Trish & Anne RV Adventures

At the end of the last post. I said we were headed to Rock Island, IL one of the Quad Cities. Well the other cities are Davenport and Bettendorf, IA; and Moline, and East Moline, IL. Yes, that is 5 cities – the name originates from a time before Bettendorf was considered its own city, and the name “Quint Cities” never took off. This is also the area where the Mississippi River runs from east to west.

We started our day by watching the CBS Sunday Morning show, and then we went to the local YMCA. We do get some walking in, but it is not the exercise we can get at a Y. The Y was in the same building as the Library – reinforcing the Y’s motto of “Building healthy minds and bodies.” Then we headed over to the Iowa side of the river. We first went to the Freight House Farmer’s market, where we picked up some local hamburgers. It was just outside the local ball park – the River Bandits are associated with the Kansas City Royals, and Modern Woodmen is an insurance company. We had hoped to find lunch at the farmers market There were sweets to buy, but not anything that was lunch food. So we found the Cafe Marie – which was in this ivied covered house in the middle of a neighborhood. It didn’t look like much, but the cream of broccoli soup and the paninis were great.

We spent the afternoon at the Figge Art Museum – we picked a good day because it was free admission! This horse sculpture looked mighty familiar. Sure enough, it was by the same artist as the one we had seen in the Minneapolis Sculpture Park. There was a Day of the Dead celebration going on. Besides some special activities there were these Catrinas set up throughout the museum. It is an iconic image used during the Day of the Dead celebrations. “The woman skeleton figure was originally created in an early 1900s illustration by artist Jose Guadalupe Posada as part of a political leaflet describing a person ashamed of their origins and trying to imitate the European ladies of style. The portrayal as a skeleton, or calavera, reminds us that we are all equal in death.”

One of the main special exhibits was art from the “I Spy” and “Can You See What I See?” picture books. The pictures in those books were photographed by Walter Wick. The cool thing about the exhibit was that for some illustrations they had the actual model there, and then the photograph that was in the book right next to it. I tried to replicate that in these two sets of photos, but just not the same as he did..

A couple of other of Walter Wick photos. The 2nd is an optical illusion – at first glance you think he took a photo with some mirrors in the scene, but then you realize those are not actually reflections.

There was an exhibit of Frank Lloyd Wright furniture – which except for the desk designed for the SC Johnson Administration Building – looks as uncomfortable as all the other Wright furniture I have seen.

This piece is called Fire & Water, created in 2014 by Yuriko Yamaguchi, and a close-up of the pieces of resin that make it up. They were cast in molds made from organic materials, such as pieces of coral. mushrooms and blackberries.

Below are two examples from the exhibit called Interstellar. These are constantly pulsing pieces done by the digital light sculptor Leo Villareal. It is done by computer generated code that doesn’t replicate itself – it is very hypnotic.

The Figge has the only self-portraits done by Grant Wood, of American Gothic fame. He also included himself in Return from Bohemia, which he did in 1935 for the dust jacket of a book that was never finished. The type of painting that he did was called Regionalism – focused on small town life and rural landscapes. There was also a small Tiffany exhibit.

On the way back to the campground we decided to drive to a wildlife viewing spot. We saw some pelicans flying overhead and found a place where they seemed to be gathering. We also spotted a great blue heron. These tanks were painted to resemble a castle – just outside our RV park – named the Camelot Campground.

No luck comet hunting that night – but we did see a great sunset.

On Monday, October 14th we went to the Nahant Marsh (no we did not magically go back to Massachusetts – this place just has the same name.) At one time the area was home to the Quad Cities Trap and Skeet Gun Club, leaving heavy doses of lead in the mud of the marsh. This lead contamination prompted the Environmental Protection Agency to list Nahant Marsh as a Superfund site in need of cleanup. All the lead was dredged out and Nahant now serves as an ecological reclamation example. While we were there, the penguins were massing for their migration – there must have been a couple thousand of them. The ranger said they were not there on Friday and when we drove out of town Tuesday we could see that they were gone. For one we were lucky on the bird watching front.

The pelicans don’t make any sound when they fly – other than the beating of their wings – which you can hear in this video that Trish took: https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/cyyx0pz7zdw8ghs7ndbck/IMG_7927.MOV?rlkey=gj38x4yws1qcc486xf49ix5yj&dl=0

Besides the pelicans, there were also some egrets, coots, mallards, pied-billed grebe, Canada geese, heron and some other ducks around.

There was also an eagle soaring overhead!

We drove over to Moline and found the Deere-Wiman House. It was built in 1872 by John Deere’s son. It wasn’t open but it would have been interesting to visit as it has an elevator dated from the 1890s, a pipe organ from the 1910’s, and a multi-nozzle spa shower reminiscent of the healing hot spring resort waters popular during the Victorian era. That’s a street in Moline that we passed as we were going for some lunch.

East Moline is the world headquarters of the John Deere Company and they have the John Deere Pavilion to show of some of the equipment that they make – most of it is pretty big. Yes, that is Trish in the picture.

This is the biggest piece they are showing off – the X9 1100 Combine – that can harvest 16 rows at a time and fill 7 semi-trailer truck loads of corn an hour! Trish caught a picture of me in the cab, and while I was there I snapped a picture of the controls – you need a John Deere Degree to run one of these.

Just a few of the cables and belts that keep the combine moving and Trish in a 4-passenger Gator.

Here are a couple of older machines they are showing off. The first is a Model LA from 1945 – this version was made from 1937 until 1947. The second is a Model A from 1950 – they made over 300,000 of these between 1934 and 1952. (I think my brother’s tractor looks like this one.)

That’s the 8RX with Trish in the cab – they have begun to use these tracks instead of wheels on some of their tractors. Finally that is a picture of the factory right on the Mississippi from the 1950’s. This plant is gone, but they have moved down river and still manufacture in Moline,

Then it was back to camp to prepare for moving on on Tuesday, Oct 15.

Next up, the trip to near Memphis – don’t get your hopes up as, having been there before, we don’t go into the city.

Until then, safe travels!