Beam Us Up Scotty
June 3, 2024 – Day 80
Kalona City Park, Kalona City Iowa – Starved Rock Family Campground, Utica, Illinois
Before heading out, we needed to get that flat tire fixed. Paul found a tire place in town and there was a 2 hour wait! That was just too long on a travel day so he decided to drive the half hour to Iowa City. The first place he stopped could do the job and fixed it in just a few minutes. The service was so fast he couldn’t get to enjoy the luxurious waiting room.
He next went to a Harbor Freight to buy the breaker bar and a small tire compressor.
We’ve been talking about getting to Riverside, Iowa this the whole trip and we bet you’re wondering why. It’s not like it’s a destination city. Or is it? Riverside, Iowa is the self proclaimed future birthplace of James T. Kirk, the captain of the Enterprise in the original Star Trek series. Back in 1985 Riverside was looking for a theme for their annual festival.
“I had read the book ‘The Making of Star Trek,’ which had a biography of Captain Kirk in it,” he said. “It was written by Gene Rodenberry, who produced the show and had directed the show.”
The book noted Kirk was born in a “small town in the state of Iowa” so Miller thought Riverside should claim the designation.
https://iowastartingline.com/2022/06/22/iowa-weird-how-riverside-became-the-home-of-captain-kirk/
Now that’s just plain cool that ordinary guy from Riverside, Iowa named Steve Miller realized that the town should claim that it’s Kirk’s birthplace!
We had done lot of google street view work to see where to park Clifford when we were visiting the Star Trek museum. (susan here: that’s a pretty common thing for us to do.) We didn’t want to have to backtrack to the campground so we figured we’d drive Clifford that was towing the Jeep and just find a parking spot nearby. Paul found 3 spots and one of them was just perfect when we got there. We crossed a park, grabbed a selfie with a life size Kirk statue. (susan here: It really doesn’t look that much like Kirk/Shatner. It was also here that Paul learned he can’t do the Vulcan salute with his left hand. However I can, easily, and using either hand.)
Next up, the museum. The Voyage Home was wonderfully kitschy! They had all sorts of memorabilia scattered about several rooms, including a life size Gorn that Kirk famously fought.
Paul tried to beam himself to Keene, but it didn’t work.
He’s tugging his T-shirt down because that was a characteristic gesture of of the Next Generation series of uniforms. They were tight and tended to ride up, uncomfortably so. You can see al the actors tugging their uniforms down when they stand up. It is pretty hilarious once you know to look for it. The uniforms in the display case to the right are the Next Generation uniforms. We noticed that in person the costumes are, how shall we say this kindly? They look great for the camera but they’re kind of crummy looking when you see them in person.
This is, of course, historically inaccurate since Paul is standing in a NCC-1701 series transporter, not the ones from the later series’. Check out the button that you could push and, we’re not making this up, they would make transporter sounds, phaser sounds, red alerts sounds. Yes, tremendously geeky. (susan here: and a lot of fun!)
We saw many, many models of various starships.
The crown jewel of the collection was Lieutenant Commander Data’s desk. Not a model, but the actual desk used on the sets of Next Generation.
About a fourth of the museum was on the history of Riverside. It was ok, we guess, since the town pays for the museum, but uhhh, it wasn’t that interesting we weren’t there to see that. Now the bathroom? That WAS interesting!
You can sit on the throne and see what Kirk would see, Sulu and Checkov’s backs! Of course, he was centered on them on the Enterprise. Disappointing they couldn’t get that right. We declined the opportunity to sit.
On the way out we grabbed another selfie in front of the “not quite accurate but recognizable enough and we still won’t get sued” model of the Enterprise.
Sadly, we had to miss the, uhh, Conception site of Jame T. Kirk. Murphy’s Bar and Grill had gotten in on the fun and figured that Jim’s “start” was in their establishment. On the pool table. There used to be a plaque on the floor under the pool table.
In 2014 the pool table was removed and the plaque was mounted on a nearby wall. Several reasons were given: it was cruel to make fans get down on the floor; the owner wanted to make the plaque easier to read; the bar wanted to get rid of the pool table and turn the room into a more profitable event space. We asked the bartender if a lot of people still stopped in to see the plaque. “Oh yeah,” she said, “and they’re usually disappointed we don’t have a pool table any more.”
https://www.roadsideamerica.com/story/51558
Sadly, Murphy’s has closed permanently but we certainly would have gone there for lunch.
And, weeks later, writing this blog, we realized we missed the official birthplace monument! Here’s what we would have seen:
We guess we’ll have to go back!
Today 2 milestones happened., We crossed 30,000 miles on the RV’s odometer. And we crossed the Mississippi. Again. That makes six times now. That means we’re on the East side of the USA and almost home.
We made it uneventfully to the Starved Rock campground which had Wifi, except it didn’t work. Sigh…
Daily: 150
Total: 6,655
Driving Miles/Day: 222
Overall Miles/Day: 83
mpg: 6.11