Thurs Sep 21 - Jefferson City MO to Mattoon IL

Another hot day. It hit 96 today but only in the afternoon. There was a storm above us heading north east so we tucked up under it enough so we got some overcast clouds, but not too close to get the rain. It dispersed as the day went on so by 2pm, the sky was clear and the temps started to rise, even this late in the day.
We continued our Rt 54 pilgrimage north east until we crossed the Mississippi River at Louisiana MO (yea, it hurt my head yesterday when I saw signs for Louisiana, who names these things?).
We read somewhere today that  this area was owned by France (don't ask the native Americans), who kinda sold it to Mexico (Spain) and then later on sold it again to America (Jefferson), which caused some hard feelings. Meanwhile Napoleon (yup, THE Napoleon) wanted some of that America action again, but his interest petered out (He got busy). So everyone was fighting to control the Mississippi River and in the end, the Americans bought it (then stole Texas?).
The other story that bubbles up around here is Abe Lincoln, who stopped in most of these towns as a young Congressman, or lawyer or President and every town has some claim to him being in their town.
The other weird one is that Winston Churchill gave his Iron Curtain speech at Westminster College so there is a lot of Winston Churchill memorials and references  here and there.
Anyway, when we crossed the Mississippi we stopped to check the maps and a crazy guy on a BMW 1200 Adventure stopped and told us to head south along the river and then cut east for some good roads. That fit with not running into the rain up north and it turned out to be a very nice set of very unbusy roads along the river and then another remote 2-laner through the corn and soy fields with very little traffic. Most towns are small and old and people don't see a lot of BMWs riding through as it's kind of off the beaten path. Again, a lot of old barns are scattered here and there and nothing going on so every square inch of land is sown with corn or soy. The rolling also stopped and it flattened out even as we left Missouri.

The cool thing is that we started seeing the combines harvesting. This is dusty business as they wait until the corn and soy are as dry as possible and today was bone dry. The setup seems to be the combine itself, which is a miracle. it just drives across the fields of corn or soy (different heads) and it somehow harvests the corn or soy and stores it in it's internal hopper. It turns on a dime at the end of the row and does it again. Usually there is a tractor and wagon that I am guessing offloads the combine and weighs it, then moves it to one of the semi truck in the corner of the field. Sometime the combine unloads directly into a semi. No sure how this all works. Rt 26 was a great slice of life road and I would  recommend it.
A couple cool off stops and ended the day in Mattoon IL. Ride into town for a cold beer and dinner, then back to the ranch and crash. Hopefully we will be back in VT in a few days, it we do not get lost, again..

So here is one of the reviews from the place Dave wanted to stay
"OMG This was awful!!

Was looking for a cheap hotel, boy did I find it. No heat they turned the shower on when the space heater wasn't working, and gave us some extra blankets, the rest was bad before the whole heat thing but seems frivolous now. The rat the size of the little dog also haunts me, this place needs to be shut down!"