Sep 21, 2011 - Keokuk

Today was another travel day, heading south. John was excited as we moved further into Iowa and saw the price of gas going down. Even though we just filled up the other day, he stopped and topped off the tank at $3.41 a gallon! We haven't seen it that low in a loooong time. He said it somehow makes it feel less painful to only pay $60 to fill up instead of the $350 we were paying in Alaska. Ya think? -- We continued to follow Highway 61 down on the Iowa side of the Mississippi River, which is designated the Great River Road. But we hardly...

Sep 16, 2010 - Touring Nauvoo

Ten miles north of Keokuk is Historic Nauvoo. Coming from Salt Lake City and not being Mormon always provides conversation. And today was no different. I had had several neighbors that had come to Nauvoo and I wanted to see first hand what they had so vividly described to us. We had a lovely time driving around seeing all the different homes and businesses. Every building had a Missionary in it to tell the story of the previous tenents. It was definitly a walk back in time. What is always surprising, is that the missionaries assume that we...

Sep 20, 2007 - Sterling, Ill to Keokuk, Iowa

The weather is still perfect. Cool mornings and warm by afternoon. Today is the first day that it has felt too warm. We made camp at a nice park in Keokuk, Iowa after spending the better part of the day driving along the Mississippi on the Illinois side. The quad cities were interesting and the traffic not nearly as bad as I had expected. We managed to find a place to park just a block from the JOHN DEER Center so we had a nice look around at all the equipment. Later down the GRR we stopped in a sleepy little town called Keithburg. Jim...

Oct 2, 2006 - Keokuk, Iowa

Spent a couple of days in Keokuk (KEY-o-cuck) Iowa. Keokuk is the home of the largest dam and ship lock on the Mississippi River. The dam is on the widest part of the river and has 113 spillway gates. The lock is used for moving boats and barges past the dam. The lock has a 40 foot lift and is over 1000 feet long. We were lucky to catch a barge moving down river and got to see it leave the lock. After the barge cleared the lock, a couple of bass boats entered and got a lift on their way upstream. Kathie found another house. This one was...

Aug 29, 2006 - Nauvoo, Illinois

The next leg of our journey took us across the state of Illinois until we were travelling along the Great Mississippi River towards Nauvoo, which is right on the border between Illinois and Iowa, the border running down the middle of the river. We arrived in Nauvoo on Wednesday 23 August. Why visit Nauvoo you may say, never heard of the place? To understand why we are here you will need to know a little bit of what the town means in the history of the Latter Day Saints. Nauvoo was a city, which was built from a malaria-ridden swampland on...

Nov 1, 2005 - Hickory Haven, Keokuk, IA - 11/1 - 11/8

We headed out to Iowa to visit a friend of mine named Kathy. I hadn't seen Kathy in years, except when she surprised me and showed up at the church for Jessica's wedding. We didn't have a chance to talk because she left right after the service. So I was looking forward to seeing her. The night we arrived Kathy invited us over for dinner. We met her cousin, Jeannie, and her dad, John. Keokuk is located right on the Mississippi river. One day Kathy, Jim and I drove into Illinois to visit Nauvoo. First we stopped along the river and ate...