Day Trip

while I was typing up a blog for last Saturday night, yours truly was asked by my pal gary to roll with him in what turned out to be a day-long escapade.  This of course, meant I wasn’t going to be in church. My apologies. Gary picked me up shortly after 11am and we headed out on the highway out of Rockford. He took the scenic  route 2 along the rock river-something we would cross over a dozen times- to go to the sterling-rock falls area, which is about 55 miles se of Rockford. Since I had traveled in this area before but my first time there in about 6 or 7 years, it was like re-visiting an old friend.  

In one of my previous jobs, I was a courier driver that delivered merchandise to various homes; one of those deliveries was in sterling.  Also made a few stops in neighboring rock falls (total population: about 23,000).  Both towns have wal-marts, though the sterling location was open 24-7.  Not sure if it was gary’s first visit here, though.

One decade earlier, Mariah met up with some old friends and brought her over to that area from Rockford, while I attended a show at The Office.  That next morning, Mariah wakes me up and asks me to come all that way to pick her up. Seems she either hated being called her old masculine name by the parents of one of those friends of hers or she just rubbed them the wrong way.  I begrudgingly hopped into my ’91 Bonneville and made the one-hour plus journey on route 2 to pick up the creep. Would you even believe they didn’t even give me the right way to get to wherever the house was! So we met up near downtown sterling and got Mariah and drove back to Rockford.   

Gary was meeting some of his facebook friends at their new digs while waiting to obtain some vintage coca-cola merchandise at a pawn shop, just right next door. Nothing wrong with that. I have a niche for dressing as the opposite gender and extreme roller coasters, no harm done.   He asked me in nearby Dixon, il, (the boyhood home of former u.s. president Ronald Reagan) prior to arriving in sterling how far was it from there to the iowa state border. I told him it’s roughly about an hour, depending how much your foot is to the pedal without getting pulled over. That thankfully never happened, thank you.  I can say he did get a few nice Coke items that were laying on the shelf in this shop.  Then I saw several items that caught my eye: first, a bicycle that resembled more of a motorbike. $150 if you want that, by the way.  The other things were two st Louis cardinals jerseys, although neither player’s names are currently on the team: Albert Pujols and Jim Edmonds. This got us think about our pastor, a beloved cardinals fan. I eventually got to text him about which one is his favorite. His answer : it wasn't Pujols!

40 minutes later, gary got his Coke goodies. We got something at Mickey D's before we hit Interstate 88 west towards Iowa. I popped a Eurythmics CD in the stereo and directed him towards the Illinois-Iowa state line.  He was told about Clinton,IA for some strange reason by his pals. Soon as we crossed the Mississippi River into the Hawkeye State, he accidentally missed the exit. We also made a second turn around to capture the "welcome to Iowa" sign after not getting it on camera the first time around. instead of driving an extra 23 miles north to Clinton, we hung out in the small town of Le Claire, and spent the next hour taking photos in both of our cameras. Did you know this was the hometown of Buffalo Bill? we posed in front of the museum, as well as shots of the lively activity on Old Man river (getting a Showboat theme going here). Plenty of boating going on. Gary even befriended a kid named Alex, who was spending his Sunday afternoon fishing in the muddy Mississip. i got to take note of some writing on a stone near the coast, which read:

 Nice huh? Something worth remembering. When you think about a day like this, it was nice that gary and I hung out today. It would've been kinda lonely for him to travel all that way alone. Having company made it more fun! 

I almost thought we were like Thelma & Louise for a moment. yeah, we could've kept on going, but it was getting late. There was no chance of getting back before the sun sets. Gorgreous sunset overlooking Dixon! Wish I had taken a pic of that!