse Trap

So I assume, since there are two categories (World's Largest and Big) that there may be bigger things out there that ARE the world's largest, and I hope to god that Dan does not look to find those - at least in my lifetime. Or maybe his second wife would like to go find those things. 

One couple, whose photo Dan took for them, asked if they could reciprocate. "Oh, no thank you," I replied. "I don't really want a photographic record that I was ever here."

After Casey, we headed to Springfield through fields and fields of corn. Then we saw some wheat. And then more corn. There is lots and lots of corn growing here. In Springfield, we hit the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum (and tried to go to the Abraham & Mary Todd Lincoln house but couldn't do it in time), the Dana-Thomas House (a Frank Lloyd Wright creation - but no photos because we were not allowed), and both the first resting place and the final resting place of President Lincoln, Mary Todd Lincoln, and three of their four boys. 

The Biggest Eagle in the Lincoln Museum Gift Shop

[We are both bald! Birds of a feather...]

Lincoln's Final Resting Place

Lincoln's First resting place - from May 1865 to December 1865. The final resting place was not ready until 1874... so where was he before that?

While I was eating gummies, the following questions crossed my mind:

1) What does it take to become an historic road?

2) Why does the Illinois State Capitol Building have a shiny, silver dome?

3) Why did Dan want his photo by this pig?

[That's a piggy bank!]

4) How do the Paul Bunyan people feel about this blatant rip-off?

Tomorrow is a long driving day to Sioux City, and on the way we get to see the World's Largest Popcorn Ball AND the World's Largest Concrete Garden Gnome. I cannot wait. (But I have more gummies.)