Interstates, the Rock Island Arsenal, windmills
 | Rob Crowe
Columnist
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It was a rather short vacation to Kentucky, five days from start to finish, but we visited many relatives and saw lots of interesting things.
The old van ran flawlessly, the air conditioner worked well, most important for keeping six people comfortable on a June trip to Kentucky. Our trips there have been much easier since Interstate 39 has been completed from Rockford to Bloomington/Normal, Ill. This bypass of Chicago makes the trip much nicer. Chicago is interesting and lively but not a town you want to drive through if you don’t have to. Somehow or other, we didn’t encounter any major road construction.
My Dad took us on many trips to Kentucky. Mom took him out of Kentucky but she couldn’t take Kentucky out of him. His idea of a trip was to drive straight through if possible, stay a couple of weeks, then grudgingly drive back to Minnesota.
We saw lots of roadside scenery, but not much else. There were a couple of exceptions. One time we stayed at a campground in The Dells, but, like I said, that was the exception. Since Management and I have been doing the trips, we plan a stop at some attraction on the way back, the Indianapolis Racetrack and Museum, the John Deere Visitor Center at Moline, something for the kids, you know … This year, feeling rather magnanimous, I told Management she could pick the place for us to stop on the way back, since most of the trip was for visiting my relatives. Her choice, get this you guys, the Rock Island Arsenal! Another reason I’m one of the happiest gearheads alive.
The arsenal is a secure site of sorts, we stopped at the entrance and a friendly guard wrote us a pass, telling us we shouldn’t go into sensitive areas or a government goon would apprehend us and send us to South Dakota, wouldn’t want that. Anyway, the island is interesting for any gender or age, a nice park with a display of tanks and howitzers and rocket launchers, the museum was closed but the visitor center at the Mississippi River locks was open. We happened to hit it at the right time, a grain barge was going through. The nine barges ran through, were tied below the lock, then the pusher boat went in, was lowered, hooked to the barges, the bridge below the locks was rotated, then the barge headed on its way down the river.
One thing that has changed on our trips is the addition of Windmill Farms. On one site in Illinois and two sites in Iowa, these have sprung up over the past several years, spectacular to see about 75 of these spread over a couple of square miles. I think they are pretty neat, I know they are the rage for the environmentalists … as long as they are put someplace else. Iowa or Illinois must be OK, on Cape Cod in sight of “environmentalist” Robert Kennedy Jr. is not.
On our trip, we saw America on the move, trucks going day and night, the factories spread over the countryside operate 24 hours a day. Factories need reliable power. Fossil fuel plants produce power “’round the clock.” Windmills produce power … you guessed it … when the wind blows. At Paw Paw, Ill., all the windmills were stopped, this at five o’clock in the afternoon when power is most needed. The Iowa windmills were happily rotating as we passed, that grid was being supplied.
The liberal fundamentalists will say that windmills and solar panels are the answer. I say, the answer to what? They are great sources of energy when the wind blows and the sun shines, but very problematic if you want a “round the clock” energy source. You’d need hundreds of millions of tons of lead-acid batteries to bridge the gap if you went to all solar and wind power. The paid protest lackeys have it both ways, they can protest the “unsightly” towers or the lead-acid batteries.
New sources of power are good, whether they be windmills or coal gasification plants. There are drawbacks for each power source but the wholesale vilification of the fossil fuel energy industry by the liberal fundamentalists is boring, infantile and, in the big scheme of things … stupid. There isn’t a better way to put it.
Rob Crowe chairs the Aitkin County Republicans and raises kids and cows on a farm near Hill City.
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