Second Day--Iowa City

Today was a good travel day and we did more then we had originally planned. After a leisurely breakfast at the hotel, we hit the road. While we drove past miles and miles of farms with farmers disking on their tractor's with 8 airplane sized tires and while reading "Burma Shave" like signs promoting the use of ethanol and bio-diesel fuel as well as gun rights, we listened to the rest of the audio book, Marley and Me. Even though we had tears in our eyes at the end, we agreed that it is a fun book and that we would highly recommend it. We stopped in Moline, IL, and visited the John Deere Pavilion in the downtown. The Pavilion included a museum with lots of antique machinery including the last "johnny popper" tractor. We then crossed the Mississippi into Davenport, IA. We visited the Village of East Davenport, which reminded us of St. Charles, MO. Since it was early, we continued on to Iowa City and the Amana Colonies. The beautiful Iowa University campus is divided by the Iowa River and includes the Old Iowa state capitol and legislative buildings. At the Amana Colonies, we felt we had gone back into the 18th century. The local winery specializes in fruit and dandelion wines, so we had a change from the usual Virginia wineries. Very sweet wines.