Aurora and Joliet are close enough to Chicago that if you drive to either one to gamble you can come right back the same evening. That’s good news, because neither town offers much else to do anyway. But if you’re still stuck on the Vegas ethos, you can re-create a small part of it by driving half a day to get to a casino, the way people in southern California do.
After a Silver Eagle cruise it’s tempting to drive the ten miles back toward Chicago and stay in hilly, picturesque, historic, romantic, quaint, and charming Galena. However, scientists have recently proven that large doses of teddy bears, gingham, and heart-shaped picture frames are a leading cause of brain decay. It’s safer to stay in East Dubuque and do nothing, which, coincidentally, is the town’s main industry.
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There’s at least one East Dubuque business that might get a good ride on the Silver Eagle’s coattails. Gamblers who haven’t already inflicted enough pain on themselves at the slot machines might enjoy a night at Bill’s S&M Motel (79 Sinsinawa Ave., 815-747-8805), a nine-unit place next to Bill’s Lounge on the town’s main street. The manager assured me that the hotel’s striking name doesn’t mean anything dirty, “although a lot of people ask that.” They might as well; a five-minute tour of this gray, weedy little town spawns the idea that a business dedicated to whips and chains would be redundant here.
At the top, old man Fenelon’s house is part of a glorious old neighborhood of huge private houses, most of them well preserved, along Raymond and Summit streets. At the bottom are the shops of Cable Car Square (between Fourth and Sixth on Bluff Avenue; call the Dubuque Visitor Bureau, 319-557-9200), Dubuque’s answer to downtown Galena.
For more peaceable tourists, Rock Island’s historic Broadway District is a pleasant five-block section near downtown with a few dozen houses either recently renovated or currently under renovation. There are mammoth houses–like the 17-room one built by a pork packer in 1888 that is now the Victorian Inn bed-and-breakfast (309-784-7068)–and smaller places treated to big splashes of color. One of the most gorgeous spots in the neighborhood is the quarter-acre formal garden behind Knox Larson Funeral Home on the corner of 21st Street and Seventh Avenue. Its flower beds are alive with all the colors of summer, and it is studded with cool, quiet fountains and inviting benches.
On the back of my ticket to the Par-a-Dice Riverboat Casino in East Peoria (21 Blackjack Boulevard, 800-PARADIC) was a coupon for $2 off admission to Big Al’s (519 Main St., 309-673-9393), in the heart of downtown Peoria. Big Al’s promises “World Famous Adult Entertainment.” A quick phone call to Scott Woody, the manager at Big Al’s, unearthed this amazing coincidence: In the first week of June, Big Al’s hosted the Miss Nude World Contest, featuring women from 25 nations. As it happened, the woman who won, Miss Nude Argentina, was already scheduled to perform at Big Al’s the very next week . Big Al’s clearly is the world capital of naked women.
