Lincoln was born here? Really?

When we decide to go anywhere, Craig starts the trip planning by searching for two things 1) checking for weather stations on our route and 2) boring historical neat places that we can visit. This trip was by no means an exception and while there were only two weather stations, there were lots of educational places nearby.

Halfway between my parent's house and the Maker's Mark distillery there lies a plethora of Lincoln sites so of course we had to check them out. We started with his boyhood home. I thought this was the coolest because it is the place that Lincoln mentions as the location of his earliest recollections. The place where he has lots of fond memories. I could actually picture little Abe running around the hills and helping his dad gather wood and making mud pies.
Apparently, nobody else thinks it is especially cool as there are only two signs there. Well, three if you count the sign saying that they would like to fix it up but currently have no plans to do so. I really do think that the park service should be able to spare a guy for a couple days to at least fix the fence though.
Doesn't it seem anti-history of them to just let the former fence of our former president sit there in such disrepair?

Well, after spending as much time as we could at Lincoln's boyhood home (i.e. 5 minutes) we headed over to Lincoln's birthplace which was much more of a visitor friendly location. I slept through a little video about Lincoln's childhood then we went on a little walk to see this great place were Lincoln was born.

But the cabin isn't just sitting there, it is inside the elaborate memorial. Fancy memorial from a distance.
Fancy memorial up close (don't mind the cute husband).
"The cabin where Lincoln was born."
Except it isn't. It is a cabin built with logs from a house that used to be on the same land as the house Lincoln was born in. I guess the thought was some of the logs from that house were probably originally from Lincoln's cabin. Sketchy.

Well, then I thought I could at least you can get an idea of how small the cabin was. Except the cabin that they built isn't even the same size as the Lincolns. They built this special memorial to put it in but ran short on funding so had to make the memorial smaller than planned which in turn meant they had to reconstruct the cabin in a smaller proportion than it really was so that it would fit. (12x17 instead of the original 16X18).

After that, I was just annoyed with the whole log cabin charade so I left to go see the sinking springs they had mentioned in the small part of the video I was awake for. I met up with my dad and Craig there and someone mentioned that the water fountain next to the spring was pumping out the spring water. So I took Craig's picture drinking from it. Then my dad's. Then my brother Rick came up and took a drink so I took his picture before he asked me what I was doing. When I replied that obviously I was taking pictures of them drinking the spring water he just laughed. Apparently the sign right behind me said that the spring water was not potable. So that water fountain...was just a water fountain! But didn't I get such good pictures of them drinking?
But I despite my frustrations with several aspects of the trip and I'm not sure I would recommend it to others, I did have a good time. Plus, I got a stamp in my National Park Passport. And that makes it worth it.