Remember leisurely Sunday drives in the country with the family? Relive those memories while exploring symbols “of a way of life rapidly disappearing from the American landscape.” This weekend, take a road trip in the Albany, Erie, and Fenton, IL, area of Whiteside County. Consider the optional eleventh stop at the Albany Mounds, a surviving site of the Hopewell Indian culture.
The Whiteside County, Illinois Barn Tour is scheduled for Saturday, July 13, and Sunday, July 14, 2013, from 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., Saturday, and 9:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m., Sunday.
The tour of ten locations begins at RKR Landscape & Associates, Ltd., 9585 Henry Road, Morrison, IL, the business and home of R. Kent and Jalayne Riewerts. Purchase tickets and receive a spiral-bound booklet of pencil drawings by David Alan Badger, which includes brief histories of the tour structures. Badger took these photographs, and they were published in the Quad-City Times.
Admission is $20 per vehicle, so carpooling with a group will add to the fun.
Lunch will be available for purchase from the Whiteside County Cattleman’s Association.
“We have a rich history to share and a great story to tell,” stated Matt Lillpop, Farm Bureau Executive Director. Experience a “rural connection” as you visit each site. Besides a variety of barns, you will view antique farm equipment, livestock, weather vanes and lightning rods, and a traveling display of tools used to raise barns of the past.
Restrooms will be available along the route and at the Albany Mounds.
Call Whiteside County Farm Bureau at 815-772-2165 or email wcfb@frontiernet.net for additional information.