Two 'fer#3: Caught in Peoria
Here's Bozo crossing the Illinois River at Lacon, IL on his way from Appleton to Peoria. Traveling through some of the richest farmland in the country, southern Wisconsin and Northern and Central Illinois. Where the corn isn't planted, in other words where the soybeans are, the dirt is black, not brown or even dark, it's BLACK. Only if you have driven through this area can you understand. We've seen lots of dark rich soil through eastern South Dakota and Minnesota, and central Wisconsin but nothing as dark as this stuff.
Something we noticed through Wisconsin. They do NOT pick up the carcasses of road-killed deer very well. Between Eau Claire and Appleton on US 10 we counted 10 and smelled one off in a ditch. All but one or two were severely dessicated, some no more than black hide and bones. Heading south from Appleton towards Illinois we saw 4, maybe 5 more. Most in the same condition. I hope the folks in that state are happy with how their governor and legislature are "saving" money and reducing taxes by eliminating services, but come on now, leaving dead animals lay for weeks? If this is evidence of the state of the state it's pretty pitiful.
This is seen in their Senate race. The incumbent GOP, Johnson, chaired a committee investigating shortcomings in Veteran's hospital care by the Tomah facility and the papers and his campaign ads were damning the administration and his Democrat opponent for not supporting our troops after they were injured in Bush's wars in Iraq and Iran. He ignores his party's role in eliminating veteran's funding as they slashed services to grant tax relief to the well-off. What a flaming hypocrite. In this regard I was glad to get out of the state.
One nice thing was the number of old brick farm homes and large well-maintained dairy farms along our route, State route 26 and US 151 in Wisconsin. There are some nice ones also along IL route 17 between I-39 and the Illinois river at Lacon. Unfortunately, we were not able to capture photos of many of them.
Our first day in Peoria and we drug poor Boz all over. He got to go to the Pottstown grocery, owned by my cousin Bob. It's been a family business, under a couple different names for almost 100 years. My maternal grandfather had a store on Arcadia and Delaware with the family home next door. My uncles, John (Bud) and Bob, kept it going in a couple locations until my cousin took over from his dad and has moved it from the small town of Pottstown up into the north side of Peoria. That's Bob and his son behind the meat counter. Neat store. Bob Jr has kept up the excellent meat butchery using locally sourced Angus, making their own sausage, as has been the case for decades. There's a small but excellent selection of specialty items too. It reminded Cathy and I of some of our favorite small stores in Seattle. I'm glad to see that he's doing well and keeping the "Barth butchers guild" still going.
After a short trip to the cemetery where my parents and brother are buried we took Bozo to the historic Jubilee College site. This college was founded in 1840 to train Episcopal clergy for the "west". It never really got off the ground. According to the site's signage no priests were ever graduated, but it did serve as a school for boys and girls for a short while. There is an old Jubilee Church graveyard there with some headstones dating back to 1840.
The last tour point was the infamous Big Al's strip club in downtown. Bozo had to stop by the place since we wouldn't allow him into the Wallace, ID bordello. He's not old enough to go into Al's, and it was in the middle of the afternoon so they weren't open, luckily.
Travel notes: Great weather. Mid-80's, LOW humidity (for Peoria). No notable restaurants to report on. Ate at Joe's Crab Shack down on the riverfront last night. Lots of fried seafood dishes, crab legs, cakes, shrimp, catfish, etc. It was an acceptable menu, but nothing special, and the servings are huge. It was hard to find a true low-carb meal for our "sugarbetes". I will admit that they did a good job in cooking the fish. The calamari and my shrimp were cooked perfectly. I just wish it wasn't a tourist menu.