When a cold front comes down the Illinois River valley, Peoria's hills stop being scenery and start being a question: whether the car is getting up that drive today at all. Royer Lawn Maintenance & Snow Removal works those grades, plowing drives and lots, clearing walks and treating the pitched approaches where traction gives out first. Snow here arrives in every form the season keeps on hand, from dry powder blowing off the open ground above town to the gray, sodden inches that fall on a thirty-three-degree afternoon. Taking a hillside drive down to pavement top to bottom, with the banks pushed well clear of the turn, is a small piece of engineering and it feels like one. Down below, the river keeps moving and the barges keep going, and the morning gets started on time.