Sunday, August 25th, 2013

Today was the day that we left on our adventure east.  We had been at Mahoney State Park for two nights and it was time to get going. :) 



 

We wanted to get all the way to Davenport, IA today, so we got the kids up by 8 am and were ready to go by 9 am.  Since we were camping with my parents, we went over to tell them good-bye and I had my mom take this picture of us five before we left.

 





By 9:45, we were on the road!  We didn't forget anything too major at home, so we decided to just get on the interstate and head to Iowa.  By about 10:10, we were driving past our church.  It then dawned on me that it was Sunday! The thought crossed my mind that we should stop, put on church clothes, go to church, and then be on our way, but Matt didn't think we should delay things.  We knew it would be a long day of driving.

We got out of Nebraska and into Iowa.  The kids were entertaining themselves quite nicely and everybody was doing well. About an hour into the trip, they watched "Mr. Popper's Penguins," so that filled the time until we stopped for lunch.  We found a state park by Altoona, IA for lunch (Mitchell something.) It was great driving by Adventureland and remembering the fun we had there in June!

After about an hour break for lunch, we were back on the road.  We had gone about 150 miles and we had about 150 to go!

For the afternoon, we got the joy of listening to many episodes of "Adventures in Odyssey" and doing some more activities in the car.  I was very impressed by how the kids did in the car all day! Even the 3 year old!!

The following game is how Megan passed much of her time.  This is a "License plate game" where you flipped the block over once you saw a license plate from that state.  She saw a license plate from every state except for 19 of them! Wow! (If the block says the state name and capital, she did not see a license plate from that state.)

About 5:30, we crossed the Mighty Mississippi and we were in East Moline, Illinois.  We decided to stay the night at a US Corps of Enginner campground called "Fisherman's Corner." It is right along the Mississippi, so once we got settled in, we went out on a Mississippi river dam and did some exploring. :)

We put the kids to bed at a decent time tonight because we want to get the kids up early again tomorrow.  Courtney was not happy when we said we were not going to make a fire and have smores.
We are going to do some tourist things here in East Moline in the morning and then head out about noon to Indiana.  We are going to be at the Indiana Dunes State Park the next two nights.