Weekend river trip

We are quickly getting to that time of the year when we will have to winterize the camper. The days are getting shorter and it’s getting colder and I hate to say it….snow will be falling soon. Al and I decided to take a quick trip last weekend to southeast Iowa.  We really didn’t have any specific plans and it turned out to be a nice weekend.

The weather was perfect, although a little windy. We camped at Geode State Park between Mount Pleasant and Burlington. It was a nice little campground that was full of campers for the weekend.  I’m sure everyone was thinking like we were that they were going to get one more weekend in.

On Saturday we headed out and made our first stop in Burlington, IA. Burlington is located on the Mississippi river, it was first settled in 1833, 13 years before Iowa gained statehood.  It was a railroad town and home to the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy Railroad  which merged into the Burlington Northern Railroad.

It is a beautiful town with old churches and lovely old homes built in the 1840’s and 1850’s everywhere, but you can also still feel the railroad/river town as well.

Beer and ammunition….a great combo!

Since it’s on the river, the town is very hilly and streets are very steep. In 1894, in order to provide a more direct link between the downtown business district and the neighborhood shopping area, an experimental street design was built. They named it Snake Alley.

The alley is made of bricks and consists of five half-curves and two quarter curves over a distance of 275 feet, rising 58’ from street to street. It’s really hard to show you the rise in the photos. You can drive on it, but it’s one way down. We were driving the Big Monster and I don’t think it could have made the curves without going over the curbs.

We had lunch at a nice restaurant called Big Muddy’s on the River which had good food and a nice view of the river.

We left Burlington and drove down the river to Fort Madison, home of Iowa’s State Penitentiary. It was built in 1839 and the original cell block that was completed in the 1840’s is still in use today.  I didn’t get a photo, but the prison still looks like it could have all been built in the 1800’s. It is one of the oldest prisons west of the Mississippi.

The city itself was built near the site of the former Fort Madison, which was the first permanent fort on the Mississippi. It was the site of Chief Black Hawk’s first battle against US troops in 1812. Amazingly, it was only a fort from 1808 to 1813. In 1813 after constant attacks by the local Sauk and other Indian tribes, the Army abandoned the fort and intentionally burned it to the ground.

The actual fort site was uncovered in 1965 during excavations to build a parking lot. That site is on the National Register of Historic Places, but it still in private hands. A replica of the fort was built several blocks away with much of the labor supplied by inmates from the prison.

There were many many old homes built in the 1840’s and later that we drove by here as well. I just kept thinking how much their heating bills must be! Many of them were for sale, which I thought was interesting.  Here are a couple listings. As you look at the photos, just think how they looked when they were new!

630 Avenue E

435 Avenue E

915 Avenue E

We went across the river to Illinois on the Santa Fe Wing Span Bridge.  It is considered to be the longest double decker swing span bridge in the world. Vehicles go on the top deck, while the trains go on the lower deck. It is the last remaining swing bridge on the Mississippi.

We headed down the Illinois side of the river to Nauvoo, Illinois. The Church of Latter Day Saints (Mormon’s) settled here in 1839, and in 1844 was the largest city in Illinois, surpassing Chicago. The LDS members left Nauvoo headed westward to Salt Lake city in 1846 making it almost a ghost town. Here again were many many historic buildings from the 1840’s.

The temple that can be seen for miles around. I’m not a member of the LDS church, but you can’t help but be amazed when you see a building of this grandeur.

We crossed back into Iowa at Keokuk, and then headed back up to the campground.

It was a nice weekend….too bad we couldn’t have lingered longer!

Carhenge and a different route to Wyoming…

In the 27 years that Al and I have been married, we’ve made probably 60 trips between Iowa and Wyoming. That adds up to 120 twelve hour drives….. 1,440 hours……. 60 24-hour days of my life has been spent sitting in a car driving between Iowa and Wyoming.

We used to go through Des Moines then take I-80 then up through Scottsbluff.  It’s an ok trip, but I get tired of Interstate driving all the time. Going that way we do get to stop at the cemetery where my dad is in Guernsey, which I enjoy because I don’t get there often.

Since they upped the speed limits, we now usually take Highway 20 all the way. It’s mostly two lane, but 100 miles shorter at only 730 miles. You can make pretty good time, and do the trip in 12 hours or so depending on your stops (and how fast you drive….have had a couple tickets over the years I do have to say).

But Nebraska is boooooring. We have already seen pretty much anything of interest to see across Nebraska along I-80 and Highway 20 over the years, so we just drive to get where we are going.  Then I found a website earlier this summer that made me rethink our trip this year and plan a different route:

http://www.roadsideamerica.com/ 

This is a fun site that lists “Offbeat Tourist Attractions”. As my husband would say, I’m a little offbeat anyway, so this was right up my alley! I searched in Iowa, Nebraska and Wyoming to see if there was anything that we could stop at quickly to break the boredom of the trip.  You can get a map of each state to show the attractions along your route.

We could have stopped to see the Largest Crater in the US, or the Castles of Ida Grove, or maybe the Johnny Carson Display or better yet the Hotel Room Damaged by Michael Landon (seriously?).  We wanted to see the Two Headed Calf at the Gage County Museum in Burwell, NE, but they are only open on Sunday, and wouldn’t return our calls.

So we settled for Carhenge in Alliance, Nebraska.

What? You haven’t been to Carhenge? If you’ve ever driven across Western Nebraska, I know you have seen the signs, but have you been there?

It’s a collection of old junk cars that are setup to look like Stonehenge.  It was built as a memorial to Jim Reinder’s father, who once lived on the property, by 35 family members. It’s now owned by a local group that maintains it. They even have a gift shop where you can buy among other things a flattened penny with an engraving of Carhenge.  If you really really want more information here you go: http://www.carhenge.com/

They even used a Gremlin, like I used to drive.

Just up the road from Carhenge, is a “quaint” little rest stop that is also on the Roadside America website:

It’s pretty corny, but makes for a fun photo!

It’s safe to say that we won’t do this route again. It was almost as many miles as I-80 (820 mi) but took much longer. It was a nice change of pace to see some new country through the sandhills, though. I can check Carhenge off my list of things to see (not that it was on there to begin with, but I can check it off anyway, right?).

I also found another website http://www.roadtripamerica.com that has lots of day/weekend trip ideas around the US. I have one marked in Missouri that I would like to do sometime in the next few months, and will keep it bookmarked to see if there is anything that we should see on any other trips as well.  

Check these sites out on your next road trip. Maybe you will find something new and interesting!

(we did get to see the World’s Largest Popcorn Ball through a window in Sac City, but by that time we were ready to get home and didn’t stop).

Biology 103: Evapotranspiration (or Why It’s So Miserable in Iowa Right Now)

We are in the middle of a crazy heat/humidity wave this week. Right now at 6:30 pm the heat index is 113°. It’s one of those days when you open the door and can’t breathe because of the humidity in the air. You stand outside for 2 minutes and are completely covered with sweat. (Especially those of us who already “sweat like a …..”).

In Iowa we seldom get much over 90° and 100° would be a record on just about any given day so why does it feel so miserable here? You can have 95° in Wyoming and it’s hot, but it’s bearable. You have 95° here and it’s completely unbearable.

The main reason is the Dew Point, which basically is a measure of how saturated the atmosphere is with moisture (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dew_point) . Here is a map of the forecasted dew points for Tuesday (from www.weather.com). A dew point of 75-80° is considered “oppressive” and dew points over 80° are rare in this area, although it looks like it’s going to be that high tomorrow.

The Dew Point gives the best calculation of the Heat Index. The Heat Index is the “feel like” temperature, or how hot it feels outside (much like wind in the winter gives you a Wind Chill that makes it feel colder than the actual temperature). I found a Heat Index Calculator here: http://www.hpc.ncep.noaa.gov/html/heatindex.shtml, then looked up Wyoming & Iowa to compare since today we had comparable temps.

Wyo: temp 97°, humidity: 21%, dew point: 52°, Heat Index 94°

Iowa: temp 95°, humidity: 60%, dew point: 79°, Heat Index: 113°

How can that be? The temperature in Wyoming is higher, but it’s unbearable in Iowa.

I found an article today that explains it. Basically when you have low humidity and high temps you sweat but it evaporates and cools you down. Your body temp doesn’t raise that much. With high heat & high humidity you sweat and sweat but since the air is also wet, your body can’t evaporate the sweat, and subsequently can’t cool down which can lead to heat stroke or heat exhaustion very quickly.

But why is it more humid here? You expect it to be humid on the Gulf Coast, Florida and the southern East Coast, but why in the Midwest? Simply put: it’s all the corn! The corn (along with all the other plants) release water vapor into the air.  We don’t have the ocean, but we do have PLENTY of corn.

From www.weather.com: “Evapotranspiration is the total amount of water that is transferred from the earth's surface to the atmosphere. It is made up of the evaporation of free water surfaces (lakes, rivers, soil moisture, etc.) plus the transpiration from plants. Evaporation of water from soil with high moisture content (due to passing thunderstorm complexes) and the transpiration of water from tens of thousands of acres of a mature corn crop contribute to an atmosphere that is sopping wet “

If you are interested, here is the full article: http://www.weather.com/outlook/weather-news/news/articles/evapotranspiration-corn-belt-humidity_2011-07-13

Did you learn anything new?

Sauerkraut Days

Like Sauerkraut? How about a festival for it? There’s one in Ackley every year, so this year we thought we would head over to see what it’s all about. Our friends, Roger & Sandy, are staying in Hampton, which is close, so we took the camper up and stayed at Beed’s Lake State Park.

We had a schedule of events that told us at 5:00 they served free “wieners and sauerkraut” to anyone that was at the festival.  We thought we might as well be there to have something free, right? What we found out, though, is that not many other people were too excited about getting the free dinner.  The “wieners” were just hot dogs, which I don’t care for, but the sauerkraut was pretty good, although they gave each person about a cup of it!

They serve it out of a huge vat, you just walk up and they give you a platefull.

At 5:00 on Friday night in the big town of Ackley (Pop. ~1800), there wasn’t many people out.  They did have the band playing for entertainment.

I’m not sure what these were for, but there were stuffed people sitting on all the benches on the main street. It was funny to see the older townsfolk sitting next to them eating their free wieners and ‘kraut.

 

Al couldn’t resist it either.

We camped at Beed’s Lake State Park just outside of Hampton. Sarah told me to make sure and take the camera, and I’m glad I did.  The park has been there since the 1930’s, and had some great buildings, and a spillway at the end of the lake. Below the spillway it was like you were in an entirely different area. 

From the lake, the spillway looked like an infinity pool. You can’t hardly tell where the water stops and the trees begin.

I did catch a nice catfish below the spillway. Although Al laughed at me because I was fishing with a bass lure, and that’s not supposed to catch catfish. Hah!

The park rents out fishing boats for only $35 per day including gas and bait, so we didn’t even take our boat. Roger & Sandy rented one as well.

Al and I fished most of the day. We found a nice spot and caught bluegill after bluegill. I don’t mind fishing, but I’m not one to do it all day long. When they are biting like this, though, it was fun! And for the record I did bait my own hooks……..but Al took the fish off for me (although that was because pretty much every one that I caught had the hook so far down inside it that we had to keep it!)

Even though the temperatures the entire weekend were in the 90’s, and it was sunny & humid, it was a good weekend.It was nice to get out of our park and away from our campers for a weekend.  (And we made some GREAT fish tacos Sunday when we got home!)

Tiptoe through the tulips….

We took the camper and went to Des Moines last weekend. Mom and Doug were still here, it was opening day for the Des Moines Farmer’s Market and the Pella Tulip Time Festival was going on, and it was a gorgeous weekend!

The Des Moines Farmer’s market is huge (ok, it’s huge for what I’m used to….maybe those of you who live elsewhere have a bigger one, but I soooo wish we had this one nearer to us). It had flowers, tomato plants, veggies, bread, and anything else you could want. I was surprised that we didn’t see any asparagus or rhubarb, but we found lots more to buy anyway.

There are blocks and blocks of vendors. Did I mention that I wish we had this closer to us? We may have to just make the 90 minute trip once a month or so and go more often.

There were also lots of dogs. Everyone brought their dogs.

Big dogs. And little dogs.

And everything else.

Mom and I hit pretty much every booth. Everyone else just stood around waiting for us to come back. Even Matt brought his dog.

We then headed to Pella for the annual Tulip Festival.  Pella was founded in the mid 1800’s by Dutch Separatists, and they have had the Tulip Festival since 1935. There are up to 300,000 tulips planted each year for the festival. They have the festival to celebrate the Dutch heritage and history.

My boss is from The Netherlands. I have seen him in his wooden shoes, listened as he spoke to his mom and dad on the phone in Dutch at my desk, and tasted the treats he brought back from his visits. But that’s pretty much the extent of my knowledge. I wish we had a bit more time to spend there. I think I would like to go back when there weren’t thousands of people, though.

We have had a late spring this year, and the tulips were spectacular. They were everywhere around town. In every color.

 

It was funny to watch all the people taking pictures of the tulips.

There were people dressed in costume.

And entertainment about the Dutch history.

And a parade with beautiful floats.

It was a great weekend with beautiful weather.  (and I spent $11.00 and won $90 bucks at the casino on Friday night….so that just added to the nice weekend)