Chicago to Iowa

Thursday May 12th

So today we start for home. But not directly, we will visit some cities from our past and take some photos of houses where we have lived. The first stop is Aurora, IL where I was born. There are 2 houses there but it seems that one has been demolished. We go by my first school which is also affiliated with St. Paul's Lutheran Church that our family attended. Over the church entrance is an engraving in German which was the common language of the Aurora Lutheran community in the 40s. But the church billboard proclaimed the church to be both St. Paul's and San Pablo and all of the rest of the billboard was in Spanish. It seems that many things have changed since 1950 when we moved away. From there we went to Belvidere for another photo and an ice cream. The roads from Aurora to Belvidere went through many cities with long red lights but things improved the farther west we went. We are enjoying the riverside highway and all of the rolling farmland. Finally we cross the Mississippi river into Clinton, Iowa. We have dinner at a Subway restaurant and search for the town campground that we were told about. However it is an RV only campground so we head west to DeWitt and a Super 8 motel. We check in and watch the season final of CSI Las Vegas and crash for the night.