May 1, 2024. A round-about way from Nauvoo IL to Ft Madison IA

 May 1, 2024.  A round-about way from Nauvoo IL to Ft Madison IA

  Last night we had continuous lightning off in the distance just as we were going to bed. Then, sheltered inside our tent, the storm got close enough to hear thunder and later on we had a strong, short wind gust that shook the tent.  But amazingly not a drop of rain!  Later that day when we stopped for a break at a Casey's, we found out that the clerk lived in Nauvoo and  had quite a bit of rain and wind.  So we were very thankful to be just outside the edge of the storm.  

  We had all day so instead of biking about 10 miles to the nearest bridge and crossing the Misssissipi to Ft. Madison, we continued bicycling upstream on the east side of the river, then crossed at the next bridge upstream to Burlington, Iowa.  Then we came back downstream on the west side of the river. At times we were on fairly flat land up on the bluff; other times down along the river.  

   We had a tasty lunch in downtown Burlington in a building that had been a prominent hardware store for a wide area in the midwest. We both got items from the "barbeque pit" part of the menu--we could smell the delicious smell outside the building before we arrived!

    In Wever, Iowa, we saw a big field with a lot of posts sticking up out of the ground; it sort of looked like they were putting in a vineyard, except for the heavy equipment putting in the posts.  We chatted with a few people just down the road and found out that a big solar farm was going in.

   Instead of staying at a chain hotel a few miles away, we are staying downtown at the historic Kingsley Inn. Across the street are several train tracks, Riverview Park and the Mississippi. 

Also in the park is a replica of the old Fort Madison and several depots border the park, including the historic Santa Fe Railway depot where the Amtrak station is now located.  We found out a lot of "railfans" come to watch the trains, of which there are plenty as 60 to 100 trains a day go through the town.  There is even a "railfan cam" on top of the Kingsley Inn which you can watch live on the internet and see what is going on.

  We ate at a small diner nearby that dates to the 1920's, although with recent new owners.   Chatting with our waitress, we discovered her great-grandfather had come from Mexico to work on the railroad and the family had lived here ever since (the oldest Mexican settlement in Iowa was here).  We also chatted with a fellow patron and she ended up giving us a ride to local ice cream store.  When we got in her SUV, the steering wheel was on the right! We found out that she was retired Army and had driven tanks which also had the steering wheel on the right.  Altogether walking to the diner and then back from the ice cream store, we got in an estimated two miles of walking. Below is our final sunset over the Mississippi River.