I slept like a log last night! At breakfast we shared the room with a favourite son of Winterset, John Wayne. he was born here and so our first stop after leaving the hotel was his home which is now, naturally, a museum.
Along the front path was a series of tiles commemorating some of his many movies and a very grand statue.
Next door to the museum we discovered the Madison County Freedom Rock. It’s is a large (approx. 60+ ton) boulder that is repainted every year with a different Thank You for Veterans to honor their service. The artist, Ray “Bubba” Sorensen II, was inspired by the movie Saving Private Ryan, as well as, wanting to give Veterans a unique recognition on Memorial Day
Before leaving town we took a slight detour to see another of the covered bridges. The Cedar Creek bridge has had a chequered past. Originally built in 1883 in a different location it was moved to it’s current spot in 1921 but was destroyed in an arson attach on 2002. Rebuilt, with a great deal of attention to recreating the original with authentic materials, the second version was also the victim of arson in 2017. Let’s hope the new one survives!
One city I was determined to see in Iowa was Des Moines, the capital city of the state. It’s the hometown of one of my favourite authors, Bill Bryson and he described it in great detail in a couple of his novels – generally with a Love-Hate attitude! We stopped to see the gorgeous State Capitol Building
As we drove out of town we unintentionally joined he streams of traffic heading for the Iowa State Fair. It is HUGE! Over a million people visit each year and it was the setting of a 1933 movie (“State fair”) which was remade in 1945. They also did another remake in 1962, but set that one Texas ( sacrilege!)
About an hour down the highway we stopped at the quaint little town of Pella. Pella was founded in 1847 by 800 Dutch immigrants and it is also the childhood home of Wyatt Earp. Wyatt doesn’t seem to get much attention around Pella but they really love their Dutch Heritage. The town has a musical Klokkenspel clock, several windmills and many of the shops in town look surprisingly similar to the wobbly buildings in Amsterdam. The Pella canal looks a LOT cleaner than Amsterdam’s though!
Back on the road for another hour and we arrived at The American Gothic House Museum. American Gothic is a 1930 painting by Grant Wood which has become an American classic, in many ways because it’s been copied and parodied dozens of times in magazines and by other artists. Grant Wood was an Iowa native who painted the daily scene and residents of his home state with so much love and affection. He stumbled upon the house one day and talked his sister and dentist into posing for the painting, designed to represent just the kind of hard working Iowans that would live in such a house. Of course, we couldn’t resist creating our own version…
Iowa seems to be the birthplace of many famous people and in some cases they haven’t even been born yet! Our final stop of the day was in the tiny town of Riverside, Iowa which is renowned throughout the Star Trekkers community as the Future Birthplace of James T Kirk, the captain of the Starship Enterprise! As you drive into town you pass a series of banners on streetlamps, commemorating the many stars of the various TV series’ and movies and the museum has it’s own mini Starship out the front. sadly we missed the annual, Trekfest, held each year in June.
We’ve checked in to the Drury Inn, in Coralville. Unfortunately, Neil’s been feeling a bit off all day with a tummy bug and has gone to bed early to see if he can shake it off, poor man. I’ll head down soon to the hotel’s evening “Kick-Back”, a free dinner that they offer at all Drury Inns. We’ve enjoyed them before and were surprised at the quality of the food so I’m hoping to get a better meal than last night!
Late Note: I was all ready to go down to a solo dinner when Neil woke up, feeling a bit better. So we went down and enjoyed the Kickback, they even had a local beer on offer for Neil to enjoy, Big Grove from Iowa City. The clouds are rolling in this evening and we could have some rain in the next couple of days but we won’r let it dampen us!