Galena, Illinois- home of President Grant

Union and Woodstock, Illinois were nice, but it sure was nice getting back on the road. Liam Maloney had suggested checking out Galena, Ill. Galena is a former mining town that at one time was very prosperous, it died, and was revived. It has 1850's era architecture, which now houses trendy shops and restaurants..To me it reminds me of Brattleboro, VT. It seems to also have many weddings, at least from looking at the advertisements, and I can see this would be a nice place for a wedding.. we saw several love birds walking around town.

The town is in the NW part of Ill, and it is mountainous. The area mined Galena and other lead minerals, but since lead is no longer popular... The odd thing was I could not find any mineral Galena in Galena at all....

The town has an interesting history. The Town museum is worthy. After the civil war, General Grant and family came to live here, as well as 5 other Civil War Generals. There is Grants house, which we didn't see, and more important is the famous painting at Appomattox with Grant taking Lee's surrender, by Thomas Nast. Also I did not know that a Seneca Man transcribed the surrender, and was a friend of Grants, who also live in Galena.

The only thing bad about the days , was we got kicked out of the Walmart parking lot at 10pm. The nice Cop, said it was an ordinance, because a campground was right next door, only problem was we couldn't get into the campground that late , being it was closed, so a very tired group drove off the the Walmart in Dubuque IOWA. But Something smelled like burning tires when we got there.. we were too tired to deal with it.