July 12th-13th • The Trek to Davenport, Iowa

I’ll be picking this post up from where I left off. In the last post, we were leaving Colorado and getting ready for the second leg of our trip to Davenport, Iowa. We had planned this as part of our trip so we could have a few days of family time and go see the John Deere Homestead. A few years ago Kevin’s work sent him to Iowa and Illinois for a John Deere tour and he has been wanting to take us back ever since. This trip was the outcome of us going to see all of that.

We left Colorado early on the morning of the 12th to make our way to Davenport. We first made our way through Kansas. When we were about halfway through the state, we saw a sign for the “World’s Largest Czech Egg”, and Grandpa Garry (Kevin’s dad) has tried to hit as many of the “World’s Largest” when his kids were growing up. We have decided that we would try to keep the tradition alive and see as many as we can, then send pictures to Grandpa so he can experience through our travels. The drive through Kansas was really not that exciting, long drive with not much in between. Although their rest stops were pretty awesome. They always had history and things to learn at every stop, also the bathrooms were always clean!

After the quick stop in Kansas, we made our way through Missouri. The roads through Missouri were pretty hick and backroad-like highways. Although there was lots of sightseeing to be had, we were trying to get through to Davenport so we didn’t have the time to stop too many times. we did stop at one of the covered bridges in Paris, Missouri at the Elk Fork Lake Salt River. One of the best things about this non-stop road tripping is we get to see so many things that we didn’t even know existed. The one thing about learning on the road is how much you can learn without trying and how it doesn’t even feel like learning as much as exploring and having fun. Now that we have seen this covered bridge we will have to make an effort to see all of them along the way.

Once we finished learning about the covered bridges and explored the area it was time to hit the road again. Our family has gotten really good about long road trips. Everyone has learned how to hold their pee for a long time! Of course, we drove all the way to Davonport and everyone was starving. We found a Buffalo Wild Wings for supper. chicken wings are the kid’s favourite thing to eat and they always have good beer on tap. Everyone was starving so we ordered extra wings and of course it ended up being way too much so everyone had a snack for later. We then went to check into our hotel room which turned out to be a dumpster dive of a place. We had to cancel everything, get a refund, and find another hotel. You wouldn’t believe on this trip how many times we have had to change hotels because they are so gross. How do places like this stay in business? Are we the only ones that care about a clean hotel room? We did find another hotel that was clean and booked it for a few nights. We did so much driving the last few days we all needed a break.

We all got settled and then headed over to Antique Archeology, Mike’s shop from American Pickers. I mean we have watched a lot of the episodes so it was a really cool experience to be there and be able to talk to the shop people. Although I was kind of disappointed in how much is just tourist, and trinket type stuff for sale. I really wish they would have had more of things that they picked there to see and maybe even purchase. I went in expecting all older stuff and I’d say about 90% of everything in the store was new memerabla type things. It was still fun and something on the bucket list just not what I’d expected.