2019 Mini-Vaca2, Eastern Iowa, Pt 3 - Dubuque River Museum

So after a big day of driving, eating and eventually hiking, what do we have planned? Some driving. A Museum. Some hiking and of course, some driving to get back and forth. Not nearly as much driving as day 1 though.

Today we got up, had some breakfast at Richman's Cafe.  It's a little cafe that at the time we got there, was run by one young woman who was doing it all.  In fact, at one point, one of what I would call the locals, got up and asked her about the coffee machine.  Once he had the hang of it, he came to our table and was refilling our cups while she was back cooking the four of us breakfast.

By the time we left, two youngsters had come in to help out waiting tables and taking orders but that original gal was still carrying the load!  Pretty dang impressive!!

After that, we drove up the curvy road to Dubuque, IA to find our way to the National Mississippi River Museum & Aquarium.  We got there right at opening.  In fact, we were so on time that the person trying to balance the drawer at the beginning of the day, asked us to step off to the side for a few minutes while they got things in order...  Someone was late for work.

We first saw this technology while we were in China adopting this fantastic human being!  It not only responds to you stepping on it, but it also responds to how hard you step on it or as I tested, STOMP on it!  I'm still amazed as it is some stunning real-time processing that's going on.

I think this is the tank where you could pet a sturgeon... maybe?  Rob was the only one who did it.  I'm good with just watching them swim...

He was hesitant, which I would suspect as he is my son, so I went and looked at other exhibits and took a picture or two.

You tell by both boys' body language that neither is comfortable with the current proceedings!  But to his credit, Rob actually petted the sturgeon.

Then there's this guy...  no petting him (or her)!

The wall of learning!  Mama, Rob and Caleb from left to right.

Not sure what these are, but there were thousands of dead ones out in the parking lot when we first got here.  There were hundreds more on the windows of the museums.  What's truly interesting is that there was one day,  Aug 7th, where they were thick on the skywalk windows in downtown Des Moines.  Just that one day tho that I noticed.

This was outside the museum and closed at the time we visited, which was fine as it seemed the boys were losing interest by this point.

This was kind of cool as we had just saw a similar style boat on our previous camping trip at the Lewis and Clark campgrounds over by Onawa, Ia.