My Day in Rock Falls with Peggy

Woke up before 7 am on Friday, took a shower, and discovered that Peggy was already awake. I joined Peggy and Ralph at their kitchen table. Ralph organized a petition to have one of Peggy’s famous omelettes for breakfast, so she made us three and we had the cinnamon pecan rolls from Bennisons. They have some great contraptions for making tea.

After breakfast I caught up in my journal 4 days and 7 pages. Then Peggy and I got on the road for our adventures of the day.

First stop was the Rock Falls/Sterling dam and the aborted Hennepin Canal. The entire 66 mile length of the canal is on the National Historic Register. The idea to build it surfaced in 1834; Congress appropriated the first funds in 1890 and completed in 1907, just in time for river shipping to be on the decline and railroad shipping to be on the ascent. It was the first canal built of concrete and not stone. The water was spilling over a little less than half the dam with immense force and power. It was impressive to stand so close to it. We took some photos and then walked across on the walk-way trail to a brick path going up to the Dillon House; an historic house that mixes up Victorian, Federalist, and Moorish styles.

Next we drove to the Indian Mounds at Sinnissipi. We read the interpretive materials about the three different tribes over three different time periods back to 1500 BC who all buried their dead in these mounds. Their remains have been removed to a different burial ground. We walked on the trail along the Rock River down below the mounds. The whole area (another bend in the river) is now a city park.

Then we drove to the City of Dixon and went to Castle Rock. It’s a state park now, but was once a sacred site for the Sauk and Fox Native American tribes. They now have a staircase that takes one up to the castle rock to prevent people from damaging the site. It is a lovely view of the whole river valley from there. Peggy and I climbed to the top, took some photos, and admired the view. She told me that many Europeans came to this site on their Grand Tour of America in the mid 1800s until too many White settlers came to the area and changed the face of the landscape. Then the Europeans stopped coming.

On the drive back from Dixon I made Peggy stop at the John Deere farm and blacksmith shop for photos. The historic site was closed for the season until May 1st, but we could still take photos. Vermonter John Deere moved to Grand Detour, Illinois in 1836 and started working as a blacksmith. He struggled with busting the prairie soil with New England plows, so in 1837 he invented a self-scouring steel plow using a broken saw blade. By 1850, he was producing 1600 plows annually. In 1912, John’s son Charles’ son-in-law William Butterworth started the company’s expansion into the tractor business by buying the Waterloo Gasoline Engine Company that already manufactured a successful tractor. In 2014 John Deer Company was ranked 80th in the Fortune 500.

The blacksmith shop still operates for tourists in the summer months.

I took Peggy and Ralph out to dinner at Art's Garden Deli. The owners of Art's are local Rock Falls residents and they have an interesting dining model. They serve sandwiches with fresh, healthy ingredients made to order, baked potatoes also made to order stuffed with your choice of meat and cheese, soups, and desserts - including frozen yogurt. You order and pick up just like at a deli counter. We sat outside on the patio. Peggy said she has always wanted a piazza like this at her house. It was great seeing Peggy in person again after all these years.