Road Trip - Indiana Davenport, Iowa to Omaha, NE 07-23-14

Lots of pictures tonight to make up for the paucity of yesterday.  Several views of the same thing to give the subject clarity.

What kind of a creature is this? 

It was at one of the entrances to the University of Iowa and I was thinking it might be a Jayhawk, but that is the Uof Kansas mascot.  Wikipedia says that Iowa is the Hawkeyes - so I suppose this is supposed to be a hawk.  Weird.

I have been trying to figure out what these lines in the fast lane of traffic are for- they go across the lane rather than between the lanes, but are about the same length.  I saw a sign about a pavement paint test way on the other side of Iowa and can't believe they need hundreds of miles of paint tests.   Maybe they are markers for tracking speeders by plane, but I wonder if they could be seen from the air and, besides, there were no signs warning of  "the eye in the sky".   The lines are 10 to 12 seconds apart at 70mph.

There is part of one at the very top of the picture.  It is a real problem trying to photograph them! The line at the bottom is the lane separation line.  Any ideas?  

The most interesting thing I saw in Iowa is the Rest Stop with this towering wind turbine blade out front.  The gentleman at the bottom left had been taking pictures and I asked him if he would be in my picture to give an idea of the size of this thing.  We see them after they are installed and I have seen many on flatbed trucks on the highways, but to stand next to one is simply awesome.

Without the man there is no way to imagine the full size.

This old guy stopped to read the sign, giving me another comparison.

 

Inside, besides the toilets, vending machines and huge map of the state, there was a frieze of placards with comments about wind turbines, here are just a few.

 

This is a tile mosaic in the entry (between the outside door and the inside door) of a light bulb.  It even has the correct screw threads.  It is quite beautiful by my arms are not long enough to take a picture of the entire floor. 

Here are some turbines at work, just a few miles beyond the Rest Stop.

These turbines are mixed in with utility poles, but there are about a dozen in the image.

One thing I noticed a lot was the filthy cars on the road.  They have a sort of light tan mud, especially on the back windows.  I include this picture of a side road that is graded and I guess that is the natural color of the soil.  I can't imagine that they haul in dirt from somewhere else.  A car had just gone past on that road (traveling from left to right) and the dust it created still hangs on the right side of the picture.  I tried for a picture of the back of a dirty car, but they didn't come out.  You'll have to take my word for it!

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Road Trip - Indiana Kenosha, Wisconsin to Davenport, Iowa 07-22-14

 

 

I suppose it is logical that the states that have heavy winters would need to do their road work in the summertime.  But it is really annoying for the tourists  - like me.  Barriers of every shape and size.  I wonder why some of the diagonals slant a different direction.

Only 256 miles today, but some of them were hunting for a couple quilt shops on the Row by Row Experience list - like Quilt Play in Grayslake.  I might try to get one row pattern from each state I have yet to go through, but I know that Colorado doesn't have any shops that are participating  - nor do AZ and NM.  So far I have four patterns two from Indiana shops and two from Illinois shops.  I didn't go far enough into Wisconsin or stay long enough to collect a pattern.  Quilt Play is a nice little shop with a wide selection. It is necessary to buy their kit to get the snowflakes already cut out with fusible on the back.  The other shop I visited was Quilters Destination in Arlington Heights.  It was very difficult to find and I had to call twice for directions.  They were not very helpful and the sign on the street is very small.  I finally snagged three ladies coming out of JoAnn's in the nearby shopping center and one could give me the names of some adjacent shops and I finally found it.  Found a great "Ruth McDowell" type fabric on the sales table for $2.50/yd and took all seven yards. 

I saw the sign for frozen custard too late to pull and had to make a convoluted back track to treat  myself to a medium cup of MANGO.  It was delicious and made a filling lunch.   And isn't it a wonderful glowing color. 

There were several signs saying that a driver cannot retrace their route to get back on the roadway.  There was an arrow pointing in this direction, but I couldn't  figure out the conflict between Do Not Enter and Exit Only.  I finally found the actual exit and eventually a side street with some shade so I could enjoy my MANGO frozen custard.

When I got on I-80 and finally came to a rest stop I spent some time straightening maps, looking for my cell phone which was hiding from me and just relax out of the traffic for a bit.  They have a great play area for the kids with a teeter-totter front and center.  I was thinking I  haven't seen one of those for decades.  Two boys of about seven years old came up and have it a try, but didn't find it very entrancing.  Not as much fun as killing somebody in a computer game, I suppose. 

 

People say that Kansas is very flat, but I have never found it so - it sort of undulates.  But this area in southern Illinois is amazingly flat.  I wonder if  the Mississippi River has caused the flatness by flooding over great areas in centuries past.  This was very close to where I crossed the river.  More corn.

And more corn.  The light was shining through growing cloud cover and gave an eerie light.

And more corn behind a fringe of tall weeds - might be Heterotheca grandiflora.

A great almost sunset.  The sun kept popping in and out of the clouds.

It was strangely like an autumn twilight, but it was 88F and humid.

The clouds moved on and the sun was dropping lower, at 8pm it was 86F.  Supposed to be cooler tomorrow.

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