We started our trip off with a visit to the Quad Cities to see the John Deere Pavilion. Alas, N2 are not old enough for the factory tour but I think the pavilion was just perfect for them! The John Deere Pavilion is free, air conditioned and very cool! You walk in and there are tractors and other John Deere equipment all over filling the place. The smile on Noah's face when he climbed on his first tractor was just priceless! Natalie was quite happy as well.
About a third of the Pavilion was taken up by a MASSIVE combine. This thing was HUGE. I was astounded by the size. This picture does not capture the size but it shows the combine. Maybe some of the others capture the size better.
There was a bulldozer and a front end loader-you could get in both.
They also had some really cool tractors. They are used for chopping logs. There was a walking tractor that Brian thought was really cool-like something you would see in Star Wars. Unfortunately you could not go in this one.
There were also antique tractors that you could not touch, so guess what, we spent no time looking at them! They had smaller John Deere products like a gator and some ride on lawnmowers. Note Noah's mouth in the first one, he was making the sound that a tractor makes.
Did you know that it takes 2 people to steer this one little tractor?
And here's Natalie after trying out all the tractors-must be hard work!
We checked into our hotel after that at which point I stayed with Noah so he could take a nap (he was up before 6 ready to leave on vacation). I knew he would not make it the fireworks without a nap and he asked for a nap. It took a lot of patience, time and crying on his part before he finally fell asleep at 4. Since we were going to fireworks, I didn't wake him up until close to 6. Natalie and Brian went off to try to find something to do. They first tried the zoo but they got there and it was closed-no animals, just vacant exhibits and 2 workers starting to tear things down. It must not have closed too long ago. Then they went to the aquarium-also closed down. Poor Natalie! The finally ended up at a playground that had sprinklers. They came back and swam at the hotel pool until Natalie decided she was hungry.
We ate a Bennigans! Alas, they no longer serve Death by Chocolates. What a shame! We went to the Davenport fireworks which are shot off over the Mississippi River. We had front row seats. It was so HOT even at 9 pm! But the fireworks show was very nice. We had to deal with lots of traffic leaving and didn't get back to the hotel until 11! End of day 1.
Edited to add a comment by Noah. Noah said while the fireworks were going on that fireworks make the sky messy and he doesn't like it messy. But he liked fireworks other than making the sky messy!
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