John Deere with a side of eclipse

By the time we finally made it to the John Deere Pavilion (the main reason for our visit to the quad cities) the kids were ready for it and excited! Just as the headquarters, the Pavilion has a ton of equipment to sit on, climb up into and admire. They also had a great kids area with toy trucks, videos and hands-on activities. My kids could have spent all day there (and they almost did!) Aldo may have had the most fun and was super excited to go on all the 'mighty machines'. He doesn't remember going to all the touch-a-truck events this spring when he was younger I guess.

A HUGE combine harvester

Aldo wants to cut your grass in this riding lawn mower

The boys spent lots of time going in and out of the trucks. So much so that we ended up going back there again for a second day! The best part was that there was hardly anyone there so they pretty much had the place to themselves!

A little man in a big tractor

Not quite tall enough to see out the window

A boy and his tractor

So happy!

In the middle of the day, we took a break to watch the solar eclipse. It cleared up just in the nick of time to see it too! It was a little hazy at first but we definitely could see it getting darker and darker outside as we walked around downtown Moline. We were in 93% totality so it was even darker than it would have been at home. We ended up sharing our glasses with some people right outside the John Deere Pavilion (and even shared with a few workers who otherwise wouldn't have been able to see it!) It was so cool to see this once in a lifetime event all together!

Family eclipse selfie!

Finally after Aldo's nap, we took a boat ride on the Mississippi River. It's actually a water taxi that goes to each of the Quad Cities but we had a blast just being passengers on the boat. It was the first boat ride for both kids so they were equally impressed.