September 23-October 1

Hi Everyone, Here is another week of our travel! Please let me know if I should take you off of this list. I really don't want to bore ANYone!

Just a quick note. Our fancy motorhome has a button on either side of the bed that you can hold in for 3 seconds and it turns off all of the lights in the motorhome. Dad just loves to leave a bunch of lights on, get in bed, hold the button in and watch all of the lights go out! He just grins and enjoys it! Now that we have everything working correctly we really love this motorhome. We can't find anything that we would change or anything that we need that is not in it! (Well, maybe a fax machine but that is not the motorhome's problem...)

Chicago
On Saturday, Sept. 23, we again took the train into Chicago this time to go to the Museum of Science and Industry. We took a taxi from the train station to the Museum and we couldn’t go in the front entrance of the Museum because there were LOTS of emergency vehicles parked all along the front! There was a Hostage Rescue Truck, a Bomb Disposal Truck, trucks with antennas and cameras 30’ in the air, ambulances, and police cars! We wondered if we were really going to see the Museum or not… However, inside the Museum was a temporary exhibit of the Drug Enforcement Agency and these emergency vehicles were there for just the day to be an added exhibit to the DEA exhibit! There were lots of good exhibits. All of them were pretty short so they were very good for kids… There was lots to do there. We rode the bus back to the train station for a change. The weather was VERY ominous. In fact, we heard on the news that the day before Chicago had a huge hailstorm and flights were cancelled. We had no problem back in Tinley Park!

Moline, Illinois
On Sunday, Sept 24, Mark went to Church and then we closed up the motorhome and drove to Rock Island KOA just outside of Moline, IL. We drove along the Rock River and the homes with huge lawns going right down to the river with their boats in their back yards were really pretty!

On Monday, Sept 25, we did a little paperwork and then headed to the John Deere Pavilion in downtown Moline. Outside of the Pavilion (which was a really big showroom type building) there were big John Deere tractors on display. Inside, there was a big combine as well as some more big and small tractors. Also, there were lots of touch screen computers with maybe 12 or more 3 minute videos about things to do with farming today or in the past—precision farming using GPS, harvesting soybeans, how a combine works, etc. It was EXCELLENT! Probably not good for little kids but it was excellent for any adult who loves to learn things! We spent 5 hours there! Across the street is a Museum for OLD tractors. I was too busy learning all of the stuff in the Pavilion but Mark went to that Museum.

It appears as though Moline IS John Deere. They have SO many huge buildings throughout the city that I am sure a very large percentage of the residents work for John Deere or are supported by those who do.

On Tuesday, Sept. 26, we visited the Rock Island Arsenal located on an island in the middle of the Mississippi River between Moline and Bettendorf, Iowa. When Mark was in the Army he used to prepare shipping authorizations for DCM rifles to be shipped back to Rock Island Arsenal to be rebuilt and stored. In the 1860’s this was a Confederate Prisoner of War camp. After the war the government decided to make it into an arsenal and armory. An Arsenal stores guns and ammunition and an Amory develops and makes the weapons and war supplies. When the buildings were first being built, there were a lot of Confederate war supplies, like cannonballs, left over from the war. The commander at that time had the craftsmen make the metal hinges, gates, railings, etc. for the shop from this metal in order to save money on supplies. The arsenal geared up production for each of the wars and developed a lot of the items needed by the soldiers—including helmets, mess kits, trench and bayonet periscopes, rifles and pistols. One of the really interesting details was the amount of gear needed by the army to support the artillery and cavalry. During one year for the First World War the Armory manufactured 118,000 sets of harness for horses.

We rode by the John Deere Parts Distribution Center (beautiful building in a beautiful setting) and the John Deere Medical Center. We stopped to see a fantastic collection in the John Deere Administration Building. The mural along one wall is actually a 100’ long “shadow box” of old stuff associated with John Deere. Very nicely done.

Wednesday, Sept 27, we drove from Moline to Peoria and stayed in our favorite campground, Wal-Mart.

Peoria, Illinois
Thursday, Sept 28, we drove out of the Wal-Mart Parking Lot right on the driveway to the Caterpillar Tractor Plant. It took Mark 6 days of calling to arrange this tour so it’s not readily available to everyone! There were NO photos or cell phones allowed. We watched them assemble the big D7, D8, D9, D10 and D11 Cat Tractors. THEY ARE HUGE! Most of the parts are made in other buildings in the same Caterpillar complex (about the size of downtown Port Aransas) and brought to the “track tractor assembly plant” to be assembled. The machines are all “barefoot” (before their tracks are put on) and are transported from station to station. The smaller machines are transported on a track-like conveyor system which pulls the tractor along on a platform at a set rate. Each work station works on one tractor for 23 minutes as it slowly moves through that station. At the end of the 23 minute period the tractor has arrived at a new work station and those workers take over the assembly. The BIG tractors are transported on a bigger platform that a special mobile platform lifts and moves from station to station. I don’t think these stations are timed… More and more parts are added at each station with JIT (just-in-time) delivery of those parts. At each station is a “doghouse” shaped rack with all of the parts needed at THAT station for THAT SPECIFIC tractor. The tractors are transported on the carriers until they reach the station that puts on the tracks. (One track for a big tractor weighs about 4,400 pounds.) After the tracks are put on, the tractors rumble through the plant on their power. Now that’s a sight! Most of the parts are already painted as they are assembled, but when the tractor is finished the WHOLE thing goes into a 300’ long paint tunnel. First anything that is not to be painted must be covered with masking tape and plastic, then it moves forward and everything is sanded, then it moves forward to a wash station to get all of the sanding dust off, then it moves forward to the “primer” section, then on to the final painting stage. It is inspected at the end and either approved for having decals applied or sent back for touch-up paint. After the decals are applied the tractor is ready for shipping. (It has already gone through NUMEROUS detailed check-lists as it progressed through the stations.) The big tractors need to have a lot of their parts removed so that they can fit on a tractor trailer or a railroad car. The big D11 needs 5 tractor trailers to haul it and all of its components.

The tour was excellent. But as with some of the others, it would have been MUCH better if we had an extra hour or two to actually watch all of the assembly…

Springfield, Illinois
After the tour we drove to Springfield, IL, and stayed at Mr. Lincoln’s Campground.

Friday, Sept 29, we went to the new Lincoln Museum which opened in the spring of 2005. It was VERY well done with nice exhibits of Lincoln’s early life in a log cabin and later life in the White House. There were 2 good movies dealing with his life. One was EXCEPTIONAL in that a hologram was projected onto glass walls that separated the “Lincoln Library” from the audience. When it started a man came out and talked to the audience and I couldn’t believe that they could have a live person come out for every show. I kept looking and looking trying to figure out if he were a real person or not. The only way I finally figured it out was when his body started to fade away… I really wanted to see it again just because it was so well done! There were lots of exhibits with lots of reading and lots of details. There were also touch screen computers with about 100 small stories of Lincoln’s responses to various questions. We were totally engrossed in the displays for over 5 hours. A very telling section was political cartoons that appeared before, and during his presidency. If you think things are rather low class in our present political environment, you have no idea what transpired back then! It might be interesting to search Google to see what was printed back then.

On Saturday, Sept 30, we visited the Lincoln Presidential Library, which is really only for research and not for visiting… It too is new and very nicely done. After that, we drove to, of course!, the Museum of Funeral Customs. It was an interesting compilation of undertaking and embalming information but just a little bit weird also. They had a recreation of Lincoln’s casket and quite a bit of information about the train route taken from Washington DC to Springfield with Lincoln’s body.

It was right near the cemetery where Lincoln is buried (finally) in a large monument. His body was moved quite a few times before finally being place there.

On Sunday, Oct 1, Mark went to Church and then we drove into town to visit a 4-block area that has been restored to what it looked like in 1860. The house that Mr. Lincoln lived in before he left for Washington as the President has been restored to exactly what it looked like then. There are newspaper articles and sketches that appeared in numerous publications to show how everything looked and they have done their best to recreate it. The Lincoln’s sold most of their furniture and rented out the house fully intending to return to Springfield after Lincoln’s Presidency was complete. Some of the original furniture that the Lincoln’s used has been re-acquired. The photos show that some of the choices for carpet and wall-coverings in the 1860 would probably not be well accepted today… The photos also show a lot of the other houses that have been restored. Only 3 of them are open for the public to tour the insides.