Vacation, Day 2 - Bettendorf, Iowa

I don't think blogger likes my laptop, formatting is not working - even if I submit my own HTML???? So a synopsis with pictures. Also, I would just put the pics up in photobucket but I know there are several of you who like to save copies of the pictures to your own PC's. I will post all the pictures later using photobucket.

To start day two we drove three hours east of Chicago to Bettendorf, Iowa. 40 minutes into the drive we left the concrete of Chicago in exchange for Western Illinois corn fields. It was amazing to see all of the farm land in Illinois. Uncle Louis and his family live in Bettendorf, one of the Quad cities. We learned those cities are Bettendorf (IA), Davenport (IA), Rock Island (IL), Moline (IL), and East Moline (IL). That's five cities, not four? Why are they called the Quad Cities? A little research explained that since the 1950's the name Quad Cities is a misnomer. In the 1950's Bettendorf passed East Moline in size but because all 5 cities have populations greater than 20,000 it was hard to exclude one. At the same time in the 1950's a TV news station ran a Quint Cities promotion, but it proved unsuccessful. I am guessing the promotion was received with the same excitement as "New" Coke was. The Quad Cities name has remained just like Coca-Cola Classic.

We stayed in a hotel in Moline. The John Deere classic was going on at TPC Deere Run just a few miles from our hotel. Those of you who know me, know I could care less. We learned that we shared an elevator in our hotel with Steve Stricker, who??? Yeah, we get off the elevator and this guy says to me "do you know who that was?", I asked should I? He says "that was Steve Stricker!" Pardon me, but who? Stricker won the tournament and took home $774,000.00 . I'm pretty sure he didn't recognize me either.

The highlight of day two was . . . . . SWIMMING! We swam in the hotel pool while the rest of the group went mud bogging in a motor home to a muddy cave? Actually, I'm not sure where they went but our kids were happy to be in the pool. Not the spoil the events of the week not yet disclosed, but Brock and Paige took a vote of their favorite activities of the week - Number 1: SWIMMING. It just goes to show that the size of the pool doesn't matter, nor does celebrity golfers at your hotel as long as you have water in a hole kids are happy. And that makes parents happy.