Road Trip Diaries

Last night saw some excitement, when Debbie closed the motel room’s bathroom door behind her, and we found ourselves locked out. After a little prodding around, I put some clothes on and went to get some help from the office, but there was nobody there. Nobody answered the phone either.

Eventually, I prised away the part of the door frame that prevented us reaching the bolt — it came away easily; we weren’t the first ones to have experienced this. It turned out that there was a button on the doorknob that caused it to lock. When the door opened fully, the knob would hit the wall, pushing the button.

In the morning, I meant to tell them all about this, but I never got the opportunity, and just dropped our key on the office desk.

Not much distance has been covered today, but we’ve seen a lot of stuff instead.

First stop of the day was the home of Ulysses S Grant, in Galena, closer to our motel than the breakfast place we were aiming for.

It was a guided tour, and the nice lady who showed us round was very eager that we should visit every historic building in Galena — which is a lot. We had places to go, but we made the most of this one. There was some garish wallpaper, lots of original furniture and paintings of the Grant family.

I was a little nonplussed to find that Grant’s son had a painting of some children smoking pipes for his bedroom decoration.

We drove out of Galena on US-20, keeping an eye out for Emmy Lou’s — Road Trip USA’s suggested breakfast place. It never appeared, and it was nearing brunchtime by the time we reached the next conurbation: Dubuque ("Dewbuke" — I was confused for a while), which involved crossing the Mississippi river.

We parked up and ate at the Brickhouse Brewpub — too late for breakfast, Debbie had a cheesesteak wrap and I had a "voodoo burger". It was tasty. It was large. We’re beginning to pine for smaller portions now.

This is an establishment where you can buy a half gallon "Growler". For $7.50 you can return to the Brickhouse and get a new Growler…!

Next door there was a tourist information place, and they advised us on our next move, which was to drive on to the Ice Harbour area, book a place on a 3:00 boat ride, then visit the Mississippi River Museum.

The best part of the river museum was being reminded of all the places along the Mississippi we’ve visited before. One of the exhibits was a "flyover" of the river from source to mouth, which you could speed through or pause with a jog shuttle. We were reminded of the headwaters in Minnesota, our visit to St. Louis, and our drive from Memphis to New Orleans. I was a bit disappointed that the flyover was not continuous, but faded between highlights.

There were also lots of exhibits about boats and industry, an aquarium, and… a model frog made up like one of KISS!

Our boat ride took us a way up the river and back down, and very relaxing it was too. There was a commentary from the captain, but accent and amplification conspired to make in pretty much incomprehensible.

We were passed by a tugboat pushing ten barges upriver, each one the equivalent of 60 trucks, among other rivergoing vessels.

As well as the boat tours and the museum, the Ice Harbour houses a floating casino. We decided to have a look inside, just to see if there were any Vegas style gimmicks. We were ID’d very thoroughly on the way in, and found nothing but three storeys of slot machines, and a few tables surrounded by miserable looking people. I don’t think anyone cracked a smile in the time we were there. It did have that familiar "slot drone" sound from Las Vegas.

We drove out of Dubuque along US-20, having been advised there would be motels that way. We noted several chain motels, then had to brake a bit suddenly to make the turning for the Terrace Motel. It seemed neat and tidy, but it took a little poking around to find the office, which had moved from the building marked "Office" to room 1 of the accommodation. This turned out to be inhabited by a sweet old lady — the owner — and her daughter. She was preoccupied preparing jams and preserves for the imminent State Fair, but sent us upstairs to look at a room.

The room turned out to be five rooms: two double bedroom, a lounge, a kitchen, a bathroom. The sign at the front isn’t joking when it says "5 room suite. 1 room price". It’s clean, comfortable, well appointed. It has letters of thanks from previous guests taped to the kitchen cabinets, along with a photograph of the cast of Hart to Hart for some reason…

There are houseplants and everything. Fantastic! If you want to stay in Dubuque, go to the Terrace Motel, US-20 West of town.

After settling in at the Terrace Motel, we went to the nearby Target, where Debbie wanted to do some clothes shopping. I left her to it, and by the time we met up again, I had two DVDs in my hand (Studio Ghibli classics Spirited Away and Castle in the Sky — $14 each. Fantastic.) I almost got tempted into buying a "nostalgia" Monopoly set, in a fancy wooden box for $13, but we realised it would have Atlantic City street names, and for me nostalgia necessitates London street names in Monopoly.

After shopping, food. We went to Los Aztecas, almost opposite the motel. In this country, and especially in this part of this country, restaurants are incapable of serving moderate portions. My plateful of Mexican food was lovely, but I had to leave some lettuce and some guacamole.

Debbie was also beaten.

And now, we are sitting on a sofa, watching TV (Without a Trace). When it comes to bedtime, we will have to stand up and walk to a separate bedroom. Such novelty.

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 21st, 2005 at 1:00 pm and is filed under Oregon Trail. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.