Day Seven: Iowa from right to left

The Radisson that Brent and I stayed at the night before was directly across the street from our first destination of the day - The John Deere Pavilion.  Filled with shiny new and old tractors and other farm equipment, the Pavilion is an interactive display of sorts.  Calling it a museum would be a stretch.  It's one big advertisement and play zone.  One section focused on history, another the future.  We happened to show up on Illinois Ag Day or something and the place was crawling with hundreds of children who were all trying to talk louder than each other.

Unfortunately, the hoards of misbehaving children won out and Brent and I didn't stay long.  We checked out some of the history displays and hopped up in a few pieces of equipment.  Brent attempted to explain a fuel injected engine cut-out to me.

 We were interested in taking a tour of the John Deer Factory but found out that the company is far from visitor friendly.  They have some dumb system to where you have to call a 1-800 number and talk to a national tour coordinator.  I called the number and got some dumb recording and had to leave my name and phone number.  It's been three weeks and I've yet to get a call back.  So, no John Deere tour for us.  Boo on them.

So we left the great state of Illinois and entered Iowa.  The rest of our day was dedicated to Iowa.

Over the Mississippi we went and before we knew it we were approaching the World's Largest Truckstop!  Of course we had to stop and check that out.  And it was HUGE!  It had full size semis inside and about every tacky souvenir and truck accessory imaginable.  We did find awesome CB antennas for my brothers while we there!

Across the parking lot from the truckstop is the Iowa 80 Trucking Museum, which has a pretty cool collection of old trucking tucks.  All were in pretty great shape!!  It was a nice place to stop and stretch the legs.

Back on the road, we headed towards our last presidential library of the trip.  This one was an add on.  I really didn't know it was on the route until we were in Kansas City.  The Herbert Hoover Presidential Library and Museum was just of I-80 in West Branch, Iowa.  This was the smallest and least flashy museum of the lot but it was interesting to learn about a lesser known president.  Hoover was an engineer and travelled the globe prior to his entrance into politics.  He was a great organizer and helped feed the world's starving populations during and after World War I and II.  He was a millionaire and his wife was a firecracker.  She shot guns and loved the outdoors and was involved with the Girl Scouts.

After touring the museum we drove around the grounds to the gravesite of the Hooovers.  It was peaceful and unassuming for a man of millions and a far cry from the marbled and stain-glassed chapel of Ike's final resting place.

Iowa was pretty.  The rolling fields of corn were beautiful.  We made tracks into Iowa City for lunch.  That was against our better judgment probably.  The busy college town was hilly and filled with traffic.  The one pizza place we were looking for didn't open until 4pm so we just parked and found the closest thing, which was the Bluebird Diner.  Burgers and fresh squeezed lemonade did the trick.  The traffic and late lunch had made us testy but we hit the road with a renewed urge to enjoy the rest of the trip and get home.

The rest of the day was spent driving.  And driving.  We made it all the way across Iowa and entered Omaha, Nebraska in the dark.  We were more than happy to find our Holiday Inn Express for the night.  One more day on the road and we'd be home.  It was kind of sad but also a good thing.  Our brains were overloaded with great experiences and our bodies tired from the constant go, go, go of trying to see and experience as much as we could.