Bridges? We ain't got no stinking bridges! We don't need no stinking bridges!

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June 29th

Sorry, but I couldn't resist paraphrasing the great line from Treasure of the Sierra Madre.  Eli Wallach's death this week at 98 kind of reminded me of this movie and this great line although he was not in the movie.

Madison County, Iowa is the covered bridge capital of Iowa.  Made popular by the novel "The Bridges of Madison County" the county lost no time in converting these historic treasures into publicity and tourist attractions.  When you are a farming area you've got to do something to increase tourist trade and the resulting dollars, don't you?

Most of the bridges are from about the same time period - 1870 to 1884 and construction techniques are very similar.  Unlike the covered bridges we had in Chester County, PA and Frederick County, MD, these are "cookie cutter" designs.  There is very little variation in exterior looks and interior construction.  Oh well, they are still nice to look at and explore.  The bridges are actually named after the property owners nearby the original location.

Cutler-Donahoe (1870)
Re-located to the city park in Winterset

Cedar (1883, rebuilt in 2004 after an arson fire in 2002)
Only bridge you can drive over

The Holliwell is the longest bridge at 122 ft

Imes (1870)  re-located to dry ravine in St. Charles

Hogback (1884)

Roseman (1883)

Westward Ho! - to Winterset, Iowa

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June 22

On Sunday, June 22 we headed further west along I-80 to the lovely little town of Winterset, IA.  OK, why Winterset?   We actually had a resident of the town ask us the same thing which prompted us to ask her why she lived here.  Her response was "It's a great place to raise kids" as in away from all the bad things in cities.  Iowa seems pretty benign to me.

1.  It's got a great city-owned campground.  Nice sites, full hook-ups with 50 amps, and only $16/night.

2.  John Wayne - who is more Western than that?

3.  Bridges - as in covered bridges.  Remember the book and motion picture "Bridges of Madison County"?

4.  And we are only an hour away from where we went to college - Graceland University in Lamoni. IA.

Iowa weather can be interesting!  This is about 30 miles east of Des Moines

Pretty soon we were going 45 mph and being blown all over the road.

Special insect greater at our campsite.  These a 17 year locusts and when the temperature hits the '80s we have lots of noise and bugs looking for love in all the wrong places.  Like mayflies, they hatch, breed, and die all within a day or two.

The Duke

John Wayne's birthplace

This covered bridge resides in the city park next to the campground.

Madison County Court House, c.a. 1876.  It really dominates the skyline in Winterset.  It is completely symmetrical with each face looking the same.   

A quick visit to Cedar Rapids

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June 21st,

Besides being our 45th wedding anniversary and Mary's 67th Birthday, we spent a quiet day visiting a historic estate in Cedar Rapids.

If you are in this area of Iowa, I suggest you take a side trip to Brucemore.  Built in 1884, the house and grounds are in beautiful shape.  Brucemore was only occupied by three families since construction and was always lived in until it was deeded to the National Historic Trust in 1981.  The house contains many of the original pieces of furniture as well.  Sadly, no photos of the interior are permitted.

The home is Queen Ann style.

The pool was added in the 1920s.

Extensive formal gardens

Learn more about Brucemore here.  BTW, the second owner was the head of Quaker Oats and liked to keep pet lions on the estate.

We're Going West...

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June 17th,

We finally crossed the Mississippi today and we are heading west - if only a short bit to the Amana Colony.  We met up with our old friends Steve and Karen and new friends Bill and Kris and enjoyed a nice dinner at one of the local German restaurants.  They were both off the next day leaving us all alone to explore the area.

If you want to know more about the Amana Colonies, I suggest you Google them.  After visiting a few of these utopian societies across the US, Amana was the only one that managed to keep itself together without a catastrophic split.  Many of the descendants of the original families live and prosper in the surrounding area.

Yes, Mary does drive the motorhome.  In fact, she drove pretty much the whole way from Van Wert, OH to the Indiana-Illinois state line.  

This map is from the turn of the last century, c.a. 1900.  Those aren't roads you are looking at - they are railroad lines.

Yes, the insects are larger in farm country.  This one would take out your windshield.

Amana Colonies RV park.  It's a very large field but the sites are wide and long.

A bit of an apology

(as  always, click on an image for a larger view)

I know, excuses, excuses, excuses.  It's not that we haven't been traveling but, in a way, we haven't.  We've done doctor visits, dentist visits, kid's birthdays, visits with friends, a couple of rallies but not too much "traveling".  But that is about to change as we get a bit of a late late start on heading out West.

So where were we since April 8th?

We started off the month of April in Franklin, NC.  We have stayed there before and just love the area.  Big mountains, beautiful campground but we were well ahead of the visitors to the area.  This can cause too little socializing and too much thinking - like "we need to visit our doctor and dentist and, and...  So after a week in Franklin, we fired up the beast and headed North to Fort Chiswell, VA - again, travel but not to anyplace we hadn't been before.  We got to Fort Chiswell just in time for a whopping big storm with snow, rain, and high winds.  So we sat and waited for the weather.  

The Great Outdoors at Sunset
Franklin, NC

After the big mess we cruised into Gettysburg, PA for a 2 week stay at Artillery Ridge Campground.  Not our favorite place but the least expensive campground close to Frederick, MD where we lived for 19 years.  So we commuted back and forth to Frederick almost everyday to shop, have lunch or dinner, or visit the medical folks. 

After the birthdays, medical and dental tuneups, and countless dinners and lunches with the old neighborhood, we headed off to Mammoth Cave.  Originally we were headed to Louisville, KY because I had three diabetes programs scheduled and we wanted to visit our daughter-in-law's parents - until someone figured out that the programs were scheduled for Derby Week.  Oops.  Well we went anyway and took the Southern route back down I-81 (to Fort Chiswell, again!), to I-40, to I-65 back north to Bowling Green.  

Bowling Green, KY is more than the Corvette Museum and Corvette Assembly plant, it's got a really nice train museum as well.  We hit the museum on National Train Day or something like that and, in usual form, we didn't take any pictures.  

The Corvette Museum is worth the stop.  As many are aware, the museum had a bit of a problem with a sink hole which opened up and swallowed a number of rare Corvettes.  Well, the hole is still there but the cars are out and now sitting in the museum.  We asked one of the Proctors the origin of the sink hole, "It's a cave".  No surprise there, this whole area is filled with caves. 

Yep, it's a big hole that eats cars.

The initial reports were "We'll fix everything that fell in!"

I don't think so...

These two had minor damage.

If you are a Corvette future purchaser, you can arrange to pick up your new car right at the Museum.  It was kind of neat to see about 20 cars on a grid ready for delivery.  Owners were milling about getting ready to take them home.  I was just trying to figure out if anyone made a baseplate for the new models and could the car be towed four-down.  Oh, and there is that money thing...  Well maybe I won't be driving one after all. 

We were off to Mammoth Cave National Park to go cave exploring.  There are a number of Ranger escorted tours available but sometimes, when you get older, parts aren't working as well as they used to.  So common sense limited us to a one of the shorter tours.  The NPS is doing their best to preserve the caves and has been changing out lighting to prevent the growth of unwanted mold and algae in the cave.  Flash photography is not permitted and the net results are no pictures inside the cave of the formations and its bugs and other critters.  But I did take a couple of pictures:

Historical entrance

Manmade entrance into another section of the cave

After Mammoth, we started back North - Stopping in Louisville for a night to have dinner with our daughter-in-law's parents and then on to Elkhart, IN.  We used Elkhart as a staging area for the Escapee's Rally in Goshen and met up with our friends Steve and Karen.  They had convinced their Arizona neighbors Paul and Laura to come along to the Rally as well.  We realized that we had a mid-Atlantic thing going - Steve and Karen are from Northern Virginia, Paul and Laura are from Delaware, and we are from Maryland.

From the left:  Karen, Steve, Laura (with Riley) and Paul

And we have figured out where and with who we are spending this Winter.  The Who are pictured above and the place is Palm Creek Resort in Casa Grande, AZ.

Post Escapees Rally, we needed to be somewhere close to an airport.  Fort Wayne wasn't too far from Goshen and place in Ohio.  Originally we going to stay at the fairgrounds in Celina, OH but after they kept making mistakes with our site reservation and location we decided to start a search for a replacement.  This was made more difficult by the upcoming Memorial Day holiday.  We found a campground East of Van Wert, OH, Huggy Bear, but there were not any ratings posted online about it.  We called, found they had a site, jumped in the Fit and went and had a look.  Here's the view out the windshield at our site:

Huggy Bear hosts about 300 seasonal campers as well as sites for 100-125 weekenders.  The sites are big, all have 50 amp electric, water, and sewer.  They can easily handle big rigs.  Kind of a hidden gem in Middle Point, OH.  

And once in a while you get a weather bonus as well...

A full rainbow isn't a bad way to end a rainy day

There are things to do around here (although not much).  Fishing isn't bad out front.  There's always Wapakoneta and best of all there is Eldora  Speedway.  

Neil Armstrong Museum
(you remember him, right?)

Our friends John and Alice popped in from Ontario to attend the dirt track racing at Eldora.  The races being held were the late model stock cars.  We attended the Saturday night $100,000 Dream race.  It was dusty, noisy, and lots of fun.  And did I mention exciting.  I think both of us were amazed how these cars performed on a half mile track.  Something to see.

This week I'm off Scottsdale, AZ (I know, it's hot there) for a couple of days for an educational seminar.  Once I'm back we are setting off West.  We are aiming for Glacier National Park by early August so stay tuned.