Today was another perfect weather day for a road trip. We shot up I-90 from Elgin, IL to Rockford before switching to US-20 to make our way over to Iowa via Galena. Turns out that Galena is the original home of Ulysses S. Grant. We didn’t stop to see his home, as the area was packed with July 4th weekenders, but it looked like a really nice town to visit again sometime. One thing we did notice in this area is that the country side leading into and out of Galena looked very much like home (ie: Upstate New York).
The picture above could easily be Bristol, NY. Anyway, after getting through Galena and continuing to follow US-20, we moved into Iowa by crossing the Mississippi River at Dubuque, IA.
The funny thing about Iowa is once you get into the state a few miles, you basically never have to use your turn signals again. The road is straight as an arrow, amazingly flat and all you can see are three things:
- Corn
- Soy Beans
- The Horizon
This is actually pretty cool and zen like….as in “One with the Road”….for about an hour or two. The problem is, the state is about 4 to 5 hours wide. So, you start looking for things to keep your mind occupied. Sudoku puzzles anyone!?……
(See the corn going by in the background while Jeff is driving!?)
One neat thing we did see along the way was a large crop of Wind Mills for generating power. These were not your garden variety ones, but the megawatt sized ones and they went off towards the horizon as far as you could see….and in Iowa that is a LONG way. We’re guessing there must have been hundreds of them.
We stopped in Fort Dodge, IA for a late lunch/early dinner at a local place named the Mineral City Mill and Grill for some very tasty sandwiches which was our only real stop in Iowa before ending the day in Sioux City just short of the Nebraska border.
Tomorrow we head to Hot Springs, SD via northern Nebraska (another pretty long day) to get into position for our visit to Mount Rushmore on Monday.
Footnotes:
- We had intended to stop in Dyersville, IA to see the Field of Dreams baseball stadium, but we missed the turn and didn’t realize it until it was too late to go back….I guess we should have put that one into the GPS
- Mom, I was not really driving and doing Sudoku puzzles at the same time.
- No corn or soy beans were harmed during the making of this production
