Okay, so I'm in Iowa, approaching Des Moines.
Which way to go?
Well, St. Louis via Kansas City is all Interstate,
but it's an additional 110+ miles. No thanks, I'll go east to Iowa
City, then south. I-80 East it is.
I had to do something to break up the monotony
of the straight, 70 mph crusing, so I did:
Speeding is fun! Taking pictures while running
100 mph is exciting, too, if not terribly safe. Yeah, I know the
speedo reads 111 mph, but since I yanked my 2.73 rear gears and replaced
them with 3.70s and mounted up 28" tall tires, my speedo reads 15% high.
I'm actually going about 97-98 mph. It was still fun. I couple
hours later I did hit about 115 actual when I was crusing with this Probe
GT near Iowa City, but I didn't get a picture of that. :-(
Okay, so Iowa east of Des Moines isn't all that
boring. It ain't the Rocky Mountains, but it beats flat farmland.
Keokuk, Iowa is a town where Iowa, Missouri, and
Illinois meet up, with the Mississippi River flowing between. I didn't
need to cross over to Illinois, but I was so close, what the hell?
There's quite a dam system and power plant setup
across the river between Iowa and Illinois. It looks to be still
functional, too. I thought it was pretty cool. Click on the
pic to see it in more detail (as with any other pictures on these pages).
It shows the plant on the left, and the big dam all the way from the plant
to the Illinois side of the river. There's a better name for the
dam, I think, but I can't think of it.
Here's a better shot of the plant (that's a railroad
bridge in the foreground):
And the dam-thing (with the railroad bridge in
the foreground again):
Coming back across the river and into Paradise...
Great.
Well, that's about it for the Iowa leg of the
Journey. I finally made it to Missouri!
Check out the Missouri leg of the trip on the
Next
Page
