July 8

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The furniture in the Starved Rock lodge restaurant was also made from reclaimed wood.  It has so much personality..............  This is the seat of the chair next to mine.

Leaving Starved Rock; headed for the highway.  Loved this little tear-drop trailer.  I always think "Oh, I want one!" when I see cute little trailers.  But in reality, I'd rather have a full set of modern plumbing as part of my accommodations............ 

Another day of gorgeous big skies over a beautifully green Illinois.  I didn't touch the saturation in this pic.  It's just as the camera and I recall it.

Corn, corn, corn, and more corn.  We also saw soybeans, and a bit of what I think was wheat.  Even a few fields of sunflowers.  But mostly it was corn.

Love the way the corn looks like bright green corduroy, when you can see down the tops of the rows.  Closer crop of the above.
 

Most of our trip looked pretty much like this -- enormous blue sky with lots of individual clouds, over bright green corn fields.

But of course there was also this.   Road-eater, pouring crumbled road into a truck to be hauled away.

You can just make out one of these, between the road hauler and the white semi, above.

Windmills.  Humongous windmills.  We didn't see all that many windmills, and fewer solar panels, but there were some.

You can tell something, from the size of that semi, about how big those windmills were......  Very big indeed.

In due time, we came to the really big river.  The continent divider, as my better half described it. 

Alas, all of my pics of the mighty Mississippi were blurry.  We'll hope those from the return half of the trip are better.



Iowa looks interestingly different from Illinois.  Less flat, and with fewer trees.  I wonder why.....  Still wonderfully green.

We got to Des Moines in the late afternoon, and found family at the motel.  We grabbed some dinner, and then hung out in the motel with family members in the evening.

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