Day 76-August 9, 2016-Illinois countryside and family
Drove 113 miles in 4 hours.
Hot, 88 and HUMID!
Still driving east on route 20 we drove through the town of Galena. If I had known sooner how cute this town was I would have tried to talk Harry into going there for a few hours. A bit touristy but not in a glitzy way. The main street is lined with restored 19th century homes, mostly B&BS now, but every now and then a gift store, antique shop, etc. The architecture is really beautiful. It’s also the home of Pres. Ulysses S. Grant and route 20 here is named “U. S. Grant Memorial Highway”. The town is on the Galena River and kayaks and canoes line the shore, some of them already in the water this morning. It seems like a great place to poke around for a while. We then passed through Elizabeth, similar to Galena, not as pretty. We have a great view of the countryside from the top of the hills, the corn fields and soy bean fields look like a patchwork with every shade of green imaginable. The road up to now has been a one lane each way road but as we get farther east it turns into two lanes with much more traffic. It’s still bumpy, almost like a roller coaster at times but the countryside now gets flatter. We pulled into a Walmart for some fuel additive and ate lunch in the parking lot. And that’s when the GPS got silly. Instead of keeping us on route 20 we zigzagged on country roads through more corn fields and farms. And ended up right back on route 20 where the campground is. I guess the GPS figured we hadn’t seen enough corn fields yet. We were shown to our site by the campground owner and her beautiful dog, Sierra, who seemed to know right where we were going. Set up and then met Harry’s brother, Jim, and his daughter, Kristen for dinner at a great little place on the Fox River with good food and a great sunset.