Today, we headed south again. This time to Arcola, IL to visit the
Raggedy Ann and Andy Museum. This is the hometown of Johnny Gruelle who invented the dolls back in 1915 while he was a newspaper cartoonist. The museum is run by his descendants and contains a wide variety of the dolls as they evolved through the years as well as other items from the early times. Susan bought a small Raggedy Ann doll and had it autographed by his grand-daughter, who is an artist in her own right.
From there, we drove out to see
Rockome Gardens, an Amish tourist attraction just outside of Arcola. It was like wandering around a small Amish village where we saw interesting rock sculptures decorating beautiful gardens, visited a few unique shops, watched a
horse pulling demonstration and ate a delicious lunch at their
restaurant.
Our last stop of the day was at the
Champaign County Historical Museum back in Champaign, IL. It was a small museum but loaded with some excellent displays of farm and town life from the early 1900's. We even saw a small bronze statue by Gutzon Borglum of Abraham Lincoln sitting on a bench that resembled the larger one in silver that we saw at Houmas House in Livingston, LA last Spring. A very nice place to visit and our guide was very informative.
Today, we headed south again. This time to Arcola, IL to visit the Raggedy Ann and Andy Museum. This is the hometown of Johnny Gruelle who invented the dolls back in 1915 while he was a newspaper cartoonist. The museum is run by his descendants and contains a wide variety of the dolls as they evolved through the years as well as other items from the early times. Susan bought a small Raggedy Ann doll and had it autographed by his grand-daughter, who is an artist in her own right.
From there, we drove out to see Rockome Gardens, an Amish tourist attraction just outside of Arcola. It was like wandering around a small Amish village where we saw interesting rock sculptures decorating beautiful gardens, visited a few unique shops, watched a horse pulling demonstration and ate a delicious lunch at their
restaurant.
Our last stop of the day was at the Champaign County Historical Museum back in Champaign, IL. It was a small museum but loaded with some excellent displays of farm and town life from the early 1900's. We even saw a small bronze statue by Gutzon Borglum of Abraham Lincoln sitting on a bench that resembled the larger one in silver that we saw at Houmas House in Livingston, LA last Spring. A very nice place to visit and our guide was very informative.
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