Rock Island and Elgin, Illinois

25 August 2013

Our last stop in Iowa was at the I80 Truck Stop and Truck Museum. I thought this would be kind of a funky touristy trap, but the museum turned out to be pretty interesting.  The building is relatively new and is filled with a large variety of restored trucks that have been used for transportation of people and goods.  Some were quite old, including an all-electric milk truck that was used in Chicago and could go 50 miles on a single charge. I recognized some of the more recent (1950 vintage) trucks; I suppose that might say something about my own personal qualifications for being put into a museum.

 

We didn’t go through the truck stop; it is the largest truck stop in the world. Probably save that for the next time we go through Iowa.  They have an annual Trucker’s reunion with about 30,000 people showing up for the festivities in July. As truck stops go, it seemed to be a bit higher quality.

 

We spent a day in the Rock Island/Moline area with the express purpose of taking a tour of the John Deere Harvester Works where the ginormous combines are built. We started out at the John Deere Pavilion in downtown Moline where there are several pieces of John Deere equipment (antique and new) to view and some to climb into.  There was even a walking tree cutter which looked like a huge bug with six articulated legs. They also had three simulators, one was a scooper where you could practice picking up scoops of dirt and putting them into a dump truck.  The simulator kept track of how much money you were making from the dirt scoops and subtracted any damage you made to the dump truck.  Let’s just say that Russ is a better engineer than a construction worker. Another simulator had you using a John Deere tractor to plant your crops.  If you want straight rows, don’t ask Russ! But he had fun anyway!  And he got to sit in a real ginormous combine!  There was lots of great information on the history of the company, the technical innovations they had implemented over the years and the impact the company has had on the world of farming and construction.  We learned that over 50 percent of the world’s crops are harvested using John Deere equipment!  That is mind boggling!

 

The two hour tour through the Harvester Works was fascinating.  We sat on trams which carried 15 people and were pulled by a small tractor (John Deere, of course) through the factory area. The tour guides and tractor drivers were retired John Deere personnel.  Our tour guide retired after 31 years in 1987 and has 24 years as a tour guide.  There seems to be a lot of loyalty and pride with the employees.

 

The facility is over 200 acres with 71 of those acres under roof.  We saw laser punches, robot welders, and nine miles of overhead track which is used to move subassemblies from station to station. We saw the whole process from punching out individual pieces to the final assembly of the combine.  It was fascinating.  Each combine costs around $500,000 and if you buy one, you can choose to come to the factory, watch the final assembly and then be the first to start your combine with your own gold key.

 

I thought the paint shop was particularly interesting.  It is all automated with 11 stations that the subassemblies pass through; from washing to remove any residue that might prevent the paint from adhering, to the paint baths which used electricity to bond the paint to the metal to a thickness of 1 millimeter.  The tour guide said that the combines typically are used for 17 years with 5 different owners and the paint does not fade or chip during that time. Why can’t the car manufacturers do that?

 

The next day we toured the original blacksmith shop site and home of John Deere.  He was a blacksmith who came to Illinois in the 1830s to find a better life for his family.  He invented a new plow which could cut through the prairie dirt without the goopy stuff caking up on the plow and impeding progress. His highly polished self-scouring steel blade opened the prairie to farming.

 

When John Deere moved his company to Moline, about 15 miles away, in order to have better access to transportation of goods and products, he basically abandoned his blacksmith shop and home.  A granddaughter bought the property and started restoration in the early 1900s. By then, no one knew where the blacksmith shop had sat.  Some archeology students at the University of Illinois excavated the site and found the foundations and locations of key parts of the shop, including the furnace and anvil. A building sits over the excavation site and a really interesting video is shown on the history.

 

A replica of the blacksmith shop is also on the property with a real blacksmith.  He had a great personality and did a tremendous job of explaining the parts of the shop and demonstrating the craft by making a leaf out of a piece of steel. We also toured the home and gardens. I am very impressed with the 176 year old John Deere Company - for the quality of the products they build, the loyalty of their employees and the public interface they provide. We thoroughly enjoyed our two days in John Deere land.

 

On our way into Chicago, we stayed at a campground near the John Deere historic site.  That was an adventure – had to drive down 2 miles of dirt road because the navigation system took us there on a roundabout path and then when we got there, we found out that the campground is, for the most part, a monthly or permanent camp for the local folks.  Generally, the quality of that kind of campground isn’t terrific.  But they did have a big field for the overnighters and we had our pick since we were the only ones.  It wasn’t ten minutes after we were settled in when we heard a train coming.  It sounded like it was going to go right through our trailer.  Turns out the track were about 150 feet away.  So we were treated to long freight trains every hour or so all the way through the night. Fortunately, I had earplugs and Russ just took his hearing aids out.  We laughed over that adventure.

 

The next two nights were at a forest preserve about 50 miles from Chicago.  This is the closest to Chicago that you can find a campground. We just did our chores while at this campground and got the trailer ready to be parked in a Chicago hotel parking lot. So now we are in the Chicago Marriott O’Hare hotel for the next four nights. Looking forward to seeing Chris!

 

I-80 Truck Stop near the Quad City area bordering Iowa and Illinois.

One of several antique trucks on display.

I have vivid memories of seeing one of these staring at me about this close in my rear-end mirror on the New Jersey turnpike.  Scared the heck out of me.

I remember seeing these kind of trucks on freeways when I was younger.

That mail is going to be delivered come rain, hail or snow.



This is an all-electric milk delivery truck. It could drive 50 miles a day which is better than some of the electric vehicles today.

We have seen these wind farm turbine blades traveling down the road and have been impressed with their size.  Our rig is about 48 feet from tip to tip, so this blade must be way over 100 feet.

 

The view from inside the huge bulldozer (that's me down below).

The John Deere emblem.

A big tractor with a seed planter attached. This was on display in the courtyard of the Pavilion.

Some of the earlier models of John Deere tractors.

Russ using a simulator.  The seat was mounted so that Russ could get feedback on the results of his actions.

That combine is huge - you basically enter on the 2nd floor.

The equipment controls were pretty complicated.

This is an experimental forestry tool which can walk through the rough terrain to get to the trees that are to be cut down.

This is more Russ' size.

Dreaming about all the places he could dig up with this bulldozer.

Yep, Russ had a good time at John Deere!

Statue of John Deere at the Historic Site, where he started his business.

 

A replica of the plow John Deere invented. He made two the first year - one of them is in the Smithsonian.

A replica of John Deere's blacksmith shop.  The corn cobs are drying and will provide seed for the next growing season.

The tools hung on the wall are the originals from the John Deere factory in Moline.

The blacksmith demonstrated the craft by making a leaf from a steel rod.

This is a manual drill from the early 1900s.

Inside the Deere home.  The furnishings are not original, although the building is.

 

North Liberty, Iowa

20 August, 2013

We traveled all of 19 miles to our next campground and are staying here near Iowa City for the next several days.  Lots to see in this area: Kalona, Herbert Hoover Presidential Library, the University of Iowa and, of course, Kalona.

 

I was so excited to go to Kalona, advertised as being the business hub of the largest Amish community west of the Mississippi and the quilt capital of Iowa.  Well….the Amish part is a bit overhyped.  There is a large Amish population in the surrounding country, but their presence in the town is not particularly noticeable.  I was much more impressed with Shipshewana, Indiana, which we will be visiting after Notre Dame.

 

I did enjoy the quilt blocks embedded in the sidewalks around the downtown area.  And there was a wonderful quilt shop, so I made up for my disappointment by buying some nice fabric. And the day was sweetened by treating myself to a Dutch letter from the local bakery.  Yumm!!

 

Saturday, we spent the day in West Branch, the site of the Herbert Hoover Presidential Library and the gravesite for Hoover and his wife.  The museum is nicely done.  I must have learned some of this stuff in school, but I sure didn’t remember it.  I came away with a new respect for the man’s humanitarian efforts and raw talents. The National Parks has a historical village behind the library which includes Hoover’s birth home where he lived for his first eleven years before he became an orphan and was sent to Oregon to live with his aunt. The man’s Quaker roots and his orphaning at an early age shaped who he became; one of the most effective humanitarians in the United States and a very poor politician.

 

Sunday, we drove around the University of Iowa.  School starts in a week and the students haven’t yet returned, so it was quiet.  Kind of hard to find the campus, since the buildings are totally integrated in with the city, including the old capitol building, and there wasn’t a discernible architecture theme to the buildings. It is a major research university with over 30,000 students.

 

Then on Monday, we went back to Kalona and toured the Quilt Museum.  Although it was not large, it had some very nice Amish and “English” quilts.  The surprise was the spool cabinets.  These cabinets were used in the 1800s to display thread for sale in general stores.  They were beautiful pieces of furniture.  I would love to own one, but I bet they are pretty scarce, at least the elaborate ones like we saw.

 

The Devonian Fossil Gorge was just a bit north of our campground, so we headed up there in the afternoon.  Interesting to see the fossilized corals and primitive animals in the limestone.  Iowa used to be part of a tropical sea back in the day, like 400 million years ago. All that is buried under several hundred feet of soil and other rock, but this gorge was exposed during the 1993 flood. We saw a very interesting video of the floods (there was another one in 2008) and the role that the Coralville dam played in mitigating the damage downstream.

 

Tomorrow we will leave Iowa. It has been a lot of fun seeing the out-of-way and not so out-of-way places. We are on our way to Chicago!

One of the more than 40 quilt blocks embedded into the sidewalks of Kalona.

The downtown section of Kalona.  A typical Iowan small town.

This is the home where Herbert Hoover was born and where he lived until he was 10, when he was orphaned.

A view of some of the beautiful grounds of Hoover's presidential library and museum.

Walking on a path through a restored tall prairie grass field towards Hoover's gravesite.

Herbert was the first president to use a telephone in the White House.  He was an early technology adopter.

After his wife died, he lived in the Waldorf Astoria Hotel until his 90s, writing his memoirs and working various humanitarian projects. This is a replica of his living room at the Waldorf.

Fishing was a lifelong passion for Herbert.

As a child, one of the few pleasures he was allowed was to go fishing.

Overlooking the restored prairie grass.

Hoover insisted on a simple gravesite, reflecting his Quaker roots.

The University of Iowa's Kinnick Stadium.

 

 

The old Capitol building is now part of the University of Iowa.

 

For all you Trekkies, we came across the future birthplace of James T. Kirk in our wanderings. This marker was inexplicably behind a small beauty shop, completely out of view.

A beautiful handmade Amish quilt in the Kalona Quilt Museum. Most of the quilts displayed were from the mid to late 1800s.  They were in excellent condition!

A small spool cabinet along with some Amish dolls.

Another Amish quilt.

There were several of these elaborately carved spool cabinets on display, most over 100 years old.

 

Russ walking the Devonian Fossil Gorge which was uncovered in the 1993 flood.

The 2008 flood widened and deepened the gorge, exposing even more fossils.

This is a fossilized coral head. The coral is long gone - this is the impression left in the mud and then turned to stone.

These were living creatures which looked like waving plants.

These are the kind of plants that one would find in the bottom on an ancient tropical sea, which is what Iowa was back about 400 million years ago.

In the distance is the causeway of the Coralville dam.

 

Ioway, Ioway, that's where the tall corn grows!!  Goodbye Iowa!