Chapter 11 Galena to Albany. On the Great River Bike Trail.

In Savanna, IL I am in for a real treat.  The State of Illinois has completed a separated bike trail called the Great River Trail. It is the best part of the MRT route so far and is a vision of what the MRT could eventually be as a truly national cross country bike trail.  The state builds paved bike paths connecting between low volume paved country lanes that cross through a lot of scenic marshes, prairie grass and public land to create a continuous path for over 60 miles all the way to the Quad cities.  Interestingly, outside this trail Illinois has no MRT signage yet so navigating requires more attention than what I am used to in Minnesota and also Iowa where signage is spotty). One gets lost more often.  I asked some locals why they don't sign it. More than one told me the state is broke. What do you mean broke, don't they collect taxes here?
 "Yes but they send it all to Chicago and  graft and corruption gets the rest".
How that?
"Well we have had 5 governors go to prison".
 I remember Rod Blogojevich (the guy with the jet brown hair) was one. So why do the voters keep electing criminals?
" They usually aren't when they are elected but become crooked in office.  Now I guess its just a tradition here."
 It makes Minnesota politics look squeaky clean and Jesse Ventura look like a Statesman.

I am a sucker for those historical plaques along the roadside.  You know "Such and such happened here".
I pass dozens of them each day and read each one.  I am slowly becoming a historian. In one county, there appeared some unusual ones. I learned that in the 1920's a local country doctor and amateur historian made his own markers of cast concrete with text describing historical events in that locale. They are creepily like gravestones and sprinkled along the roadside in dozens of locations.  Years later, the state historical society decided to add a sign next to each one with a disclaimer apologizing for any offensive statements and provides an more politically correct version of events. Actually the grave stones are pretty matter of fact, something like: "Near here was the great battle of  XXX  where the the Indians were pursued by the soldiers. X Indians were killed and X Soldiers were killed ending the uprising and opening the land to white settlers". At least they didn't remove them altogether.
The next day I crossed back to Iowa and visited the site of an old grist mill called the Nye Mill. Here I learned Benjamin Nye was the first settler of Muscatine County. The plaque here tells me he built the mill and was later murdered.  Further down the road a couple miles is a boulder engraved with the sparse statement that "At this location Ben Nye was murdered in a dispute with his son in law".
That's it? Nothing more? There is room on this rock for at least another paragraph. Was he murdered because he was a cantankerous S.O.B.? Did the son in law get away with murder or was there frontier justice?  We will never know.

The Benijamin Nye Grist Mill Murder Mystery.