Aloha all,
we have made it to Iowa…one of those states where we’ve been told by some people that “There is nothing to see”, except maybe cornfields. First of all: Don’t be silly, not all of Iowa is cornfields! Only half of the state is covered by corn, the other half are soy beans. But then they also squeeze in a ton of surprisingly interesting places, friendly people and fun events.
We made good progress in the past week: We are now down to just 6 states we haven’t seen and down to 9 Presidential Libraries we haven’t visited. We saw one of the most curious or eccentric sites from all of our trips, made new friends, saw several fireworks and survived another storm…or as Bern would say: “Life is good.”, but that seems like an understatement.
From South Dakota, we followed the Missouri River to Iowa, which got us briefly back on the tracks of Lewis and Clark. The big difference: They followed the river because it was the (relative) easiest route, while we had a hard time staying close to the actual river. I’ll admit that a “scenic route” in the Midwest is something different from the scenic routes in the Rockies through canyons and along ridges. Here it counts as scenic when you occasionally get a glimpse of the river.
Our very first stop in Iowa, which we just added after randomly seeing it on the free state map, already proved everybody wrong who said that there is nothing to see in Iowa. If you have been to “The Grotto of the Redemption”, you know what I am talking about. If you have not been there, you should either pack your bags and go to West Bend, Iowa, or at least read the next paragraph to find out what it is. I still can not get over the fact how special, weird and beautiful this place is. If this were in any place people like to visit, let’s say Paris, New York or Lahaina; this ‘grotto' would be one of the best known buildings of the world. I find it more interesting than the Eiffel Tower, more beautiful than the Statue of Liberty and more special than the Banyan Tree in Lahaina….and I love all these places!
So this young German man, Paul Doberstein,who’s not far from where we grew up, wanted to be a priest, but they did not let him. So he moved to Iowa in late 1800’s and was ordained a few years later. But then he became very ill. He prayed to the Virgin Mary and promised to built a shrine if he were saved. He was saved and boy did he deliver on his promise! I have been to St. Peter’s Basilica and yes, it is pretty amazing they were able to built this without modern technology. But I am more amazed how this building came to be. In Rome, at least they had a few hundred or thousand men working and all of the money and power of the Catholic Church. Here, in rural Iowa, there was one guy with a crazy obsession. He worked on his “Grotto” for 42 years, mostly by himself, but also with some volunteer help. It is now a sizable complex of caves, walls and towers. That would be impressive enough. However, since he was a geologist before he was a priest, he gave the grotto an extra touch: Every square inch, inside and out, is covered with precious stones, rocks, gems, coral and petrified wood. I had read before that they had rocks from every state in the country and from every country in the world and that it is the largest collection of semi-precious rocks in the world. I thought that was either an exaggeration or a joke. But after visiting the grotto, I have no doubt that this is actually true.
So if you like weird eccentric places, the Grotto is for you. If you like geology, this would be an amazing place for you to explore. If you like pretty things, you’d love this place. If you are religious, you might feel the presence of god here. Even if you are not religious, you have to marvel at the dedication and devotion of Father Doberstein. And if you don’t like interesting places, interesting rocks or interesting history, I hope you at least like nice people. They’ve got those, too, at the grotto. The lady who gave the tours through the grotto was so nice and informative that we took the entire tour almost twice. And the second time around, there was a super nice family with their 92 year old mother along. We just kept talking for hours after the tour and ended up in the next town for dinner together. West Bend might have one of the most amazing attraction we have ever seen, but it does not have an open restaurant…
The aftermath of the dinner with our newfound friends was another example why we love RVing. When we wanted to leave the restaurant, it was pouring…not the cats and dogs kind of rain, more like lions and wolves. We first decided to stay a little longer and when it did not get any better, we asked whether we can spend the night in their parking lot. We did not realize until the next day how good of a decision that was. Turns out the area just south of us, where we were heading, got badly flooded. Roads were closed and one guy in a van was swept away by a raging river, all while we were peacefully sleeping just outside the restaurant.
But the Grotto is not the only interesting place in Iowa: The next day in Fort Dodge we visited a reconstructed fort and frontier town and spent a lovely afternoon in Jefferson. This was another site from the “Eccentric America” book. This cute, but otherwise not so remarkable small town has a Carillion Tower, which is some special kind of bell tower that a local business man donated to his hometown after he passed away. Half of the population didn’t want it, even for free. It seemed silly and like a waste of money. But the other half liked silly and it was not their money, so they built it. It does seem a little out of place, but we had such a lovely time there. The lady who sells the tickets for the elevator seemed truly excited for every visitor, came up to the top with us and we ended staying up there way past closing time talking about Iowa, Maui, Germany and everything in between. We saw a small garden from up there. We walked over and the same thing happened there: The lady who worked in the garden took over half an hour off, just to show us around the Jefferson Garden in Jefferson. It’s tiny, but with such a personal tour and for us as Thomas Jefferson fans, it was a real treat.
But we agree that eventually, you have seen all the sites in a small Iowa farm town, so we headed to Des Moines. We went to the “Living History Farm” mostly because they are part of the “Harvest Host” program. That's a collection of vineyards, breweries, farms and museums that let RVers stay overnight for free when you visit their facilities, which works great for us since these are the types of places we like to visit anyway. The Living History Farm could not be better named. It’s a farm and a replica town that comes to life thanks to several costumed interpreters. Besides period farmers, we got to talk to a broom maker, a blacksmith, a teacher, a druggist, a hat maker, a store keeper and a printer. These type of living history museums make you wonder why anybody would build a dead history museum.
Being on a 6 months trip, there is no way we can plan our trip as well as we would for a ‘normal’ vacation. We’d spend half of our precious time planing instead of seeing and doing things. But our timing in Iowa could not have been any better even if we had spent months planing it. The night we came to Des Moines, the Symphony had their 25th annual Yankee Doodle concert. It’s their most popular 4th of July tradition, which for some reason they do on July 2nd and for some reason is free. The location just below the state capitol building is amazing and so were the fireworks. They estimated about 100,000 people were there, including the governor Kim Reynolds and the local favorite opera star Simon Estes. Apparently he is world famous. We had never heard of him, but were glad to hear from him at the concert, what a voice!
We love historical buildings if they offer tours. Without the stories, it’s just an old building with old stuff in it. And since American history is mostly relatively recent by European standards, some of that ‘historical’ stuff is not much older than things my grandparents had in their apartment, which I rarely paid any attention to. The Salisbury House in Des Moines is another example of that. Just another old house, but what made it fascinating were the stories of the tour guide how the Weeks family got rich by inventing an early version of makeup and how the wife forced her husband to upgrade from a modest 2 bedroom house to this 42 room mansion. It’s modeled after an actual historic mansion in England with an eclectic collection of memorabilia from various time periods and from all around the world. To me it seemed like a small version of the Hearst Castle.
As you know, we always like to visit state capitols and the Iowa state capitol is about the fifth capitol we have visited that I felt was the best of them all. I am not sure myself how that is possible. But this one really is a whopper. It’s huge, gorgeous, dramatic, elaborate, impressive, a great place to represent the history of the state and the current political center of Iowa. The tour guide shared her enthusiasm for the building so well that I actually believe her when she says she spends her days off roaming through this elaborate building. It’s the only state capitol with five domes. The center one is very special, not only because it’s covered with actual gold, but also because we were allowed to go up into the cupola.
For dinner that night, we decided to go to a German restaurant in an Amish colony. The colony turned out not to be Amish at all; the German restaurant was good, but not very German. We were also lucky with our timing for 4th of July. We got to pack in a traditional 4th of July parade, a movie, a waterski show, a concert and Iowa's best firework show at the Cedar Rapids’ Freedom Festival. Happy Birthday, America!
Amongst some of our friends we are rumored to know everything about American presidents. Nothing could be further from the truth, but we know enough that we realize how little we know. First of all, despite my best efforts, I have not yet mastered to name all the presidents in the right order. Then there are some presidents we know pretty much nothing about. And then there are some where we thought we knew at least a little, but actually didn’t…like Herbert Hoover. But after a full day in West Branch in his boyhood home and his Presidential Library, we are at least a little smarter. Now we know that he had a very successful career in mining and in feeding millions of people e.g. after the first world war in Europe. That was before he became president at the most unfortunate time, a few months before the Great Depression. Voters in 1933 made up their mind very quickly. After being elected in a landslide four years earlier, he was then pushed out in a landslide against FDR. Historians still seem to argue 90 years later whether he could have done something to avoid it. One thing that seems hard to argue with is that he was a very decent and very intelligent man with very modest Quaker values. While most people (including us) know Hoover mostly for being president during the Great Depression, it is nice to know that millions of people remembered him for giving them food and hope in time of need. President Truman remembered that 20 years after Hoover left office and put him in charge of disaster relief and feeding millions again after the second world war. So Hoover did make a comeback during his lifetime. It just took until 2018 for all that to make it into our consciousness. We’ve only been on this road trip for a month now, but if we keep this up, we’ll soon know at least half as much as people think we know.
On our quick dash through southern Illinois, we visited the Dickson Mounds. These are Native American burial sites that were a huge tourist attraction until 1992. Then it was decided to close up the site where over 200 native Americans remains were unearthed but otherwise left in place as they were found. I am not sure how I would feel if future people were to dig up gravesite of our ancestors and displayed them as an attraction. But since we stole their land, I feel the very least we can do is respect their believes. We enjoyed the very informative museum just as much or more than looking at bones.
Yesterday, we went to the Caterpillar Visitor Center, which is a very modern facility next to their world headquarters in Peoria, IL. The introductory movie is shown in a movie theater that’s housed inside the bed of a huge life-size replica of one of their 797 trucks. Just to give you an idea how big these trucks are: The tires are 14 feet tall, way bigger than Joy overall. And the movie theater in the truck is bigger than some theaters on Maui. The museum also lets you sit in all kind of Caterpillar trucks and try to control them, but luckily only in a simulator, otherwise I would have done some serious damage. Of course they also tell the history of the company and make you leave convinced that they built the best machines in the world. Next time I have an extra 5 million dollars and need a big truck, I will only consider buying from Caterpillar.
Another fun “Harvest Host” experience was the Sleepy Creek Vineyard. We have done a lot of wine tours and wine tastings before, so we thought we do this just for an excuse to drink and for a free place to spend the night. But then we found out they make a tomato wine. I did not even know that was possible. But not only is it possible, it’s delicious! We enjoyed the first bottle sitting by their pretty pond so much that we bought another one to take with us. Surprisingly, Sandra and I both love the wine, we are just debating whether it’s better to drink by itself or as a “Winey Mary”. If you like wine and you like Bloody Marys, you do want to try this, even if it does not come with a free place to stay for the night.
Today we saw another presidential site: The house of Benjamin Harrison in Indianapolis. I know we are supposedly such experts with American Presidents, but again we knew hardly anything about him. Since this is not one of the well known, popular presidents, there are fewer, but more interested people visiting his house, so the tour was more in depth and more personal. We picked up some trivia that might come in handy at a future game night, such as: Benjamin Harrison was the only grandson of a president to become president, he was elected exactly 100 years after Washington and he is the only president who is ‘sandwiched’ between two terms of the same other president (Grover Cleveland served before and after him). He also added more states to the union than any other president and created several national parks and lots of federally protected lands before environmentalist was even a word. And he advocated for women's suffrage before that was generally accepted as the right thing to do.
That all makes you wonder why Harrison is so little known and so badly ranked as a president. There seem to be two main reasons for Harrison to loose his reelection bid to the same guy he beat 4 years earlier. First of all: He had lost the popular vote even in his first election, so he did not have a strong mandate. Second: He introduced a lot of high tariffs that quickly became very unpopular. Sound familiar? Can you think of a president who lost the popular vote and likes to impose tariffs? One can only hope that history actually repeats itself occasionally...
Tomorrow, we get to visit another state capitol, here in Indianapolis. No, we are not tired of them yet and I don’t think we will be until we saw all 50 of them, which along with presidential sites, historic houses, breweries, vineyards, factory tours, events and museums should keep us busy for years to come. But the next few weeks will be friends & family time since we get to visit several friends in Indiana and then watch my niece at the ultimate frisbee world championships in Cincinnati. Unless Linnea reads these updates and fakes an injury to get out of having to visit all theses historical sites with her aunt and uncle...
Aloha and Mahalo for reading,
Chris & Sandra
