Today was a repositioning day as we wanted to get to the
Mississippi River and then be in a line to see the four Road America
attractions in Iowa that we’ve identified as worth visiting.
We decided to start listening to the audio book we bought at
the library earlier on this trip – The Dirty Girls Social Club. It’s actually interesting and we listened to
2 of the 4 discs today.
We made a stop in Henry IL and just happened to see The
Spirit of Peoria coming along the Illinois River. Wish we knew about this earlier today and we
may have stopped and taken a river cruise.
They have from 1 to 5 day cruises on the Mississippi and Illinois Rivers
and it’s one of the few authentic paddlewheel-driven boats that offer overnight
trips.
We then made a stop at the Hennepin Canal – “The Hennepin
was the first American canal built of concrete without stone cut facings.
Although the Hennepin enjoyed limited success as a waterway, engineering
innovations used in its construction were a bonus to the construction industry.
Some of the innovations pioneered on the Hennepin Canal were used on the Panama
Canal. Both used concrete lock chambers and both used a feeder canal from a
man-made lake to water the canals because both needed water to flow ‘uphill.” We never heard of it before so it was quite
interesting and we got to watch a little video and talked for quite a while to
a woman in the visitor’s center.
We didn’t plan our day too well so we are in a hotel instead
of a campground.
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