Iowa - Day 21 - Council Bluffs, Sgt. Floyd, Sioux City

Lewis and Clark State Park, Onawa

Monday, 21 November 2022

today's route

As you can see, we pretty much went straight north.  My plan had been to stay tonight up there in Sioux City, but that got derailed when I found the campground closed.  So I headed south again.  More on this later.

I intended to compress 4 days of travel that I'd already planned into 3, and I did some heavy editing of the driving directions I'd already written up, and today started where I'd intended to end up on Saturday but was in Kansas instead.  (If that sounds confusing, you should see my directions.)

We left the campground at 9:15, because I thought today would be an easy drive, and started off to Council Bluffs, where my first order of business was to replenish my propane supply at a U-Haul.  I got there just as the propane refill truck was leaving, so I knew they had some.  I warned the woman about the air problem from a few days before, but she didn't have any trouble filling it up, which was a relief.

I drove a couple more miles farther into town and arrived at the historic Squirrel Cage Jail.  Here're the signs I found outside.

That's the current county courthouse behind.

This sign is a fair distance from a metal 
fence, and I couldn't get a photo without
the shadows.

And this is the outside of the historic jail (no longer used as a jail though I think there are offices in the building).

I have no idea what that turquoise horse is doing there.
(It suggests not all the squirrels were in the jail.)

I'm showing these photos because this is all I've got.  They're open only on weekends during the off-season months, so I had to miss out.  But this is what I found online:

These squirrel cage jails were built as a sort of "lazy Susan" and the pie-shaped cells rotated somehow.  You can see why I wanted to see inside this thing.  The designers (from Indianapolis) got a patent in 1881, and this version was built in 1885.  There were only 18 of them built in the US.  Of those, only 3 are left, all preserved as museums.  One, a 1-story jail, is in Gallatin, MO; another, a 2-story jail, is in Crawfordsville, IN; the third is this one in Council Bluffs.  It's the only one ever built that had 3 stories, so it was unique even before the 15 others were demolished.

I'm really sorry I had to miss it and would definitely plan a visit if I ever get here during tourist season.  I just can't see in my mind how these jail cells revolved.  And especially not 3 stories of them.

I was walking Dexter around when I took these photos, and we went across the street to Bayliss Park, which took up a city block.  I saw 4 black squirrels all at the same time (which is why I'm sure there were so many).  Black squirrels aren't common and I wondered if these were all related.

The park had some unusual features.

I guess the gauzy looking stuff is lights,
and the snowflakes made me think they
were Christmas decorations.  But it seems
really elaborate for just one season.

I think this is the center of a really large fountain,
which of course was turned off this time of year.
I guess that gauzy looking stuff hanging on the
fountain is more lights, but I also think some of this
is part of the permanent display.

And then there was this:

I think Dext is trying to decide if these are statues or real squirrels.
I've seen him look like this before in these situations.
Or maybe he's wondering why the squirrels are so big.

We walked back to the RV, passing a building that said it was the Free Public Library.  But now it's the Union Pacific Railway Museum.

The Free Public Library was built in 1905 with the help of Andrew Carnegie.
Nearly a century later, the library moved into a modern building,
and the museum opened in 2003.

There was an unusual piece of art outside.

titled: "Van Gogh in the Bluffs"

It's part of the UNsculpture Project (you see the "UN" in the design?) by which Council Bluffs has installed 10 pieces of art around town.  They say it's to celebrate how Council Bluffs is "Unlike anywhere else.  On purpose."

The route I'd picked took me through the Kanesville-Tinsley Historic Neighborhood.  Not by planning - I just saw a sign telling me that's where I was.  Most of the houses I saw were old working-class houses - small, wood.  And I'm sure that's exactly the income level those houses were built for.  But the current neighborhood association seems to be very active.

Back on I-29, I was pleased to see a Bald Eagle fly across the road.

I saw a sign telling me to exit soon to go to an unnamed ski area, which seemed as bizarre as a 3-story squirrel cage.  But I've since learned that Iowa does indeed have a few ski areas, and one of them isn't very far north of Council Bluffs (which you remember is just across the river from Omaha).  The word I saw was that, though it's a converted cornfield, it almost feels like a New England ski area.  And it turns out that Iowa has several others, the best being in the Dubuque area.  I'd never have thought it.

Farther north I passed an enormous RV park at the junction of the Missouri River and the Little Sioux River.  It had a whole lot of RVs parked there and I have absolutely no idea why.  There's nothing whatever anywhere remotely close to this area besides the rivers.  Even across the Missouri in Nebraska.  And even if they all wanted to come here for the fishing, surely they wouldn't flock in droves at this time of year.

My radio's not working right for some reason.  For the last few days, I'll pick up a station, getting good reception, and then the sound gets lower and lower until I can't hear it at all.  But I'm still tuned in to the station.  If I change the channel, I'm picking up connections to bunches of stations and I can't hear a peep from any of them.  Usually when I run out of sound, it's because a mountain or something is interfering with the signal.  But aside from the fact that there aren't a lot of even decent-sized hills in Iowa, I can tell that's not what's happening now.  All I've been able to figure to do is turn the radio off and wait a while.  If I wait long enough, when I turn it back on I'm picking up signals and sound just like I'm supposed to.  I'd think it was Iowa, but this happened to me when I was driving south in Kansas too.

Speaking of hills, the land I was driving through was really flat along here - maybe because of the Missouri being so close by - you know, flooding and so forth.  I saw almost nonstop farmland interspersed with small towns.

I pulled off the interstate to visit a monument to the only person of the Lewis & Clark Expedition to die during the trip.  But on the way there, I passed a sign telling me to turn right for the First Bride's Grave.  Now that sounded weird to me - really strange - so I looked it up.  

And it still sounds a little strange.  People can go down a complicated and wandering trail and arrive at the reputed burial site of a woman reputed to have been the first white woman married in this area.  According to the monument there, she was 14 or 15 when she got married to a man twice her age, and she died after giving birth to their 4th child 12 years later.  Now those facts make her no bride.  She was a full-fledged woman after that sort of life, and history shouldn't be diminishing her.  Poor thing.

Instead of visiting her purported grave, I went to the monument for someone else, whose remains were moved here when the monument was erected.

Monument to Sgt. Charles Floyd,
died 1804.

Looks like the Washington Monument, doesn't it?  That one was built in 1848 and is 554'; this one was built in 1900 and stands at 100'.  (I was curious.)

Sgt. Charles Floyd was one of the first recruits to the Expedition.  Today's doctors think he likely had a ruptured appendix, though back then they said he'd died of bilious colic.  He was 22 when he died.  I think it's almost miracle territory that he was the only one of all those folks who died during the 2-year trip, considering the primitive state of medicine and the physical hazards they encountered.  His original grave was washed into the Missouri by erosion, but interested folks saved most of the skeleton and the skull and buried them in a safer place.  Then this monument was built and his remains were moved here.  In 1960 the US Dept. of Interior designated this site as the first National Historic Landmark.

There are informational signs that have eroded almost as much as his original grave.  Here are a few that are mostly legible.

info about the monument itself

text enlarged below

A description of Floyd's illness and death.

These were on the monument itself.

sunstruck - but maybe legible

And finally, these were views from the bluff down to the Missouri.

Not even counting the interstate, I still doubt this is what the expedition saw when they were here.  The incoming farmers would have made a big difference.

The Expedition stopped at the grave on their way back east, by the way.  In 1806 they stopped and tended the grave, said they'd filled it in completely (maybe erosion had already started?).  But it was nice of them to do that.

In Sioux City, I fought hard with Google to drive around town a bit.  I saw 3 overhead walkways downtown and figure there may be more.  The town seemed to be a combination of old and new, and here they didn't try to sweep the old under a rug as many towns do.  I liked it.  They've got a Hard Rock Hotel and Casino downtown.

There are several references to War Eagle around here, including a park with that name.  I've since learned that War Eagle was one of the founders of Sioux City, that he was part of the Yankton Sioux tribe and had been elected chief, and that he represented the tribe in Washington, DC, to negotiate peace treaties.  Historians think it's ironic the name white people gave him - War Eagle (his Indian name means Little Eagle) - because he spent his life promoting peace.  There's also a monument to him in the park - a statue of him that stands at the confluence of the Missouri and the Big Sioux Rivers.  I'm sorry I didn't know this.

War Eagle City Park was only a few miles from Stone State Park, where I'd planned to spend the night.  Online they said it had only 7 sites that had electric plugins, so I knew there was a chance I wouldn't be able to stay here if all the electric sites were taken.  On the other hand, my experiences earlier in the month when the weather was better and I was still the only RV in various campgrounds made me think it'd be fine.  What the park didn't say on their website was that they'd closed it.  The whole park.  When we got there the road was blocked at the park's entrance.  No explanation.

I drove down the street to a large city park I'd spotted on the drive there and got on the computer to find a campground that could take us tonight.  Because of that 7-sites-only thing, I'd already identified 2 other campgrounds within a reasonable driving distance, and I checked them out.  One had apparently decided recently to close up for the season - which wasn't what they'd said when I checked them before.

Which is how we ended up driving almost halfway back to Council Bluffs for the night.  We stopped at Lewis & Clark State Park - I called their office before I went to be sure they were open - and we were the only ones there.  It was a nice campground, probably very popular during the summer, but the water was turned off of course.  Still, that meant I paid only $12, and I had electricity, and I had my choice of campsites.  I kept telling myself it was going to make tomorrow's drive an hour easier, but it was nearly 4:00 by the time we got settled in.

Several things have been not quite right recently.  Of course, there was the air problem in the propane tank.  And the radio problem I mentioned earlier.  But also the water pump is sounding not like it usually does - it seems to be working extra hard.  And the toilet's not flushing quite as usual either, though thank goodness it's still performing its function.

And then my asthma's been getting substantially worse.  It started in Nebraska, when it got so bad several times that I needed to use the inhaler - first time in many months.  And I've had to keep using it here in Iowa.  I'm going to hope that all these problems are related to the weather getting really quite cold.

I never thought of Iowa as a plains state, but the wind sure does blow here like it does on the plains - i.e. almost constantly.  I guess I expected it in Nebraska, which after all is in between the Dakotas and Kansas and Oklahoma - plains states all.  But Iowa is between Minnesota and Missouri - would you have thought it'd get all this wind?  I didn't.  And I was wrong.

That means that all the cracks my poor almost 5-year-old RV has developed are getting cold wind blown through them.  I guess I'm glad Gracie isn't still around, because she'd be absolutely miserable.  Dext doesn't like it but he's still just 7, so it's not so bad for him.  Anyway, wind makes things harder.  Age makes things harder.  Cold weather makes things harder.  And we've got all 3 dumping on us now.  I guess it's no wonder if appliances aren't working in tiptop shape.  But we'll be heading south soon.