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Sept 24
Time to pack up, check out and move on this morning. We missed breakfast so it
was scrambled eggs and coffee in our room.
We were pretty much out of fuel when we got here three days ago so first up we
hit a gas station. Knowing it'd be way cheaper elsewhere we only put in $20 worth
@ $2.99/ gal.
We took a leisurely drive back towards the city mostly with the lake beside us on
one side and green spaces with squirrels bouncing around on the other. For a bit marinas full of boats replaced the green spaces.
Through the city there's a number of old stone churches. I expect they were once quite imposing, now however they're dwarfed by the skyscrapers.
We went to the Old Town area to check out Old Town Aquatics. We got there before noon when they open so we took a walk around the area which once housed arty
types and is now a little more yuppie. There's a lot of stores selling fragrant spices, flavoured oils etc, bars and restaurants.
The LFS was pretty nice but very expensive. Their stock was in good shape and well presented but in the 15-20 mins we were in there not one person said as much as hello let alone can I help you and they weren't busy with others so no idea why we were ignored.
From there we made our way to the other side of town to check out the fire station where Chicago Fire is filmed, not the classiest neighbourhood but it's just as we
see on tv.
We set the GPS for Omaha intending stopping for the night well short of there. It took us through an inner city Hispanic area. We spotted a guy selling fresh fruit from the back of his ute and stopped. He had punnets of strawberries for $1 ea or 4/$3. I was tempted but we have limited ability to keep things chilled so I settled for just the one and a large punnet of blueberries which were also $1. The strawberries were excellent, the blueberries quite small and a little tart but still pretty good.
We started to leave the city behind us as we headed west on Route 66. Slowly but surely the apartments gave way to dual family homes and eventually single, stand alone homes.
Once we'd left the city far behind the land was very flat, small towns, farming communities, some cattle, lots of corn and wind farms. We stopped at a nice park for lunch. It had heaps of squirrels but they were wary of people, to the rear of the
park was yet another corn field.
Just out of Clinton we crossed the Mississippi and were in Iowa. The road loosely followed the river for some time. There's no water shortage there, lots of rivers, lakes and swamps; the grass areas are very green.
In the middle of nowhere we stopped for petrol, $2.12/ gal so much better than this morning. The servo curiously smelt strongly of sweat despite being quite a big
area, I swear I heard the faint twang of banjos lol
We were treated to another awesome sunset as we drove the back roads of Iowa.
Our GPS said there was a super 8 just outside the small town of Washington. When we got there it was called something different, when I asked they said they had recently switched away from being a Wyndham. They wanted $80 plus tax for a double room, no queens and no kings available so we gave it a miss. We'd seen a small independent motel just down the road, they had a king room for $50 plus the ever present add on of tax. We took that and it was ok, not five star but clean with everything we needed and very amenable staff.
Only $2 total to do a big clothes wash in the laundry which was right next to our room.
We FB called Angela to let her know we had left Il-a-noise today lol a joke that started at trivia when the host was unable to pronounce it correctly and it really grated on Angela's nerves. She didn't answer initially then she sent a message asking is everything ok? We must've made her think it was urgent cos we'd not done one of those calls to them before. It was fun talking to them.
Stuffed baked spuds for dinner with the addition of a big plate of cooked cabbage for me and that was pretty much our day.
Lots of squirrels today, some Canada geese and Pete spotted a bald eagle in a field casually consuming what he thought was a mouse snack.
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