SPRINGFIELD, Ill. - "I wonder if Lincoln had to turn around this much," The Navigator asked, map splayed across her lap in the passenger seat.

I had just spun the steering wheel for our fifth or sixth U-turn of the day on yet another placid two-lane highway indistinguishable in its beauty from every other one we'd seen that day. Hence all the U-turns.

In addition to his better-known achievements - uniter of a fractured nation, freer of the slaves, 16th president - I was ready to heap one more laudatory title upon Abraham Lincoln: deft traveler of the Illinois countryside.

The Navigator and I were somewhere between Middletown (population 420, according to a U.S. Census Bureau estimate) and Tremont (population 2,072), in the heart of what was once the 8th Judicial Circuit. The circuit included 14 counties (later reduced to eight) that didn't have their own court staff in the mid-19th century, so the court staff came to them: prosecutor, defense attorney and judge. Usually acting as the defense, Honest Abe traversed this land largely by carriage or horseback every fall and spring for 23 years. At night, the lawyers slept two in a bed, three or four beds jammed in a room. Each trip lasted about three months and covered 450 miles.

Down here they say the experience made the man. Lincoln spent eight years in the state's General Assembly and two years in the U.S. House of Representatives, but for the bulk of his pre-presidential career, he worked as a lawyer. At home in Springfield, he was in private practice and did a lot of work for railroads, the largest corporate clients of the day. But nearly half his year was spent traveling the circuit, where he took on his share of oddities, such as defending a woman accused of murdering her husband with a piece of firewood or successfully prosecuting a man accused of stealing a herd of cows.

"It is strange to contemplate that ... Mr. Lincoln's whole attention should have been engrossed in petty controversies or acrimonious disputes between neighbors about trifles," wrote Henry Clay Whitney, a lawyer who rode the circuit with the future president, in the book, "Life on the Circuit with Lincoln." "Yet I have known him to give as earnest attention to such matters, as, later, he gave to affairs of state."

In advance of the Feb. 12 bicentennial of Lincoln's birth, The Navigator and I set out last month to retrace his route as closely as possible and see what he saw. The good news: Historical organizations long ago planted markers at each county line to guide travelers on the same path Lincoln took. The bad news: The route includes dozens of intersections that are just wisps on the map and miles from a paved road. In the name of honesty, I should say we got turned around more than once. But when we finished four days later, The Navigator had a new appreciation for the man.

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If you want to try such a trip, here are two suggestions: Get a navigator and meet Guy Fraker. Fraker, 70, is a semiretired Bloomington, Ill., lawyer who has dedicated his recent years to Lincoln's place on the 8th Judicial Circuit. Fraker, whose raspy voice comes with an easy laugh, has been a Lincoln fan for decades but became addicted only after cutting back his legal work.

"Instead of playing golf, I got serious about Lincoln," said Fraker, whose book, "The 8th Judicial Circuit: Lincoln's Ladder to the White House," is to be published next year by Southern Illinois University Press.

He has driven the circuit several times and memorized much of it, a near wonder considering it involves an unbelievable number of quick turns on tiny roads - hence the need for a navigator. For navigation, I set out recruiting and settled on an old friend who I figured could A) be in a car with me for four days without arguing about music and B) get lost with me many, many times during those four days without arguing about being lost.

She and I started in Springfield, where we visited The Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum and the modest, comfortable two-story house where he lived with his wife and children. Both were interesting, but light on circuit history. And The Navigator squealed when she found on display in the museum a wooden folding mirror that Lincoln used for shaving while on the circuit.

"It would be pretty bulky to take with you," she said. "I can see why he would want to start growing that beard."

About 10 miles north of Springfield we found a spot where a marker was supposed to have been; its disappearance is a mystery to Lincoln scholars. Near Delavan we passed the first existing marker - a bird had built a nest inside - before getting to Tremont, the no-stoplight former seat of Tazewell County, where the Tremont Museum and Historical Society, at Madison and Sampson Streets, is open from 2 to 4 p.m. on the second Sunday of each month.

Fraker had given approximate directions to a brick house with a wide yard where Lincoln would stay and barbecue with the circuit members. Such social gatherings were the lifeblood of the circuit, replete with "bustle, business, energy, hilarity, novelty, irony, sarcasm, excitement and eloquence," Whitney wrote in "Life on the Circuit with Lincoln."

We couldn't find the house, a private home, during a quick spin through its quiet streets, so we stopped into one of the few businesses on the town's main street - an insurance office. I explained the house we were looking for, and Bob Wettstein, who ate a baloney sandwich at his desk, immediately knew where to send us.

"That was my grandpa's house!" said Wettstein, 30. "I don't know why Lincoln stopped there, but its been passed down for years that he stayed there. It's cool to tell people."

After marveling at the house and the long, sloping yard where Lincoln barbecued, we pushed on past another marker and landed in Metamora (population, 3,324). There, in the former seat of Woodford County, is one of the bigger finds on the trip: one of the two courthouses on the circuit still standing in its original location where Lincoln practiced.

Built in 1845, that creaky two-story brick courthouse at 113 E. Partridge St. has been refashioned as a museum and state historic site. The second-floor courtroom is simple and tidy, the walls white and unadorned except for blue trim on the windows. "The floorboards are original, so you're literally walking in Lincoln's footsteps up here," said museum curator Jean Myers.

The Metamora courtroom looks onto a park where, Myers said, Lincoln would sit in the days before a session to meet potential clients and mediate disputes that he thought shouldn't go to court. Sometimes he would bring those mediations to the tavern "to get them lubricated a little bit," Myers said. He called it an example of Lincoln being a peacemaker who was a step ahead of everyone else.

"Lincoln had to get the skills somewhere that made him the great president he was," Myers said. "In my opinion, it happened on the 8th Judicial Circuit." On the way to Bloomington, we passed the third marker.

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The next morning, Fraker gave us his tour of relevant Lincoln spots in downtown Bloomington, which include a handful of buildings where the future president worked. Some have sat untouched for decades - same stairs, same floor, same walls - but not in an effort to preserve history; they just haven't been redeveloped yet.

After a tour of the David Davis Mansion, l000 E. Monroe Drive, Bloomington - Davis was the judge on the circuit and helped get Lincoln elected president - The Navigator and I headed back to the countryside, passing Marker 4 on the desolate, snowy border between McLean and Logan Counties.

Logan County has the rare distinction of hosting two essential 8th Circuit sites. The initial county seat was in a town called Postville, which no longer exists. It was swallowed up by what is today known as Lincoln (the only town in the nation named for the president before he was president because he was that popular on the circuit). Henry Ford bought the original Postville Courthouse in 1929 and moved it to Dearborn, Mich. Today a replica sits where the original did, at a state historical site at 914 5th St. in Lincoln. The first floor is a decent little museum about the circuit, and the second is the courtroom.

Twelve miles south sits Mt. Pulaski (population 1,591), where Lincoln visited when that town was the county seat between 1848 and 1854. Like in most towns where the circuit stopped, the court is literally at the center of town. All life, businesses and commerce have grown around it. Locals still take immense pride in the fact that other than Metamora, it is the only standing courthouse on the circuit where Lincoln worked.

"You can hear him walk," said Wallace Kautz, 74, site coordinator for the Mt. Pulaski Courthouse, 113 S. Washington St. "Other people have heard it too. Something is in this building, and whatever it is, it sounds like Lincoln."

We spent the rest of the day motoring past grain silos and heavy farm equipment, finding three more county-line markers; two were on dirt roads that afforded unspoiled 360-degree views of snowy farms. We hit the last one in the dark while Interstate Highway 72 rumbled a stone's throw away. Under a moonless sky, we angled our headlights to get a good view.

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After a night in Urbana, we headed east on a lovely strip south of I-74 called Lincoln Trail Road, which is one of the original, crooked paths Lincoln traversed. Found at the first intersection on Illinois Highway 49 just 2 miles south of Ogden, it's Fraker's favorite part of the route, and it's not hard to see why. As the dirt and gravel head 35 miles east to Danville - passing another marker - the farms take on a slight rolling quality, then become gentle hills. They look more like New England than anything else on the route.

In Danville, another spare city puncturing our idyllic rural escape, we stopped at the Vermilion County Museum, 116 N. Gilbert St. (on display is a desk used by Lincoln). Next door, and part of the museum, is the home of Dr. William Fithian, who served in the General Assembly with Lincoln and put him up when the circuit came through town. The highlight: a walnut, half-canopy bed on which Honest Abe slept.

Museum director Sue Richter said locals take their Lincoln heritage "very seriously," noting that her husband's grandfather was named Abraham Lincoln Richter, and she knows a woman whose grandmother sat on Lincoln's lap when she was a child.

"When you have things like that, it's not all that far removed, and it feels personal," Richter said.

We roared past another marker, stopped in Paris (population 8,785) to see the Milton Alexander house, 132 S. Central Ave., where Lincoln stayed. Then it was on to Charleston (population 20,296), where one of his legendary debates with Stephen Douglas was held, the only one on the circuit. On the way, we passed Marker 10.

The Navigator and I were getting good at spotting the markers from farther away.

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The first marker we came across on Day 4 was on the line between Coles and Shelby Counties. Unlike the others, it was not on a post but was sunk into a low brick wall. Fraker said the post was knocked down, and a local who got tired of waiting for the state to fix it improvised her own solution.

We passed by courthouses in Shelbyville (population 4,615) and Sullivan (population 4,339), then found the county-line marker at the border of Macon and Moultrie Counties - from which the face has been removed (most likely stolen).

In Decatur, we visited Lincoln Square, a tiny patch of downtown marked by a statue of a smooth-faced Lincoln, where he gave his first political speech (on behalf of the local Whig Party) at 21. We visited the Macon County Historical Museum, 5580 N. Fork Rd., also in Decatur, where director Pat McDaniel emphasized Lincoln's local roots. Lincoln's first home in Illinois was just down the road. "Everyone thinks it's Springfield, but it's not," McDaniel said.

But unlike some of the smaller towns we'd seen, Decatur is somewhat apathetic about its Lincoln legacy. McDaniel started a Lincoln Festival in 2005 but folded it after three years due to lack of interest.

"When you look at old articles from the 1920s, they were complaining even then that people didn't care about the Lincoln heritage," McDaniel said. "It's just sad."

We buzzed by Lincoln Trail Homestead State Park (10 miles west of Decatur off U.S. Highway 36, on Lincoln Trail Memorial Parkway). That's where the Lincoln family first lived after moving from Indiana in 1830. We went through Taylorville (population 12,222), where a statue of Lincoln and a pig stand outside the Christian County Courthouse, a reference to Lincoln jokingly asking a judge for a "writ of quietus" because a pig was squealing beneath the courtroom floor.

And we passed the final two county-line markers. That last one, perched beside a creek at the Christian and Sangamon County border, felt like a quiet victory. In the cold, as the orange sun dipped, The Navigator and I exchanged a congratulatory hug, then drove the last 50 miles to Springfield to complete the journey we began hundreds of miles earlier. We stayed at the most obvious destination we could find: The President Abraham Lincoln Hotel and Conference Center.