Washington 2023:
Day 2 - Sioux City, IA

	Monday, August 14, 2023: We took advantage of a break in the early morning rain to break down camp and load everything into the van, and we were on the road again just after 9 AM. We headed west on US-20 across northern Illinois.
	Blue sky! It was still raining intermittently, but we could see big patches of clear blue sky ahead.
	We drove through the adorable town of Elizabeth, Illinois, ...
	... and when we reached Galena, Illinois, we stumbled upon the home of Ulysses S. Grant.
	This beautiful park was also in Galena.
	That's the Mississippi River, which means that Dubuque, Iowa, is just on the other side.
	Score! At the base of the bridge, we got a great photo of the Iowa version of the Great River Road sign.
	We passed a replica Statue of Liberty ...
	... as we made our way ...
	... to the National Mississippi River Museum and Aquarium.
	After paying for admission, we checked out some of the exhibits.
	There were small aquarium displays woven in among the other exhibits. This one contained fish specific to the Marshall Islands.
	This beauty is a guineafowl puffer.
	Around the corner was the Gulf of California aquarium, which contained this balloonfish. For some reason, these fish always seem to know that Debbie is taking their picture and they turn right toward her.
	The lionfish aquarium contained no fewer than five of these gorgeous red lionfish, ...
	... and this striped burrfish.
	The next tank contained this yellow garden eel. As we watched, a helper put food in the tank, and this garden eel stretched to her absolute limit trying to reach the morsels that sank to the bottom of the tank.
	There was a giant tank containing lots of different fish, but the two that caught our eye were this porcupinefish, ...
	... and this green moray eel.
	Across from the giant tank was a smaller tank containing seahorses. This little guy is a lined seahorse.
	Look at all of the rays in petting pool. They would swim right up to the edge where the kids were standing like they wanted to be petted.
	No river museum would be complete without mentioning John Wesley Powell.
	We were pleased to see this print of Thomas Moran's masterpiece, Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone, on the second floor. Little did we know that we'd be seeing the original version near the end of our trip.
	We went up to the second floor to see if there were more exhibits, but the only thing on the second floor was the theater. We headed back downstairs, checking out this canoe on the way to the gift shop.
	After much searching, we finally found four different kinds of kids socks with aquatic species for the grandkids, and one adult size for Debbie. Christmas shopping bonus!
	We walked outside along the riverfront to get to the other museum building, ...
	... checking out the walk-in fish exhibit that showed the fish's internal organs. Cool!
	We walked along the boardwalk toward the other building, ...
	... passing this beautiful calliope in a trailer just before getting to the entrance.
	This huge exhibit was interesting because it let you see the fish both from above and below the water.
	Turtles! This little guy swam right up and made eye contact with Debbie.
	And then there was this small display off to the side with the Delorean time machine from "Back to the Future," ...
	... and the world's first 3D printed car. They were both great exhibits, but we were confused as to why they were at this museum.
	As we walked through the building, we loved that the floor was printed to show the Mississippi River system.
	Check out this shovelnose sturgeon!
	It's a gator, babe. A huge one.
	Those are some sharp teeth on this longnose gar.
	There was a tank containing two river otters that were just too fast to photograph well. They looked like they were having a blast as they shot from one side of the tank to the other.
	There was a small display containing Wyoming toads. They are only found in the Laramie Basin of Wyoming. Isn't this one cute?
	Outside the museum was this giant paddlewheel from a riverboat. It was more than 20 feet in diameter and weighed more than 30 tons. And it was only the starboard paddlewheel! There was a second one on the original ship!
	Debbie locked on to this frog statue on the walk back toward our van. It was originally part of a statues on parade series called Toadally Frogs.
	As we left the musuem and drove through Dubuque, we saw these amazing murals, ...
	... and this very plain dead end sign.
	We decided to get lunch at A&W, ...
	... and ordered onion rings, two cod sliders, a Papa Burger, and a diet A&W root beer. Everything was really good, but the onion rings were especially delicious.
	We left Dubuque on US 20, headed west.
	An hour later, as we were approaching Waterloo, Iowa, we passed the John Deere Tractor and Engine Museum which didn't appear to be open on Mondays.
	Thirty minutes later, we arrived at Antique Acres, ...
	... which is the home of the Iowa Merci Train which is the first one we ever visited. We were excited that it was open, and then we noticed that there were two people working on the right side of the boxcar. They turned out to be siblings Rick and Jeannie. Rick is the current caretaker of the Iowa boxcar, having taken over after his father passed away.
	He gave us the nickel tour, pointing out the various artifacts that they've recovered over the nearly 75 years since the boxcar was first delivered to Iowa.
	Here's the inside of the boxcar looking to the right, ...
	... straight ahead, ...
	... and to the immediate left. There was a partial wall in the middle of the boxcar, and these items were displayed on the left side of that wall.
	Here's a close up of a painted book cover that is on the second row on the left side. It depicts the first singing of the French National Anthem.
	Here's the other side of the partial wall.
	There was a display case containing dolls that Rick explained belonged to a collector who successfully hid them from the Germans during World War II. She included many of the dolls from her collection to the recipients of the Merci Train.
	There were lots of very interesting artifacts, ...
	... and Rick very happily explained the history of as many of them as he could.
	Thank you Rick and Jeannie! We very much appreciated the time you took to give us a very personal tour.
	The first time we were here, we only took photos of the front of the boxcar, and we were going to remedy that this time. Here is the front and right side, ...
	... and the back. Rick explained that he had new shields for the various provinces, but that he still had to fabricate the mounting blocks for them.
	Here's a close up of the boxcar's identification plates. The black plate is the equivalent of the boxcar's license plate, and the brass plaque underneath the car is more like the vehicle identification number.
	As we drove away, Debbie found the article written about the boxcar that Rick had mentioned during our tour.
	Our next stop was in Hudson, Iowa, where we visited a city park containing a brand-new looking rocket slide.
	As we continued westward, we saw this large collection of hawks circling a farmer's field. Soooo spooky.
	Our last sightseeing stop of the day was at Le Mars, Iowa, the ice cream capital of the world!
	There were ice cream statues all over the town, so we went on a quick photo safari to find as many of them as we could.
	This one had a world map and messages about giving a helping hand.
	Live Life!
	Jesus!
	There were banners lining the street with the slogan "Life is Sweet."
	We stopped at Blue Bunny Ice Cream's Visitor Center.
	There was a huge ice cream sculpture out front, ...
	... along with these cute ice cream benches.
	We ducked inside where they had this great display showing all of the available ice cream flavors.
	Debbie got a chocolate-covered waffle cone with Rocky Road, and Tom got a regular waffle cone with Scooper Hero, which was really just brightly colored vanilla ice cream.
	There was plenty of seating available, but we decided to take our cones on the road.
	Back on the photo safari, we passed a cone statue dedicated to the Girl Scouts, ...
	... and this one covered with flowers and butterflies, ...
	... and this one, ...
	... this one, ...
	... don't forget this one, ...
	... and lastly this blurry one.
	Here's an ice cream mural on the Blue Bunny ice cream building.
	As we approached Sioux City, Iowa, we noticed this Jolly Time Popcorn building. Tom wasn't familiar with this brand, but Debbie has fond memories of it from her youth.
	Hey! That's the Sue Bee honey bear! Apparently it is from the Sioux Honey company which would obviously be from Sioux City.
	We crossed this river with interesting spillways every few hundred yards.
	We entered Sioux City proper, ...
	... and then immediately crossed over to Nebraska, ...
	... and made our way to the Scenic Park Campground, which was our destination for today.
	Septimus, our trusty minivan, earned another scar as Tom backed into this very hard-to-see firepit and put a tear in the bumper cover.
	We slapped some Gorilla Tape on it and went back to setting up camp.
	Here's the view from inside Bundlings Utopia, looking out at a nearly clear blue sky.
	Here's our final set up.
	We unwound with a few episodes of "The Masked Singer" before turning in. Day 3 >