Show Me Missouri: Moline and Galena (6.23.24)

A high point of our Missouri trip was visiting Jonny in Moline, Illinois, where he bought a duplex and became an Illinois resident.  Jonny's family lives in Salt Lake City, but Jonny commutes to Moline every Sunday night through Thursday, three weeks out of every month. 

 A path along the Mississippi River winds right outside Jonny's home.  We walked along it on June 24, 2024.  It passed a John Deere plant, protected with barbed wire.  Jonny works in the construction division of John Deere.

Dave and I met Jonny in Galena, Illinois, up the Mississippi from Moline.  While we waited for Jonny to arrive on Sunday morning, we first went to church in Davenport, Illinois, and then visited the Ulysses S. Grant home.  

After the Civil War, when Grant was a famous general, the City of Galena gave him an elegant home, which he kept while he was U.S. president.  Grant initiated his campaign for president in Galena.  He had lived there as a young man, working unsuccessfully in his father's leather goods store.  Grant was unsuccessful as a farmer and shopkeeper, but he was a military genius in both the Mexican-American War and the Civil War.  After reading Grant's biography, I came to believe he was also a very good president.  He asserted federal control over Reconstruction in the South.  Southern blacks rose into leadership positions in their communities and began to prosper.  That progress was lost when Rutherford B. Hayes became president and gave control back to the states.

Grant's home in Galena was full of treasures, such as this family Bible.

Grant's wife, Julia, had once owned slaves, as the daughter of a planter in Missouri.  She became friends with the wife of Jefferson Davis after the Civil War, as well as with prominent Yankee women.

The rooms of the Grant home had the finest Victorian decorations.

Jonny joined Dave and me on a trolley tour of Galena.  Jonny was so tired after commuting nine hours from Salt Lake City that he dozed.  Dave convivially joined him.  We passed the Victorian mansions of the riverboat millionaires who lived in Galena when steamboats still visited it.

The sites we passed included Ulysses S Grant's original house in Galena, not nearly so grand as the one the city gave him after he helped to win the Civil War!

We relaxed with a root beer float on Galena's picturesque main street.

I never realized that root beer has many different tastes and qualities until my grandson, Spencer Flindt, worked at a root beer store in Seattle.  He is a connoisseur.  When I serve root beer at family parties and Spencer attends, I buy several varieties so Spencer can choose the best ones!

On our drive back to Moline from Galena, we stopped at the Minnetonka Caves, a favorite state park with Jonny's boys when they lived in Bettendorf, Iowa, across the Mississippi from Moline.

It was dark and delightfully spooky deep in the caves.

When Jonny went back to work Monday morning, Dave and I made our pilgrimage to the John Deere center in Moline, where the company's prized machines are on display.  We always feel proud that Jonny helps to create those machines, in the many different roles he has played at the company.