September 1 - 4 on into Illinois, Rock Island/Quad Cities

Sunday the 1st to Thursday the 4th of September

Welcome to Illinois - my 18th state

Route Maps

route on Sunday the 1st from Wisconsin to west Illinois

route on Tuesday the 3rd in the Quad Cities area

Campground
* Rock Island/Quad Cities KOA: As you can see from the map on the right, it's not just KOA that calls this area Quad Cities.  But I never did figure out which are the 4 towns being referred to.  At first glance, I assumed it was Davenport and Bettendorf on the Iowa side of the Mississippi River and Rock Island and Moline on the Illinois side.  But why wouldn't East Moline be included, since it looks almost as big as Rock Island?  And what about Milan and Silvis?  There are 5 towns all jumbled up together on the Illinois side.  Weird.

The campground was fine after my next door neighbors left on Labor Day, taking with them their temper-tantrum-throwing child and small dog.  They too (like previous difficult neighbors I had) were in a pop-up camper so were outside most of the time.  Hard to ignore.  Since I keep mentioning them, here's an internet photo of one, for those who don't know.

As advantages: they fold down into one compact solid-looking trailer and cost less than $500.  As disadvantages: they seem to be too small for families to do anything but sleep in them, and I've seen both men and women who were traveling alone struggle for quite a while trying to fold them back up again.

We stayed here a couple of days past Labor Day, and I was surprised that the campground stayed fairly populated into the middle of the week.


Comments along the drive
Actually, I made 2 drives.  The first was on the 1st coming into the state, with a side trip to the vet in Peoria.  The second was on the 3rd when I ran errands in the Quad Cities area.

First Drive

a LOT of onions

they really were onions

At a rest area, I saw this truckload of onions and decided I needed photographic evidence of what I was looking at.

Illinois is a true believer in toll roads, so I'd see a rough month ahead except they all seem to be in the north part of the state.  It looks like once I get farther south than Chicago, I'll be okay.

But when I was thinking I might grit my teeth for this long first day's drive, I looked up info about toll road pricing and found their system almost impenetrable.  In other states, the online system is useful.  In Illinois, it's ridiculously complex.  More than that, if you want to pay cash (like me) and you don't have the exact change (how could I when I can't figure it out), you have to find a staffed toll booth, which they aren't always.  And if you go through without paying, you have 7 days to get it paid, but how could I do that if I couldn't figure out how much to pay.  Online comments show that even people who tried to pay within 7 days were stymied by the system and ended up owing an arm and a leg for penalties.  So I went around the toll routes, adding a lot more time to the drive.

I ended up going through the west side of Rockford (a well established city in Illinois and all I can think of is Jim Rockford, detective extraordinaire).

Much of the countryside I drove through looked like Wisconsin - corn fields next to that green crop (soybeans?).  But here these fields are next to industries.  Several wind turbine farms along the drive.

I crossed a very long bridge across the Illinois River.

I saw a semi ahead of me that looked like it was having trouble staying in its lane.  A lot of trouble.  Made me very nervous and I finally decided to go around him to get out of his way.  A little scary because I couldn't trust that he'd stay in his lane while I went around him - and it turned out not to be someone falling asleep or drunk but a middle-aged man talking animatedly - maybe over the radio?  I couldn't see anyone else in the cab.  He should definitely pay more attention to his driving.

I passed what seemed like reincarnated Burma-Shave signs, only these said:
   Wherever you go
   In city or farm
   It is your right
   To keep and bear arms

I liked Burma-Shave better:
   King Henry the 8th
   Sure had trouble
   Short-term wives
   Long-term stubble

I passed a Mennonite Heritage Center near Peoria, so I assume they're established around here, though the internet says the majority of Amish folks settled in the southeast part of the state.

Side Trip to Peoria
The city of Peoria is on the Peoria River, which is pretty good sized.  Actually, from a close view of the map, I think that river is actually part of a whole system of water bodies that are all pieces of the Illinois River.  According to the map, the Illinois begins near Joliet, flows mostly southwest between a series of lakes (e.g. Upper Peoria Lake, Lake Chautauqua) but is still identifiably the Illinois River, and eventually dumps into the Mississippi River.

I saw at least 6 Corvettes today, scattered at intervals along the highway.  That seems an awful lot of such an expensive car, out on the Sunday before Labor Day when there's not much other traffic.  Come to think of it, that might be the best time to take out such a car.

I was here because this month I wanted to avoid the mistake I made last month of not getting Lily's claws clipped or her flea medicine applied right at the beginning of the month.  The only Banfield anywhere near my campground was in Peoria, a long way out of the route I would have taken.  But they were willing to fit her in today, so off we went.  Google promised the drive from Madison to Peoria would take 3½ hours, which I assumed meant at least 5 hours for us (I don't go 70 mph very often and take several rest breaks); it actually took 5½ hours but we'd left early so we made it in time for the appointment.

similar to my boxes

I got Lily into her carrying box and hadn't even finished stepping out of the RV when the bottom fell out of the box.  Terrified that Lily would run off or that I'd grab her and she'd use her unclipped claws on me, I squashed the box down on top of her until I could grab her and pivot at the still-opened door and toss her inside (past the dogs watching the whole scene).  Then I had to pick up the pieces of the box and unearth the second box (I used to have 2 cats, remember?).

I keep them stored in the underneath storage compartment, and since I don't use them often they're buried under 4 storage boxes of books which are under 2 lawn chairs, all behind a heavy duffel bag with my winter clothes which is behind the box with the water hose and the bag with extra paper plates and Saran Wrap and stuff, both of which sit on the box with the sewage hose.  Getting out a box is no trivial matter.  Especially not in the middle of a parking lot without a picnic table to put things on.  But we had an appointment so out it all came, then the spare box, then back went all the other stuff.  I assembled the spare box, grabbed Lily yet again, getting scratched and bitten in the process, and went into the Banfield asking for something to wipe up the blood.  Quel mess.  But it got done for another month.

I guess the box breaking was an accident waiting to happen anyway.  I got those boxes when I was still living in Tacoma (WA) and going to law school - mid-90s.  I used them first with Katie, then with Max and Quincy, then with Jasper and Roscoe.  For cardboard, they held up pretty well.  But I guess I'll have to start shopping for something else.

Third Day
I needed to get groceries, do laundry, go to a liquor store, and find a Target (for a cat carrying case).  I was surprised to find that the places listed online for these things were scattered all over the area, but decided this was as good a time as any to see what's here.

One of the first things I saw was an enormous banner proclaiming a tent revival to be held in Rock Island in mid-September.  Followed by sightings of a number of churches and a Bible Institute.  Presumably religion is important to many of the residents of Rock Island.

I saw another sign advertising the upcoming annual Ronald Reagan Bar-B-Q, a local GOP fundraiser held in Milan.  I'd forgotten that Reagan spent the first 26 years of his life in northern Illinois.  I might try to get to Tampico, where they've preserved the upstairs apartment where he was born, but may not have time this trip, especially since I'll go to his presidential library when I'm in California.

I can't help but see that the John Deere Co. is a big deal around here.  There's an expressway named for it, their world headquarters is here in Moline, and there's a museum that includes a lot of the original equipment he created.  I'd like to visit that and hope to include it when I come back through here on Illinois's share of the Great River Road.

When I stopped at a liquor store in Milan down the road from my campground, I asked how to pronounce the town's name.  One of the customers told me it's MY-lan - she said they're not high class Mih-LAN (like in Europe) but a little country village MY-lan.  And I later noted on the highway signs that Milan has 3,800 residents, while next door Rock Island has 59,000.