Gettysburg

Day 6 September 18, 2024 Ames Iowa to Joliet Illinois 319 miles

The day is partly cloudy with some breeze. We were the only people in the hotel last night. Don’t think that happens often. Good thing we weren’t there on the weekend. Iowa State University is here and they have a home football game. The hotel will be full.

We are out of town very quickly. (It is not a veery big town.) Two large plants are just outside of town. One is Barilla which makes pasta and the other is Verbio which makes renewable natural gas. We saw lots of large plants today. Most had no visible name and if they did nothing as to what they made. I guess you are just supposed to know.

Before long we are on a four lane divided highway. It’s not a freeway because side roads cross rather than having exit ramps. For some unknown reason the GPS keeps taking us on little side routes but always returns to the main highway. Some of those are gravel roads. The dust on those is so fine that everything in the car is covered with dust. After the third side trip we stop using the GPS and just follow the highway. We had looked and know that we should stay on US Highway 30 until it intersects with US Highway 52. Then follow that into Joliet. We get back on the GPS when we get closer to Joliet.

We did encounter one long stretch of construction where the road is being resurfaced. We had to wait for the pilot car. That must have been 3-4 miles long. Our morning break took us just a little off the highway. As we returned to the highway we met about 8 very large pieces of farm equipment going the opposite direction. They do take up more than a lane. Harvesting season is upon us.

John Deere has stores in almost every town. Equipment comes in all sizes but very few color choices. One of the stores had certified pre-owned equipment. Surprisingly for all that equipment we saw very little was out in the fields.

Speaking of fields we have never seen so much corn. The fields are huge and there are lots of them. Miles and miles of corn on both sides of the road. No wonder there is so much ethanol in the fuel. Some of the gas stations offer 15% ethanol. Only a handful of the fields were harvesting. Even then they only had one machine cutting the corn and one hauling away the corn.

Well with all that corn there must be lots of raccoons because we sure saw a lot of roadkill raccoons. No antelope and maybe only one deer.

Very few cattle today but we did smell hogs. When we came through Iowa a few years ago it seemed like every farm had hogs. However, we were further south on that trip.

Not many windmills until we got closer to Joliet. Then they were all still. Granted the wind was calm but seems they should have been moving some.

US Highway 30 skirted most of the towns similar to a freeway. It just went through all the corn fields. Well once in a while there was a bean field. Still saw lots of silos but no grain fields. The grain must have been in the few fields that were bare.

A couple of signs about buggies were posted but we never saw any buggies. The Amish population must not be large. The small towns we did drive through usually had big older homes that were well cared for.

We arrived at the hotel at 6:00 pm. Later than usual. The mounting bracket for the turn signal device on the car broke off today. Rob had to make at least a temporary fix. Tomorrow will tell if it works.