Saturday, September 26, 2009

Lincoln Highway, Clinton Library and the Big Dam Bridge

While we were driving to Amana, we saw this interesting bridge -- an original bridge from the Lincoln highway -- the first transcontinental highway in the USA! In fact, this is the only remaining bridge on the entire route. This highway was first gravel surfaced and stretched from New York to San Francisco. Imagine driving across this very bridge in 1915 as you traveled cross country.



We next visited the Little Rock, AR area and took in the Clinton Presidential Museum. Very interesting and what we both thought was scary was that we remembered all this and it seemed like yesterday!

Here is the actual limo President Clinton used while in the Whitehouse. This think is litterally built like a tank.

The museum featured activities and events for each year that Clinton served as President. One very interesting display was the President's daily activity calendar -- each day took some 5 pages of single spaced type to show the activities!

You could also visit an exact duplicate of the situation room. Here Rick imagines he is in charge!

We thought this replica of the Oval Office was perhaps the most interesting display of all. Furnished exactly as it was while President Clinton was in office, this really provided on insight into the office of the President.

While driving around Little Rock, we say a sign for "The Big Dam Bridge" and had to investigate. It turns out that this is a real bridge for walkers and bikers only and crosses the Arkansas River. It gets its name from the fact that it uses a dam for many of the supports and is, in fact, the longest pedestrian bridge in the USA at some 4,300 feet.

Rising some 90' above the river, this makes a spectacular viewing point for the river. Today, the river was very high and water was really moving as a result of recent heavy rains.

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