June 24, 2008

We are at Scott County Park near Eldridge, Iowa. The campground we planned to stay at was filled and they recommended one of the State Parks. The first we tried was full also and they directed us to Scott County Park. This place is beautiful with large sites that have great level pads for the RV. The only negative thing is the abundance of gnats. They are everywhere and a real nuisance. The rangers told us they are extremely bad this year because of all the flooding.

Today we went to The John Deere Pavilion, John Deere Collectors Center and John Deere Store across the river in Moline, Illinois. What a great place to learn about the changes in farming and farm implements during the last hundred years or so.

Here is a group of school kids waiting to enter the pavilion.

Vera found one she liked.

I think we were all surprised to discover this harvester cost around $400,000.00.

At The Collectors Center, Vera wanted to take us for a little ride.

This is the John Deere World Headquarters.

This is the entry to the headquarters. These are all full sized machines.

I found one that was just right for me.

Char, the farm girl, became the heavy equipment operator. She declined to say whether or not she belongs to the Operators Union.

After all the John Deere fun we went to see the mighty Mississippi River. Even though the water level had gone down in the last couple of days, there was still no barge traffic.

This road along the river reopened this morning and still needed a little more clean up.

Vera said she could feel the power of the river from her fingertips to her toes.

Here you can see two birds leisurely floating along on a piece of driftwood.

These are some of the contaminated sandbags waiting to be removed.

We were fortunate to be able to visit the area along the Mississippi River after the terrible floods. A lot of people are still homeless in Iowa, Illinois and Missouri from the rising waters.