We Arrived in San Francisco

Omar got us to the airport in plenty of time. We flew Delta from Kansas City to Salt Lake City and then on to San Francisco. Either Delta is flying miniature airplanes or the passengers are getting a lot bigger. These were Canadian Regional Jet (CRJ) planes and they had two seats on each side of the aisle. It seemed we were almost sitting on each other's laps. The plane from Salt Lake City was a little bigger but not much. I never have seen a passenger get an extension for the seat belt before but the guy across the aisle was too big to buckle his seat belt and they gave him and extender.


Apart from being cramped, the trip was good. There is a lot of snow in the Rockies already. It was pretty cloudy most of the way and when we got to San Francisco it was raining and foggy (surprise!). Our rental car is a bright gold Ford Focus. It will be easy to spot anywhere we go. It has satellite radio and Jill turned the radio on and we listened to the Mizzou-KSU game on our way into the city.


The motel is a little creepy but we are hoping it looks better in daylight and no rain. We are near the Civic Center and that is a good location for seeing the city so we will be OK for two days. We walked to Rocco's restaurant on Folsom St. which was about three blocks. We decided that this is about as far away from Jefferson City as you can get and still be on the same planet. The restaurant was great (Gnocchi was great) but the walk was an eye-full. We now know where to go to buy all sorts of skimpy leather thingies. If they didn't have mannequins we would not have been able to imagine how one would wear them.


We got back to the motel and locked the door. Jill finished up her homework and we mapped out our plan of attack for tomorrow. We called Jim and made plans to see him on Monday. We are not adjusted to the time change so we will probably fall asleep early.

On our merry way -- Kansas City

We got on the road about 5:30 heading to Kansas City. Today was mostly spent getting ready. Watson and Iris have been deposited at the vet's for boarding. Watson hates to travel and cried the whole way. Iris is the perfect traveller and didn't make a noise. She actually gained a pound since April so she is almost at 5 pounds....quite a milestone for her.

We are staying at a motel by the Kansas City airport. This is where we have started several trips in the past. It is a motel with a car parking service and a shuttle to the airport. At each of our earlier stays the manager/owner has been Indian or Pakistani. This time it is an Arab...I guess that's the way things go in our global economy. This guy is a lot friendlier than the old owner. The motel is in better shape, too, and very quiet.

Jill did some homework here at the motel -- much of her classwork is on-line, which makes it convenient. You can access the material from where ever you happen to be.

Tomorrow we fly in to San Francisco and get there about 4 PM local time. Looks like the weather will be cool but good otherwise. No pictures taken today so I went down and got a picture of Omar at the front desk. He handles security as well as check-in and complaints. Since he has to get us to the airport tomorrow I think I'll be very nice to him.

Next trip....California in November

Jill and I are taking a long-postponed trip to California in November. We will spend a little time in San Francisco and up north near Point Reyes and the wineries and then down to Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Park. This should be an enjoyable trip. Jill has never been out there and Joie always wanted her to see the Redwoods.

Taking the long way home

We grabbed a breakfast at the motel and then got packed up and were ready to leave around 10 AM. Gene had to get all of his Obama and McCain bobble-heads packed securely....there isn't a great deal of extra space on the motorcycle. He has adorned the bike with little pigs at various places....makes it more customized. Davenport was actually a pretty nice place for a weekend. We had a good time without any permanent scars or property damage. We tried to find any newspaper article with our interview at the ballpark but the Argus newspaper wasn't available at the motel and they don't seem to have an Internet version. Maybe our 15 minutes of fame marched on without us.

Gene hit the road back to Wisconsin and I headed west on I-80. Traffic was surprisingly heavy but part of that was probably due to students heading toward Iowa City and University of Iowa. There were a lot of moving vans on the highway...more than I've noticed other times.

HERBERT HOOVER

My first stop was at the Iowa welcome center to pick up a better map. Then it was off to West Branch and the Herbert Hoover birthplace and Presidential library. The entire town of West Branch seems like it is frozen in time. Painted frame houses and picket fences everywhere. A few businesses were modern but there were still some older commercial buildings in the middle of town. Hoover was born here in 1874 and the family home was small, only 20 feet by 14 feet....that's 280 square feet for a family of five. They had two rooms, a summer kitchen on the back porch and an outhouse in the back yard. Across the street was the father's blacksmith shop....which was considerably larger than the house. About 250 feet in the other direction was the Quaker meeting house where the family worshipped. The one-room school house was about the same distance in the opposite direction...so Herbert Hoover's entire childhood existence was pretty much confined to an area not much larger than two football fields.

Hoover was orphaned at age ten and was supported by an uncle. He was educated as a mining engineer and was trapped in China during the Boxer Rebellion while working there.

The Hoover library looks pretty small and dates back to the 1960s when Presidential libraries were starting to be built. This one was totally built by private funding and then eventually donated to the National Park Service. There was a park ranger in the house who was very knowledgeable and another fellow that was apparently a local historian who was just hanging out there.

Hoover is buried on the grounds of the library with his wife, Lou.

So I learned a lot about Herbert Hoover He's not one of our universally appreciated presidents since he presided over the start of the depression...but I have to admit that he came a long way from a two-room house in rural Iowa.

AMANA COLONIES

When I stopped at the welcome center I also discovered the Amana Colonies were only 14 miles out of my way--- just a little west of Iowa City. I always heard about the Amana Colonies but didn't know much about them.

Apparently there was a bunch of disgruntled Lutherans in Germany in the 1700s who developed their own church tradition and separated from the other (presumably gruntled) Lutherans. The German government was freaking out....they tried to co-exist but that didn't work so they moved to the US and eventually landed in Iowa in the 1850s and set up a communal society with several small towns all called Amana. There is South Amana, West Amana, Middle Amana, High Amana, and plain old Amana...all together there are seven little communities that look like miniature Hermanns. Sometime in the early 1930s they gave up on the communal idea and then eventually started cranking out refrigerators. There is a huge factory near Middle Amana. Several hundred old buildings are still located in the seven villages but now there is a sprinkling of modern homes around the area. The church is still active and owns much of the land.

I managed to traipse through most of the smaller Amanas before I got to the main tourist center at Amana. The place is well preserved and there are a bunch of restaurants and shops as well as wineries and cheese shops and a general store. It is bigger than Arrow Rock but smaller and less urban than Hermann but has some of that same flavor. I ate lunch at a German restaurant and took some Cherry pie to go. A few doors down the street is the Ackerman Winery so, of course, I had to go in there. I walked out with three bottles of wine so now I had wine and pie. Next I wandered into the general store and wandered out with even more food....I'm glad I ate lunch before I went into these places, otherwise I'd be hauling a trailer.

I eventually got back on the road but it was already 3 PM as I was going through Iowa City. Highway 27 runs south from Iowa City into Missouri and it is a really good, divided highway with not a great deal of traffic. It is designated the "Avenue of the Saints" because it is a connecting highway from St. Louis to St. Paul (maybe why there isn't much tradfic). When it gets close to the Mississippi it is also part of the Great River Road. In Missouri I followed Highway 61 south to Palmyra and then went west through Mexico and down US 54 to Jefferson City...got home about 7:30.

This is not a particular scenic route unless you like corn. Corn is probably the state tree of Iowa. When they introduce the baseball players at the Davenport ballpark they come on to the field by stepping out of a small cornfield. Cute... "Is this Heaven?"......"No, just Davenport."

Because of all the rain and some flooding it is all overwhelmingly green for mid-August. There are some impressive farms and some huge old barns along the way. Swedeburg Iowa is a Swedish community with a Swedish heritage center. Lots of antique stores in the little towns.

Saturday in Davenport

We slept pretty well....the motel is really quiet. I treated Gene to the free breakfast at the motel. He was impressed. Next we stopped at the local Harley-Davidson dealer and looked at the various models they had.

We decided to go to the Putnam museum in Davenport to see the IMAX movie "Mystery of the Nile" . This is a documentary of a team of modern-day explorers rafting down the Blue Nile from Ethiopia all the way to Alexandria on the Mediterranean Sea. This was the first successful raft trip from the source at Lake Tana to the sea. This is a good IMAX film if you get a chance to see it. The section on Ethiopia was really interesting.

You can see a sneak preview at ... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jcqPFv1SoCw

While we were at the Putnam Museum we went to see the motorcycle exhibit. They have about two dozen old motorcycles dating from around 1910 up to the 1950s. They had some WW-II motorcycles and some like those I saw in New Mexico (Excelsiors and Indians) plus a few others. There was a special exhibit on women and motorcycles. Some of the old photographs were interesting.

We had a couple beers and some cheeseburgers at a sports bar down on the river front. The women's diving competition was on the TV and we developed our own scoring system that was somewhat unrelated to the diving. We don't know much about diving. Ours was based on wedgies.... you sort of had to be there

Next stop was the minor league baseball game. This was the Quad Cities River Bandits vs. the Burlington Bees. The score was tied up for most of the game but the Bees pulled ahead and eventually won 6 to 4. The ballpark was nice and they had a good crowd. We had good seats just behind home plate. There was a special give-away...McCain or Obama Bobble-Head dolls and you could pick your candidate. Obama won. Gene and I got selected to be interviewed for the local newspaper...I guess just because we looked so cool with our bobbleheads.

The downtown part of Davenport was seriously flooded just a few months ago and the ballpark was sort of an island. Water was well up into the First Street buildings in many places.

They had a fireworks show after the game so we watched that and then went back to the First Street Brewery and watched Michael Phelps win his eighth Olympic swimming gold medal. The whole place was glued to the TV. After that we headed back to the motel and ended the day. Tomorrow we head back home.

Iowa: Remarkably Unremarkable

I'm working on a new state motto for Iowa. How about "We've got nice barns" or maybe "We're like Kansas, only greener"....or "Land of Herbert Hoover" (following the lead of Illinois). "Keep moving--we'll plant corn anywhere" might work. Anyway, if you have seen northern Missouri, you have seen Iowa.

Gene and I got to Davenport this afternoon within 4 minutes if each other...how's that for synchronized driving? Roads were good. No surprises. The motel is nice so we are set for the weekend.

We managed to hit all of the local brew-pubs in Davenport, Rock Island and Moline in one afternoon and evening. Some were better than others. We also managed to sneak in to the Reggae Music festival without paying the $8 fee and got some curried goat to eat...it wasn't too bad. The music was only so-so. I guess it was as close as they can get to reggae. We also got into the local Rock Island casino....it is actually a boat on the Mississippi --- pretty small and it smells like the river. I managed to down a couple mussels at one of the brewpubs...it wasn't so bad....but I'll stick with the potato skins.

They had a bad flood here this year but you can't see any lasting damage....or at least we haven't seen anything.

"Iowa: We're what keeps Missouri and Minnesota from slamming together." How's that, eh?

Next Up --- Davenport Iowa!

Oh Boy! Here I go.....another trip!!!

This is a glorious road trip (not balloons) to the enchanted "Quad Cities" area staying two nights in delightful Davenport, Iowa, home of the Quad City "River Bandits" minor league baseball team. They are a single-A affiliate of the St. Louis Cardinals. In 1989 Jim Edmonds played for the Quad City Angels, a former incarnation of the team, and somehow seemed to go relatively unnoticed.

This being my birthday week I will be doing some celebrating....just how remains to be seen. I will be meeting Gene there so anything is possible.

As an update to my earlier posts....I am now the proud owner of a building lot in New Mexico. If you were a turtle or a snail you might consider it a ranch but I have to admit, at 1/2 acre it is a pretty small spread. My plan is to hold on to it for a while and then build a house and move out to the ranch in a year or two.

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