De Immigrant on Mississippi Road Trip 2013 - Day 2 - June 12 - Stop #1 - Indiana, Illinois, Iowa (Indiana Dunes)

Back on the road, day two was to take us from Indiana, through Illinois, and half way across Iowa. Stop #1 was in Fulton, IL, where they've recently built a fully functional Dutch style windmill - De Immigrant. All parts were brought in from Holland and then assembled by Dutch craftsmen.

It's not always in operation but does come on regularly to make several types of flour that you can buy in their wind mill museum across the street. When we visited, a group had just left and we got a private tour of the mill. The gentleman clearly loved the history behind this and other wind mills as well as talking about it as he went into details about the construction and also its operation and answered all of our questions, no matter how silly.

The mill sits on top of a flood control dike on the banks of the mighty Mississippi. Being elevated plus its own 100-foot height makes it a rather tall structure for the area. However, it was not visible fro distance during our approach.

De Immigrant on Mississippi

There are other attractions in Fulton, especially their Heritage Canyon was recommended to us. However, we had to balance attractions with time on the road and were also getting hungry and ready for lunch. As such, we sounded for retreat.

Before we did though, we drove a little further along the river. There were some beautiful houses there overlooking the river. One had this wonderful view of trees right in the river in their back yard. I am really not sure if that was normal or if the river had an elevated water level flooding a part of their yard but either way, it looked otherworldly.

Trees in Mississippi

And that was it for Fulton. We crossed the bridge over Mississippi finding ourselves in Clinton, Iowa. There, a nice diner and some sandwiches took care of our growling stomachs and we were ready to continue to the second stop of the day.

Enjoy your summer vacation, wherever your plans take you!

Equipment used:

• Nikon D600
• Nikon 24-85mm Nikkor Lens
• Promaster 72mm Circular Polarizing Filter
• Think Tank Speed Demon Waist Pack,  Petzl Zipka Plus 2 Headlamp (always in the bag just in case), SanDisk Extreme 32GB SD Cards
• Nikon Capture NX2

Using my links to buy your equipment keeps me going and costs you nothing. You can also use the Amazon search box in bottom left for anything not mentioned here. Thank you very much, I really appreciate it!