A Blog Along The Lincoln Highway

People in Woodbine know that Route 30 makes an unusual turn there at the one end of their town. If you’re heading east, you cross the Boyer Bridge and then make a sharp right to stay on 30 rather than coming straight into town on the old brick Lincolnway. If you’re heading west on 30, you make a sharp left in front of Walker’s Service Station and go across the Boyer Bridge.

I love the way the folks in Woodbine say “Boyer Bridge.” They don’t say Boy-yay like Charles Boyer. They say Boo-yer, but with a pure U sound in the Boo, almost like a French u. Buu-yer Bridge. It crosses the Boyer Creek.

Anyway, Bob wants us back on the interstate ASAP, and Marshall has given him some special directions. We cross the Boyer Bridge and turn left immediately on Iowa F-32, heading east across the hills. It’s a wonderful two-lane that’s great fun to drive. And because the terrain is rolling hills now, we get excellent vistas at the crest of many hills. There’s minimal traffic, and when we get to Iowa Route 59, we turn south to Route 44, and continue eastbound toward Des Moines.

Bob says we’re saying on this as long as we can unless traffic gets bad. He’s taking pictures of the landscape as I drive.

In Guthrie Center, Iowa, we stop for gas and Glenn takes the wheel. We actually are pretty good about sharing the driving duties. We’ve rotated seats regularly the whole trip.

We drive till about 8 pm, decide we’ll try to find a place in the Quad Cities. There seem to be no rooms in Davenport. “Because of the floods,” one clerk tells me, “there are lots of volunteers and FEMA workers in town.” Using my iPhone, I find us the last three rooms at the Fairfield Inn in Moline, Illinois. We cross the wide and recently overflowing Mississippi.

The woman at the Fairfield Inn who took our reservations suggests that we stop for dinner at Montana Jack’s which we’ll pass en route to the hotel. OK. It’s an unusual little steak house with a western theme. The waitresses all wear cowboy hats and some have holsters and toy guns. At least we assume they’re toys.

Bob and Glenn get seafood platters. I get the Cowboy Steak, a bone-in rib eye, and it turns out to be the best steak I’ve had in a long time. Rare and tender and delicious.

Then we find our rooms and crash for the short night.