If it is Sunday, this must be Iowa!

We feel like those folks in the 1969 movie ("If It's Tuesday, This Must Be Belgium") as we are traveling across so many states in so few days... Sunday we finished crossing Nebraska and arrived in Iowa.

First - a picture from Saturday evening that Celesta took of us in Kearney, NE -- with Miss Kitty on the couch next to "her Carl".

Many of the fields in Iowa are terraced -- usually with crops and then grass on the terracing strips -- this one may have crops and grass but it isn't quite clear. It was hard to get a good picture as we had rain for much of the day on Sunday.

Sunday night we stayed at the Iowa Aviation Heritage Museum (https://iowaaviationheritagemuseum.webs.com/) -- another Harvest Host site!

We did not have time to visit all of the museum -- but one of the volunteers was telling us that these planes suspended from the ceiling are remote control planes that would be used in airshows and would re-enact fights between Japanese and American fighters. I didn't know that RC planes could be this big! The largest one probably had a wingspan of 20-24'!

We met up with Carl's cousin Jenice and her husband Gary for supper. It was so nice to talk and share with them, hearing what is going on with them and sharing our story.

When we got to the airfield on Sunday afternoon, we could see that there were cars racing on the runways. We asked, and one runway was closed for this event by the Corvette Club of Iowa (https://www.corvetteclubofiowa.com/). I pulled up information on their calendar:

It indicates "7 events per day" - I'm not certain what the different events are. We saw them going one at a time through a slalom-type course identified by traffic cones and then around a U-Turn and down the runway as a straight-away. A new car would start as the one before it rounded the U-Turn.

Our plan is to get to Illinois on Monday, get parked, and get to work on getting Carl's Mom moved and settled.

Saturday into Nebraska

Saturday morning, we woke up at Pine Bluffs Distillery and took some pictures before leaving:

Grain storage units outside the distillery.

Back of the distillery building

Gracie parked right next to the field.

Chad had told us that the overhead clearance was 14', but Carl stayed outside to make sure that Gracie made it under safely.

She made it!

We headed east on I-80, on our way to Kearney, Nebraska, where Patti's friend Celesta has recently moved. We parked at Cabela's and Celesta came over to see Gracie, and then take us to visit her new home. It is so NICE! Amazingly large and so nicely laid out!

Celesta took us out to dinner at Whiskey Creek Wood Fire Grill (https://whiskeycreek.com/) for dinner -- they had something on the appetizer menu called "Southwest Tootsie Rolls" ...

We had to try them -- the shape of them is like a Tootsie Roll. They were really good!

We got some pictures together back at Gracie:

Celesta and Patti

Obligatory selfie

We went into Cabela's and looked around at some of the clothes, camping supplies, and hunting equipment...

A tent that blocks 90% of sunlight to keep the tent cooler.

A propane stove much like ours, but...

... it has "Wind Block" -- we need to figure out how to create something that would provide this functionality on our stove. When it is windy, the heating of the stove is severely negatively impacted...

Some of the hunting equipment was in the same area -- an Ozone Closet: "Ozone Power destroys odors in 30 minutes" -- if we had this in Gracie, could I use it instead of the washing machine?

"Wild Frenzy Bugle Tube"

"Imaka da bullcrazy" -- a longrange elk call.

Some of the many, many trophies displayed in the store.

Gracie along with several other campers in the parking lot

Cabela's water tower, since I forgot to get a picture of the front of the store.

When I was looking for a place to stay for the night in Kearney, I looked for a Harvest Host, and there was the "Classic Car Collection of Kearney" -- as I started looking at it more closely, I realized that it was located at a Cabela's and that we may be able to stay at the Cabela's and not feel obligated to visit the museum (it probably would have been interesting, but we wanted to be able to visit Celesta and not feel that our time needed to be taken by other activities). I have heard that some Cabela's no longer allow overnight parking (since they were purchased by / joined with Bass Pro Shops), so I called, and the lady I spoke with said that we were welcome to park in their lot and, essentially, to stay as long as we wanted! So, we decided to park at Cabela's. I had read that the only disadvantage was that there were frequent trains going through, but that the west side of the parking lot (opposite side from the Classic Car Collection) was a little quieter. When we got to Cabela's we drove to the west side, and we were the first rig to park on that side, though almost immediately, a trailer pulled in behind us. Eventually, a few other rigs joined us. We had a quiet night, and look forward to more miles east on Sunday.

East all the way across Wyoming

On Friday, we headed east all the way across Wyoming -- about 400 miles -- a long one-day drive for us!

Views while driving -- we saw a lot of pasture land with sheep, cattle, horses, and some antelope (we're think the antelope were wild).

Lots of snow fencing in the fields along the interstate

View from the rest area where we stopped for lunch

Gracie amongst the trucks...

We stopped for the night at Pine Bluffs Distillery at the far eastern end of Wyoming (Pine Bluffs, Wyoming) -- this is a mural wall inside their serving and bar area.

A view of the transfer piping -- "Chain-Vey" - you may be able to see the chain and disk inside that piping.

The source of the Chain-Vey (like "convey with a chain") system

The system that cleans the grain (screens are used to clean). All of the grain used in producing their product is grown within 23 miles of the distillery. They used to say that all of the grain was produced in Wyoming, but one of their farmers has a corn field that is within a mile of the distillery, but partly in Nebraska (the border is that close), so now they say the grain is grown within 23 miles, mostly in Wyoming!

Finished product in boxes (the order of the pictures which is the order of the tour isn't consistent with the order of the process)

Malted grain - they use their own malted grain, but they also malt for others (e.g. State of New Mexico) and sell the malted grain that they produce.

I didn't understand *all* of this, but... they malt the rye, wheat, triticale, and barley. An interesting point is that the rye, wheat, and triticale produce only a single malt product, but barley can create many different types (pale, dark, pilsner, and about 15 others) depending on the temperature used in the drying process. Just a different of a few degrees temperature difference in the drying can make a difference in the resultant product. Only barley has this characteristic.

During the malting process, the grains are germinated - he wants the grains to have roots a little longer than the length of the grain.

This is a dark malk - we were able to taste it (and also a pale) - they both tasted like they would be good in granola!

The drums in which the grain is malted and dried. During the malting process, the drums are turned on a regular basis (2 turns every 4 hours on average) to ensure all the grains are kept evenly moist.

This container was used before the drums - to wet the grains for 2 days to start the germination process.

On our way to the alcohol production area, we passed where the product is aging.

Oak barrels for aging

My remembering may not be accurate, but this is what we think we heard: In the silver container the "mash" of grain and liquid ultimately creates the alcohol that is taken off as liquid -- the remaining grain is used to feed farm animals. Each alcohol is created from a mixture of different grains -- corn plus different combinations of the others. Corn is not malted (malting does not change the properties of corn as it does the others).

The distillers

The fermenters where the starch -- yeast -- is added before going to the distiller.

The barrels are burned on the inside. Bourbon can only be created in barrels which have not been used for aging anything else. The second use of the barrel with the same grain ingredients would create whiskey. This picture shows two staves - the one on the left is the common way that staves would be made with grooves cut in, the other is made by a company in Minnesota that puts honeycomb holes in the stave - giving more surface area for the alcohol to encounter the oak. Both are burned on the inside which is necessary for the aging of the bourbon (first use) or whiskey. Vodka is produced in a similar way but not aged.

Labels of all the products they have made here, including on the top center left Hand Sanitizer, which they made last year during the height of the pandemic. He shared that they actually discovered a better way to make their vodka through the process that they went through to make the hand sanitizer.

He also told us about a limited single barrel offering that they had made available earlier this year -- they would bottle a limited number of bottles from a single barrel of whiskey -- and they were numbered. The first 50 people who showed up on the morning of the offering got to choose which bottle number they wanted, from 1-50. There were a total of less than 300 bottles produced. The people who got any of the bottles are then able to come back next year when they will bottle from another single barrel from the same batch of product -- and so on for 12 years. So, the guy who got bottle #1 from the offering can come back next year, and the year after that, and the year after that, and get bottle #1 from each batch. The first year (this year) the whiskey was aged in the barrel just 1 year, but next year it will be aged 2 years (same original batch, put into a different barrel, continuing to age after barrel #1 was bottled out). Eventually, the whiskey in the last year will have aged 12 years in its barrel. The guy who was on the tour with us was intrigued by this, so he asked if there were any of those bottles left, and there was one -- #245 -- so he got it. I think since he bought this one, he is eligible to come back and get one each year, though, since he wasn't one of the first 50, he won't be guaranteed to get #245 each year (we discussed that and there is really no difference between bottle #1 and #245 or #270, the difference is in the whiskey aged 1 year versus 2 years versus 12 years). Our guide told us that they generally age the whiskey in two years.

The front of the bottle - I like interesting bottle shapes...

This is our fourth Harvest Host location. We have found each one to be interesting!

More information here: https://www.pinebluffsdistilling.com/

Last morning at Welcome Station RV Park

We packed up and left Welcome Station on Thursday morning, but took a last walk around before heading out...

RV Park Resident Rich got a new tool for his job with AT&T -- Carl thinks Jimmy needs one of these!

Beautiful tulips blooming

"In the Garden"

Pepper giving her beaver impression

Such a beautiful lawn on the east side of the park...

.... and also on the west side!

Pond on the west side....

Stream on the west side (there is also a stream on the east side, but it is smaller).

Such a happy babbling brook/creek!

More flower beds

Looking up the creek

Some of the pansies blooming

Rutabagas

Patti petting Pepper and Gayle and Nancy planning what to do next.

Steve's Kubota Collection

I was happy to see that Nancy's bicycle agreed with the color scheme of the Kubota collection!

Gracie in her site

We had a beautiful site, facing the lawn area / pond / creek on the west side. We wish we could have stayed longer!

Coming east out of Nevada to the salt flats of northwestern Utah.

Salt flats from the rest area on eastbound I-80 -- we saw a number of cars, some driving quite fast, on the salt flats on Thursday.

For Thursday night, we stopped at another "Harvest Host" location, Uinta Lanes in Evanston, Wyoming.

We had pizza for dinner at the pub attached to the bowling alley.

We are hoping to arrive in the Chicagoland area by Monday, with the additional hope that there will be campground spots available at the end of the holiday weekend.