John Deere Trip

Sunday, after dropping off Jewel at the dealership, we headed to Moline, Illinois with Rick's folks, Roy and Becky to go on a Gold Key tour at John Deere. For those of you not familiar with the Gold Key tour, John Deere allows farmers purchasing new equipment to come and take a tour of the factory and start their new purchase as it comes off the assembly line. Plus, it's a private tour so that's a bonus too.
On Sunday we went to the John Deere Pavilion and Store to do some shopping and a little history lesson. Roy and Becky had brought us an early wedding present, a new digital camera, so I took lots of pictures trying to figure out all the options.

The Burns family in the John Deere commons

Yeah! I'd rather be a vegetable than eat it!

Now that's my kind of tractor!
After driving around Moline (and having troubles with the map) trying to find the world headquarters, we realized we arrived way to early, so we were going to head back to where we just came from. I think this picture accurately captures Rick and my thoughtsRoy farms in Texas and main crops are cotton, corn, grain sorghum and winter wheat. Farming is very different there when you compare it to the Iowa corn and soybeans I'm used to. Welcome Gold Key Customer Roy Burns!!
After a nice buffet lunch, we got our backstage-pass tour and Roy got to start up a combine for the first time as it came off the production line! He was so happy and excited!
Here is the Burns family with some of the production crew that stayed late from their shift to let Roy start up the combine and our tour guide. I made an album of all our trip photos to share with Rick's folks, so watch the slide show below or click to go to the album:

It was a quick trip, but a good one. A fancy hotel, steak dinner, and I got a sweet green shirt with yellow logo, even though I had to get an XL in kids to get one that would fit! We all had a great time and Rick's dad was really happy and proud at the end of the day. We were all happy for him, too.

But I'll admit I was excited to get back to Ankeny to pick up my new car... Stay tuned for more!