Jenna and Chris' Cross Country Trip: July 9, 2013

"A series of unfortunate events..."

Our last post landed us at the Cracker Barrel in Rockford, Illinois. We opened up the camper and holy moly it was HOT in there. We were staying in a parking lot, so we could not keep the door opened at night and there was just about no air movement inside. Chris took our brand new generator out to try to get the air conditioner working for an hour or so before bed. The generator would not run our AC--oh, no! We tried it before and it worked, this time it said "system overload."

We decided to suffer through the night.

1 AM...After hours of tossing and turning and Chris and I taking turns to get up and walk around the camper to try to feel some relief, I had enough. I took an ice pack from the freezer earlier to cool down and had noticed the freezer didn't seem as cold as it had earlier in the day. Chris and I both got up at 1 and decided to bleed the propane line to try to get our freezer running-luckily, one thing went our way--it worked! The two of us were exhausted and feeling ill from the heat. We both agreed to start driving to our next destination, Antique Archeology in La Claire, Iowa. The trouble was, we were both exhausted, miserable and in need of a good night's sleep. We drove for a half hour and tried to stop at a campground-they were closed. Super 8 wasn't too far off so we stopped-they were closed. We ended up at a Baymont Inn in Rochelle, Indiana. The people were nice and the room had AC, we were set.

We were about 30 minutes closer to La Claire when we arrived at the Baymont Inn at 3 AM, so we decided to sleep in until 8 am. They served continental breakfast which was right up our alley. We needed to save as much money as possible because renting a hotel room was not in our budget!

Chris and I fueled up and picked up Subway subs for lunch on the road. The ride to Le Claire was pretty uneventful. We were like two kids on Christmas morning the closer we got to the actual site of American Pickers :) If you're following our blog but do not like/watch American Pickers, the next several pictures will not interested you...feel free to scroll down.

<------Mississippi River on our way to Le Claire(pictures are sort of reversed)

We spent the next several minutes talking about everything we saw and how cool the store was! The rest of Iowa was exactly the same mile after mile. I understand now why people from out West think our farms are puny in PA. Miles and miles and miles and miles of corn lined Route 20. The barns looked very different, too. There were no bank barns and some had cupola looking things are their roofs. Since the land is so flat and there is no where for water to go, there were terraced areas with mounds of dirt to help stop run-off rain water. It felt a little creepy to us because there were very few cars on the road. Very few people had animals, most farms were corn/soy beans and if there happened to be a horse or two, they were in a teeny tiny pen. Really, teeny tiny, not just teeny tiny compared to the thousands of acres they had. We guessed maybe farmers didn't want to waste valuable farm land on animals?!

We tried to make it to Fort Dodge to see a frontier town, but got there close to 5 and it closed at 5 :(

As we got to the end of Iowa, we ran into a lot of rolling hills and a wind mill farm. There were close to a hundred windmills on this one farm-they were HUGE! As I write this, I am still thinking about the farms and how you could see where the sky seemed to meet the field; you could see for miles!

Our final destination tonight was the KOA in North Sioux City, South Dakota. We have made it ALL the way to South Dakota in two days! Wow! I am pretty impressed with us so far.

Nebraska, Iowa and South Dakota meet in one spot and we could see all three states at one time; that was cool, too. Who would have thought North Sioux City would be in a different state than Sioux Falls and South Sioux City? The KOA was waiting for us with open arms around 8 PM(we are an hour behind all of you now). We were hungry, so we ate leftovers from last night, first! The campground was really pretty and the people were friendly. We felt blessed to have AC, cable, Wi-Fi, and electricity tonight--woohoo, living a life of luxury in the KOA! After dinner, we took our bikes off the rack and rode around the campground to check it all out. I was definitely impressed with how nice our first stopped was.

We have a Mount Rushmore size day ahead of us tomorrow! First, we plan to travel to The Badlands, then we'll drop the camper off at the Mount Rushmore KOA campground and head to Crazy Horse; I'm thrilled! Then, we'll head back to Mount Rushmore, hopefully for the 9 PM light show. We'll drive about 8-10 hours tomorrow and have a packed day ahead of us...sweet dreams :D