Day 30: Anchor, Sibley, and back to Mapleton...

Still in Mapleton... Long story...

Today I failed to plan my route ahead of time and made a tactical error that put some pressure on and eventually brought us back to Mapleton for one more night...

We took our time getting packed and started this morning (actually, we were not ready to pull out until about 1:00 p.m.). My intentions were to go to Sibley, IL and then on to Nauvoo.

However, when I plugged the route into "Strips and Treats", I noticed that Sibley was exactly east and Nauvoo was exactly west and the route would have had us double back right passed Mapleton...

So... I made a command decision to throw Deb in the car and beat feet to Ford County Court House in Paxton, where she closed at 4:30.

We arrived at 3:40, grabbed the laptop and ran into the Records Dept. to search marriage records. We found three records before we had to leave.

On the way out, we notice a large memorial on the wall of the Court House (inside the lobby) that honored the members of Ford County that served in WWI. We found a few of Deb's relatives listed. This was curious to her... Rudolphs in Ford County???

After we left, she asked me to look for a Mt. Hope Cemetery in the GPS. It was nowhere to be found.

However, there was a St. Johns Lutheran Church just 5 miles outside of Sibley (where Deb's relatives lived and died) so we drove to it.

It was out in the middle of nowhere in Anchor, IL.

She located some graves that we think are related to her family in Sibley... but she did not find the Lohmeiers that she was hoping to find...

As we were leaving, a lady left the church and Debra asked her if she knew where Mt. Hope Cemetery was. She told us to go five miles down the road and turn right on Rt. 165 (a country road cut through tall corn on both sides of the road) and look for a small hill... (shouldn't be to hard in this country that is as flat as a table).

After the hill, you should see a cemetery on the left side of the road...

Sure enough, there was a slight rise in the road and on the left was Mt. Hope Cemetery.

A quick drive through got Deb very excited... she was spotting family names all over... I thought she was going to jump out of the window.

Right off the bat, she found the Rudolph Family plot... This is where the mystery began to unravel... She did not know the Rudolphs were there... or had never really made the connection because her grandfather and father were in Woolstock, IA. But all of her grandfather's family was and still is here! (Including the ones listed on the court house memorial). This was a very exciting find for her!

The sun was going down fast so we systematically ran through the cemetery while I took photos like a madman (I am glad the cemetery was small).

As the sun went down, I turned around and noticed the most perfect sunset scene I have ever seen...

The sun was going down perfectly behind the only farm house for miles!

I took photos until I knew I had to stop or we would run out of enough light to search the rest of the cemetery (and I had no flashlight).

As I turned around the other direction, I was met by a huge harvest moon!

Deb kept searching while I snapped some more photos of the moonrise.

Eventually, the sun went down and it got dark.

While Deb continued to research the laptop, I took advantage of the perfect photo opportunity... Sunset on one side and full moonrise exactly 180 degrees in the other direction!

The sunset and the farmhouse silhouette was reflecting off of this headstone with the moon in the background!

Debra researched in the Mini while I took some shots of the cemetery with the sunset on the in the west and the headstones being lit by the full moon from the east (throwing very distinct shadows from the moon low on the horizon).

This was the most fun I ever had in a cemetery.

Afterwards, we returned to Brandyn and Jen's for the night.

I think our plan to is to leave earlier in the morning and head for Nauvoo... but you never know what will happen????