Off to Galena We Go, We Go

As I’ve mentioned before, I occasionally go to Chicago to see my brother Jay. Taking the train is perhaps the nicest way to get there, but it does have one or two disadvantages. My default method of travel is driving, and although the trip is at least six hours if I’m traveling at least 70 miles per hour and don’t stop for anything, having your own car in the suburbs of Chicago opens the way to a few stores that almost make the drive worthwhile. It’s also nice to be on your own timetable, instead of constantly having to look at your watch, just waiting for the time to leave is upon you.

When you drive to Chicago from northeast Iowa, you have no less than three choices. The most obvious choice is to take Highway 63 down to Waterloo, then take Expressway 380 to Expressway 80 and go from there. However, you can also drive almost straight east to Madison, then drop down to Chicago from the north. Both are fairly decent routes, but I decided to take the third option—Highway 63 to Waterloo, then Highway 20 across Iowa and Illinois. It’s probably not the most efficient way, mainly because you hit a couple small towns on Highway 20 that drops your speed down to 35 when you really want to put the accelerator down and cover as much ground as possible, but it does have one thing the other routes don’t—Galena.

Galena is a small town in Illinois, fifteen miles away from Dubuque and just on the other side of the Mississippi river. It may be my all-time favorite town to pass through when I am on my way somewhere else. That may sound damning with faint praise, but a nice town to pass through while driving is an underestimated treasure. When you drive through a city, such as Madison, you get the outsider’s view as buildings flash by while you travel on the expressway. Small towns, on the other hand, usually have the main highway double as the main street, so you get some of the local flavor, although more often than not the local flavor is a bar, a hardware store, and perhaps a restaurant or two if you’re lucky. All in all, not anything interesting.

Then there’s Galena. If you’re driving from Iowa to Chicago, you’ll encounter some tourist fare first and foremost—two fast food restaurants, and an increasingly common Wal-Mart enclave. I freely admit to stopping at all of them, if only to access that comfort you can only get from a franchise in an unfamiliar city. It’s nice, but what really makes Galena worth traveling to is the town proper. Galena resides in the driftless regions, similar to Decorah, which means that the town geography is hilly. This would be obvious even if you didn’t get to pass through the town. However, when you go through town you are struck by how nicely the residents have adapted. The roads go across the hills, with the occasional very steep crossroads, and the houses seem to be terraced on the sides of the hills. Now would also be a good time to point out that many of these houses were built in the 18^th and 19^th centuries, giving the place a look that is old-fashioned, but with modern improvements. Somehow, though, Galena seems to have avoided the mess of modernization that all too often occurs. You won’t see any stray cables or leakage from cheap air conditioners in these houses—and yet they all seem to be actively lived in.

At some point, you pass by the home of one Ulysses S. Grant. Yes, the future president of the United States claimed Galena as his home before he went to the White House. He wasn’t alone, either—a full nine Civil War generals came from Galena, which makes you wonder if these people didn’t have some pre-existing grudge. “You think you’re so smart!” they would scream at each other. “If there was a civil war, I would get out on that battlefield and kick your butt!” That’s probably not what happened at all, but it’s kind of fun to think about.

After you pass Grant’s house, you go up a hill. And up. And up and up and up until you see the eastern outskirts of Galena. Unlike the western outskirts, this is where a lot of the “casual tourists” must come in, because there is a series of restaurants lined up one after the other, all in the style of a downtown street in the old west. The colors are faded greens, oranges and blues, and more often than not you’ll see the immense parking lot in front of them packed with cars. There’s also a Happy Joe’s franchise, but let’s face it—if you get to eat in a nice restaurant in a building that looks like it was designed in the 19^th century, why on earth would you waste your time in a franchise restaurant? The people who eat there must be sick of high-end steaks and salmon fillets. Either that, or they’ve eaten at the high-end restaurants so many times that they’re sick of the flavor and yearn for the mediocrity only a chain restaurant can provide.

I suppose they set the restaurants here because it’s closer to Chicago. I’d heard that Galena was a bit of a tourist vacation for people from Chicago, and I can see that. However, I like coming in from the west. You get less tourist razzle-dazzle, and more watering holes. If you’re just passing through, that can be a godsend.