Up and Down the Mississippi with Jonny and the Gang

Over Memorial Day 2019, Dave and I visited Jonny and Jenny at their home in Bettendorf, Iowa, on the banks of the Mississippi.  The first time I visited the Quad Cities area, I couldn't imagine anyone living there.  The second time, I thought it had possibilities.  This time, I loved the area and couldn't wait to return.

Jonny bought tickets for Dave and me to tour Harvester Works, in East Moline, Illinois, where John Deere corn combines are manufactured.  We saw the huge machines which not only cut the corn, but pull off the cobs and shuck them, covering many acres in a day.  There weren’t many people on the assembly line; most of the workers were paired with robots.  The Deere assembly line workers waved as we passed.  “This is a friendly company,” our guide said.  

That evening, Thursday, May 23, we watched Sam’s coach-pitched baseball game.  “Sam’s a good athlete,” Jonny said, as we watched Sam hit the ball virtually every time he came to bat.  Jonny and Jenny handed Henry and Thomas back and forth, as Henry begged for a hot dog and Thomas had a diaper change.

Henry showed his fingers, colored bright orange by Cheetos.

 Sam is learning to be a good team member.

 After the game, while Sam ate a hot dog with Jonny and Jenny went to get the car, I pushed Thomas in his stroller, around and around and around, near the concession stand.  As long as Thomas was in motion, he was calm and quiet!  Back home, we had “movie night,” with orange Julius, popcorn, and an episode of Planet Earth on the big screen TV.  

Jenny walks Sam to school every morning, pulling the wagon with Thomas, and sometimes Henry, inside.  Of course, on Friday morning, Sam wanted to have his picture taken in the wagon, too!

While Jonny worked on Friday, Jenny, Dave, and I took the boys to the excellent Putnam Museum, with science activities for children.  The boys played with suction machines that sucked plastic balls in and spit them out at the top, and with huge screens that showed them interacting with dinosaurs.  Our very favorite activity, though, was the Superpower Dogs movie.  The movie was a documentary that told about dogs trained to rescue drowning people at sea, to find people caught in avalanches, and to prowl disaster sites, locating survivors. “Jonny, you really need to see that movie,” we said, when we congregated back home.

On Friday afternoon we drove north, and stopped at Maquoketa State Park.  It had been raining and was muddy, but the caves were lush, green, and beautiful.  We took a loop hike through a shallow cave which we could walk upright through, and then along a moss-covered, wood walkway past a stream, and back to the car.  It was a child-length hike, but beautiful and memorable.  Just right for our troop.

 We then wandered through Galena, a lead-mining town founded during the 1820s, which had a golden moment of prosperity in the 1850s through 1870s.  

 We stopped for root beer floats near the hotel where Abraham Lincoln had given a campaign speech from the balcony and where Ulysses S. Grant had set up his campaign headquarters for U.S. president.

We visited the town park, with a statue of Ulysses S. Grant and cannons from the Civil War and from WWI.

On Saturday, we hiked to a viewpoint over the Mississippi at  Effigy Mounds National Monument.  Jonny and Jenny got Sam and Henry sworn in as Junior Rangers at the Visitors Center.  The little boys took that appointment very seriously, holding up their right hands and reciting their oath.  Jonny then bought a Junior Ranger book for Sam, in which he can mark off each national park and monument he visits.

 Sam and Henry each took a Junior Ranger scavenger hunt checklist with them, as we hiked the mile or two to the top of the mountain in the park. There were  fun items to search for, such as a spider’s web and a boat on the Mississippi.  We saw Indian mounds along the trail and, from the top of the mountain, we had a gorgeous view of the Mississippi, as it meandered south through green countryside.

 Our next stop was Pike's Peak Park.  The park commemorates a fort established by Zeb Pike in 1805, shortly before he went to Colorado, where "Pike's Peak" was named after him there.  As Westerners, it is easy to forget that other parts of the country, including this Mississippi region, were once as much a part of the frontier as our own Utah and Colorado!  The history and hikes were all a bit much for a three-year-old, and Henry recuperated on a park bench with an ice cream bar!

 We later ate lunch at Breitbach’s Country Landing, an iconic German/American restaurant on the way back south.  We enjoyed the buffet—fried chicken, roast beef, and apple pie for dessert—and then wandered through the antique shop next door.  Jonny plans for just such details.

 A restaurant meal with three little kids is a colorful and challenging affair.

It was a treat, on Sunday, to hear Sam give a talk in Primary. 

 On Sunday afternoon, we visited the zoo.  The animals and the train were great, but so were the tricky bars.

 Jonny showed Sam how it was done.

 And of course Jonny's whole family needed to have their pictures taken as monkeys!  The photos reminded me that my mother often referred to her own and other people's little children as their "monkeys."  That's Jenny and Henry in the photo above, and Jonny and Sam in the photo below.

Jonny is a proud and accomplished chef.  For Sunday dinner, he showed Dave and me the best way to cook a steak.  We were suitably impressed!

 The broccoli was good, too.

Monday, Memorial Day, was rainy, and our plane flew out of Des Moines in the afternoon.  Jonny and Jenny drove with us as far as Iowa City.  We paused at the Mormon Handcart park, where many of the LDS companies packed their handcarts and left on foot for Salt Lake City.  My great-grandmother, Mary Bomelli Eyring, may have left from this spot.

 We ate lunch at Nodo, a trendy restaurant in this college town.  It was a fast casual bistro, and we hauled trays of soup, sandwiches and fries upstairs to a room which was not private when we entered but soon became so (with little kids, you’re never sure if the other diners leisurely finished their meals and left naturally, or dashed out upon our arrival!).

            

Soft rock music floated upstairs, and Henry danced to the music, rocking his body and jumping from one foot to the other.  At the table, Thomas smiled happily and swayed back and forth.  It was a precious time—all of us together, as a family, in our own world, with the music playing and the children smiling.