Fall Vacation Entry # 4

Last Wednesday, we headed home after a few days of visiting with the Hubby’s brother and sister-in-law in Iowa. I seem to have lost track of how many times I have driven around in Iowa and I always find new and interesting things to see. So, I’m tellin’ ya – don’t knock Iowa.  A person could take a week’s vacation there and not see it all. 

 Anyway, we only had those few days there this year and it was time to head home. We drove north along the Mississippi River crossing into Illinois at Savanna.

 Following highway 84, a small sign for a scenic overlook caught my eye and I hollered at the Hubby to turn west down Army Depot Road. Little did I know where that was going to lead!

This place was totally fascinating to me.

 This sign alone wouldn’t have kept me from wandering off into the restricted areas. I had my responsible Hubby driving the car, so there would be no wandering, no arrests and no explosions this day.

 The only sign of life we saw, other than a few flocks of birds.

  The Savanna Army Depot was a 13,000-acre site on the east bank of the Mississippi River just north of Savanna.  Opened in 1917, first as a weapons testing facility, it later became an ammunition depot. After WWI, warehouses were built to store ammunition. The base really boomed during WWII, when employment there jumped from 143 to 7,195. A construction boom built several new warehouses, a new power plant and 407 “igloos” to store ammo and other volatile weapons like mustard gas.

 The base went through several changes over the years, but by 1995, the writing was on the wall. Five years later, the Depot officially shut down, transferring 9,400 acres of land to the Upper Mississippi River National Wildlife and Fish Refuge.

 Made it to the scenic overlook.

My imagination could still just go wild in a place like this.