The Bridges of Madison County and John Wayne

It's taken me a long time to get somewhere that I can get on the internet.  I don't know if it's where we've been or if AT&T isn't the carrier of choice!  We're in Manistique, Michigan tonight but I need to start catching you up on what we've been doing.  This has been an incredible trip so far.  There are so many wonderful things to see in our own country.

One day while in Iowa, Conrad and I headed to Winterset, Iowa to see The Bridges of Madison County. No, not the movie - we saw the bridges where the movie was filmed.  We started out walking around the Square.  It really is a beautiful square with lots of old buildings and a courthouse.  Loved poking around the old Ben Franklin store!

 Winterset Square

Madison County, Iowa Courthouse

Walking down the street, we came across John Wayne and stopped to say hi!  This is the new museum that just opened in April.  The house where he was born, sits just behind the museum.

Conrad and John Wayne

John Wayne's Birthplace

After that, we headed off to find the bridges.  This first bridge is the Holliwell Covered Bridge that was featured in the movie.  The bridge was built in 1880, and at 122 feet, is the longest remaining Madison County covered bridge.  It remains in its original site over the Middle River.  

The Holliwell Covered Bridge

 The Holliwell Covered Bridge from the side

The next bridge was the Hogback Covered Bridge.  It was built in 1884.  It is 106 feet long.  It was built with steel pylons to support the main span. Originally there were 19 covered bridges in Madison County; now there are six remaining bridges.  

Hogback Covered Bridge

Inside the bridge - amazing how sturdy they are!

Typical Iowa farm

It seems that farmers remove the metal roofing

from the barns and then just let them fall down.

On our way back to Des Moines, we decided to drive through Indianola.  My aunt, uncle and cousins lived there years ago.  My Uncle Bob owned a bowling alley there and it is now a restaurant called Crouse Cafe.  Since it was lunch time, we decided to eat there.  The building looked kind of familiar inside and I could imagine the bowling alley still being there. 

Crouse Cafe

From there, we drove out to Lake Aquabi State Park near Indianola.  My family used to go there for swimming and picnics and that is where I learned to swim!  The school furnished transportation there for a week or two after school was out for summer and we took swimming lessons.  It didn't look the same at all.  The beach is still there and there are changing rooms but they are all new.  It was fun to see it though.

Lake Aquabi Beach

We also made a stop to visit my 82 year old, blind cousin, Snookie.  She is in great shape for her age and so much fun to talk to.  She still lives on her own (her husband passed away in the 1980s) and has friends who take her where she needs to go.  Wish we could have spent longer with her.

 Here I am with my cousin.

You can't spend time in Des Moines, Iowa without seeing

the state capitol building!  The dome is covered with

23 carat gold.

This is the church my family attended when we lived

in Des Moines.  I would love to have gone inside but nobody

was there.  They merged with another church so now another 

congregation meets here.

We had dinner with my niece Cathey and her boyfriend

at Noah's Ark in Des Moines.  It was so good to catch up with

what is going on in her life now.

It's about time to wrap this up and get to bed.  We are now in the Eastern time zone.  We have driven over 2,000 miles.  I know that without GPS we couldn't find half the stuff we've done!  Tomorrow we are heading to Munising on the Lake Superior shore.  Hopefully, we'll have WiFi again and I can catch you up some more.  We have some awesome scenery pictures to share!

They Say You Can't Go Home Again (but you really can!)

This blog starts with us being in Des Moines, Iowa, the place where I was born and lived until 2 months before my 14th birthday.  I always remember the Iowa State Fair was such a fun place and couldn't wait until the next August so I could go again!  The fair is huge, the fairgrounds are huge, most of the area is paved and the grounds are clean - no trash around.  So, after 49 years, I got to go to the fair again!  I had told one of my elementary/junior high friends who lives in Mexico that I was coming and she said she and her family were coming too!  Then, another friend, Kim, said she and her husband and daughter were going to come from Pennsylvania.  (I last saw Debbie and Kim Spring Break 1972.)  Another friend who lives in Minnesota said he and his wife could come!  There are still several who live locally and I got to see several of them too.  I hadn't seen any of the others since I moved to Arkansas in 1967.  We had an absolutely, wonderful time catching up and doing some fun stuff.  

I heard on the news tonight that the fair had record breaking crowds. The total attendance was 1.117 million!  Saturday, August 15, was the largest attendance with 115,000.  That was the day that Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton were there.

Sky Ride at the fair

 Odd vegetables

 All these were made from recycled aluminum

cans.  They were shipped out of state to a place

where they took all the color from the aluminum

then shipped it back to Iowa for this artist.

 We saw lots of old tractors...

 ...and lots of farm equipment

 Conrad and I standing behind the largest pumpkin

at the fair.  It weighed in at 1,235 pounds!

 Just a few of the canned entries

 The cakes were amazing and didn't look like cakes!

 A sand sculpture - It was created with 50 tons of

sand and took 100 hours of sculpting

 Meet the Big Bull

It's a Red Angus named Sampson

weighing 2,893 pounds!

Finally, the famous Butter Cow!

This is sculpted every year for the fair.  It is 5-1/2 feet

high and 8 feet long.  They use 600 pounds of butter

for sculpting.  I remember this so well!

We spent a couple hours with one of my cousins and her husband here at the fair.  Then I met up with my school buddies and walked some more.  We spent 10 hours at the fair and still didn't see it all!  

The most amazing thing was that Ken and Millie, who bought our house from my parents in 1967, invited us to stay with them for 5 nights!  I GOT TO SLEEP IN MY OLD ROOM!!!  The house has changed a lot.  They added on to the house and made it much bigger, added on a 2-car garage, and even added some on to the basement.  They have added lots of trees and plants.  They have a great garden, apple, pear, plum and peach trees, a cranberry bush, blackberries, honey bees, grapes and lots of big shade trees.  They have had a lot of rain this summer and everything was so lush and green.  Ken and Millie are such interesting people and so much fun to be with.  We felt so comfortable and welcome.  Mom and Dad would be so proud of the way it's been kept up and that this couple loves it as much as they did.  

My dad built our house in Iowa and we moved in to the basement when I was 6 weeks old.  I don't know exactly when it was completely finished but my dad spent part of the year for 4 years straight (1951, 1952, 1953 and 1954) working in Greenland to build Thule Air Base. He had bought an acre of land from a neighbor and paid for the house as he built it. Originally, it was 900 square feet on the main level and the basement and about half that on the 2nd floor and the rest was a walk-in attic.  There were 2 bedrooms upstairs and 2 on the main level.  In the spring of 1959, the house was hit by lightning and burned the upstairs.  When dad rebuilt it, he added a bathroom up there.  That upstairs bathroom still has the original bathtub, toilet, tile and medicine cabinet!  (The sink broke and they had to replace it.)  The bathroom on the main floor still has the same bathtub and toilet but they built a vanity with a new sink in there.  All of the rooms have been changed but I still see "the old house."  (Sorry if you feel I've gone on and on about this but I was just so excited about the whole deal!)

 The garden

 Back yard of my old house

 The back of the house (When they remodeled,
the moved the upstairs windows.)

For comparison, this is what the back of the
house looked like when I lived there.  My
bedroom was upstairs on right.

 The garden

 The south side of the front yard - my dad

put the flag pole there!

 The front of the house (When they remodeled, they
extended the upstairs bedrooms to go the width of
the house. They also added the bay window to
accommodate a Christmas tree!)

For comparison, here is the front of the house
when I lived there.  The upstairs window was my room.

 A view of the house and yard from the road

 Ken asked me if I recognized these cabinets.

When they redid the kitchen, they moved these

old ones to the basement workshop.  They have

the original hardware on them!

This was our front door.  They also replaced

it and used it on a store room in the basement.

So now you've had a little history of my life and have had glimpses of the Iowa State Fair. My next post will be about our trip to see the Bridges of Madison County...no, not the movie...where the movie was filmed AND seeing John Wayne's birth place.  This trip has been incredible and we've only just begun!  We've already driven over 1,150 miles!