Illinois, Iowa, Minnestota

Midwest maneuvers through Illinois. Iowa and into Minnesota

June 14-16, 2013 brought the North American Safari travelers through more of the Midwest region of the U.S. Friday the 14^th was our 44^th anniversary. We spent the morning driving from Indianapolis, Indiana to Peoria, Illinois a relatively quick 270 miles. Mike puts the rig in drive and “OFF” we go. The roadside was once again covered with acres and acres and acres of corn. I “Goggled” that the American farmers will plant 97.3 million acres of corn this year, think that we have seen much of that crop in the last week or so. Many of the fields still look pretty wet from recent rains, not sure that some of the corn will grow? Maybe there is a “bog” variety? Along with the huge amount of visible corn, we have also seen 100s of wind turbines – the farmers appear to be taking advantage of their ability to generate energy and grow corn underneath. We got into Peoria in time to go to a very nice steak dinner at Jim’s Steak House (a Peoria Land Mark) to celebrate OUR DAY.  A great dinner of oysters, steak & crab and a bit of adult beverages was enjoyed by both of us.

Wind Turbines

Leaving Illinois in our rear view mirror, we entered Iowa. Yes, yes: there was much more corn to be seen today as well. The most notable few miles of our 250-mile route today was the NARROW ROAD EXPERIENCE. Unfortunately there are no photos of this because Karen was too busy praying and hanging on for “dear life” and Mike, well he was just busy hoping to keep the rig in-between the very narrow lanes. This adventure was one of those that reflecting back on - we know we are VERY LUCKY to have made it through with no damage. We saw the warning signs that read “Wide Loads” to exit at the next exit.  Are we a wide load??? We quickly reviewed our measurements; the rig is 10’4” wide – add 1’ for each of our side mirrors. Sooooooooo, when we saw the sign that we were entering the narrow zone that was only for vehicles 10’ or less, there was suddenly a dead silence from the driver AND his navigator. YIKES! Well after what seemed like a very long construction zone, all remained unscathed. It was VERY -VERY narrow, especially the 3 times that there were big-rigs coming head-on towards us. Phew - once again Mike was amazing: cool, calm and collected making it through this scary experience. Still trembling, we pulled into our campground in Clermont, Iowa, quickly changed our under garments and enjoyed a quite afternoon sitting along side the Quarry Lake.

Fathers’ Day, our very special Dad drove 350 miles through Iowa. We stopped for a mid-morning break in Mason, Iowa – also known as River City, home of Meredith Wilson the composer of the Music Man.  The town has a rich heritage of music, with many music, band and drum corps competitions scheduled. Unfortunately we were not there on one of the weekends when there was an event scheduled.  We motored on into Minnesota to join up with the US I-90. This kept us on our continued westward route. CORN was still the most visible roadside attraction, although we did see a sign pointing out that the 60 foot Jolly Green Giant was in a town just off the highway a few miles. We did not go visit him, but believe he probably does reside in this “vegetable growing” region. We made our goal for the day to get to Sioux Falls, South Dakota. We spent the evening in camp barbequing a nice piece of pork loin and relaxing.

Mason City or River City