We were able to indulge in a later start this morning as our first stop for the day didn’t open until 10.00am and it was only 20 minutes away – we set off for the Williamsburg Outlet stores! Woo Hoo! I love Outlet shopping in the USA, we always manage to pick up some great bargains, usually high quality clothing at rock bottom prices compared to what we’d pay for them back home. We were a little early arriving at Williamsburg so we made a short detour into the town to see one of those odd sites that Neil finds – in this case a memorial to Eugene Burton Ely who in 1911 became the first pilot to successfuly take of and land a plane from the deck of a ship – he made aircraft carriers possible.
A short drive from the outlets led us to the heritage disctrict known as the Amana Colonies, one of America’s longest-lived communal societies. A religious group began meeting in 1714 in Germany and became known as the Community of True Inspiration. Persecution and an economic depression in Germany forced the community to begin searching for a new home. In 1855 they arrived in Iowa. the leaders chose the name Amana for their comunity from the Song of Solomon 4:8. Amana means to “remain true.” Six villages were established, a mile or two apart, – Amana, East Amana, West Amana, South Amana, High Amana, and Middle Amana. In the seven villages, residents received a home, medical care, meals, all household necessities, and schooling for their children. Property and resources were shared. Men and women were assigned jobs by their village council of brethren. No one received a wage. No one needed one.
Our first stop was in West Amana where we saw the first of what we expect will be many BIG things on this trip – in this case the Largest Walnut Rocking Chair. It’s certainly a doozy!
We drove on down past several old homes and barns to Amana which has an abundance of cute little shops and restaurants on a well manicured streetscape. However, having dragged Neil around the Outlet mall I figured he deserved a break from ye olde crafte shoppes, so we decided to head on our way.
Just outside the town of Dyersville was a surprisingly popular tourist attraction, the movie site for the “Field of Dreams” . If you don’t know the movie,it starred Kevin Kostner as Iowa farmer Ray Kinsella He hears a voice in his corn field tell him, “If you build it, he will come.” He interprets this message as an instruction to build a baseball field on his farm, upon which appear the ghosts of Shoeless Joe Jackson and the other seven Chicago White Sox players banned from the game for throwing the 1919 World Series. There were several families and visitors, most having lots of fun pitching, batting and running the bases on the field. It’s an idylic setting in amogst the cornfields. Actually, I shouldn’t have been surprised about the number of visitors, the Americans just love their baseball!
Unfortunately Neil was still a bit seedy today and was feeling very dozy by the time we arrived in the town of Dubuque, which is a quaint old town on the banks of the Mississippi River. We stopped to admire the view over the town and the river at the top of the 4th Street elevator ( also known as the Fenelon elevator). It’s claimed to be the shortest and steepest railroad in the world and gives an easy ride for people down in the town up to enjoy the views at the top.
Galena has some wonderful old Victorian brick buildings , even the slightly neglected ones have a kind of grandeur about them.
We crossed the river here and found ourselves in Illinois, not a new state for us as we’d visited the southern part of the state in 2016.
About 20 minutes down the road we arrived in Galena, another lovely heritage listed town. The Victorian homes here don’t look neglected at all and some of them are downright magnificent!
Tomorrow we hope to see the home of Ulysses S. Grant. During the American Civil War, General Grant, with President Abraham Lincoln, led the Union Army to victory over the Confederacy and he later went on to become the 18th President of the United States.
Neil had a snooze and after he surfaced we walked down the road to dinner at “Frank O’Dowd’s Irish Pub & Grill”. I wasn’t surprised to find it was far more “Irish” than any of the pubs we visited in Dublin last year! Best thing was that the food was delicious – we shared a yummy BLT flatbread for appetizer and I tucked into a tasty Shepherds Pie for main. Yum!
