Illinois river ride

We love visiting Cliff's sister and her husband.  It is amazing that a town the size of St. Louis has so many wonderful motorcycle roads within a short drive from the city; Pat and Charlene always have a new route for us to try when we're there.  However, we like to try and sneak in a ride to Mel's, wherever else we might go.

Once you cross the Mississippi River and get through Alton, Illinois, it's a perfect ride along the river.  You can make the ride as long or as short as you like, but we try to ride at least as far as Mel's, which is in the town of Hardin.

This is a bar we passed in Grafton, near the beginning of our river ride.  I personally think it's a bad idea to drive a motorcycle drunk, but I guess people do it all the time.  When we took our motorcycle safety course, we learned that a huge percentage of motorcycle accidents involve alcohol.
There are bars and restaurants all along this highway (Illinois 100) with bands playing and people enjoying life.  There are many places where you can take a ferry across the Mississippi back to Missouri.

As we rode toward Hardin, at least a dozen classic cars about the same vintage as this one passed us.

When we reached Mel's, those cars were in the parking lot.

Cliff especially liked this one.

Another tractor show

I'd noticed the gang on Tractor Tales message board talking about a tractor show and a "taler gathering". A couple of them, including the guy who cooks Cajun food for such gatherings, had invited me and Cliff to attend.

Somehow I thought it was in Indiana. I found out Thursday evening it was in mid-Illinois... not so far away after all. And then when I visited the website, I found out the world's largest farm tractor, Big Bud, was going to be there.

Cliff has seen Big Bud on television, and read about it for years; one of his dreams was to see this tractor in person.

So Friday morning, after having only four hours of sleep (because he had to get up and help a neighbor load his wandering bull), Cliff decided to go.

We threw together what we thought we'd need for the trip and took off.

You can click on this picture to make it larger and read the information about "Big Bud".

As you can see by the standing water, there had been considerable rain at some point in the previous twenty-four hours.

A heck of a lot of rain!

Cliff spent a lot of time looking at that tractor from every angle.

For $250, you could buy a toy replica of Big Bud.

We did not meet up with the Talers; Cliff wanted to get at least a couple of hours toward home before dark. As we were leaving the show, I said, "Why don't we go to St. Louis to your sister's and spend the night? We haven't seen them for awhile anyhow, and that way we're halfway home in the morning."

So that's what we did.

Here's a slide show of pictures I took in Rantoul, Illinois. If you click on the four little arrows in the lower right-hand corner, you can view the pictures full screen.