Today we're off to learn all about John Deere, who founded Deere and Company, the largest agricultural and construction equipment manufacturers in the world. In 1837, John Deere invented the first commercially successful steel plow, which worked better than other plows in the tough soil of the Midwest prairie. Deere located his company here, and other agricultural equipment manufacturers followed. The town grew along with them -- until the farm crisis of the 1980's when the town nearly dried up.
In the 1990's, Moline began staging a comeback through the redevelopment of the riverfront and today the John Deere Commons is a multi-million dollar entertainment and tourism complex showcasing John Deere and the history of agriculture in the Midwest. The John Deere Pavilion is a huge building full of old and new tractors, combines, and other agricultural equipment.
It didn't take long to see enough tractors, and then we were on our way again.... across the Mississippi and into Iowa. Iowa doesn't seem like a very big state until you start driving across it - it took the rest of the day. Of course, we made an unscheduled stop at the Iowa 80 Truck Stop - said to be the largest truck stop in the world. All we know is that it is huge - there are at least 8 trucks inside of the place, including 3 tractor-trailer rigs.
Iowa was a pretty drive -- lots more snow. The terrain was gentle hills, with a few more trees than Illinois, and monster farms. It looked mostly like corn, but of course, it was all white - fields of snow, frozen rivers, and some very impressive snow drifts.
Today we saw wildlife, too - a bald eagle, several hawks, some wild turkeys, lots of deer and Canada geese.
Out in this frozen land, we even saw some folks ice-fishing. Talk about wild lilfe - they gotta be nuts.
We stopped for the night at Council Bluffs, right on the banks of the Missouri River. From our hotel room, we could see Omaha, Nebraska, across the river, and we're heading that way in the morning.
