A State at a Time: Iowa - Day 6 - heading southeast to Burlington/Muscatine

Fairport State Park, Muscatine

Sunday, 6 November 2022

today's route

Google said today's drive would take more than 4 hours, so I got us on the road by 7:30, hoping it wouldn't be too late in the day when we got to the campground.

About 20 miles from the Newton KOA I came to the town of Pella (without a highway sign). "A Touch of Holland," they say. It's a seriously cute town, surrounded by farmland and packed with signs of The Netherlands.

These shops are on 2 sides of Central Park (in the center of town).

This view down a side street shows the historic Vermeer Windmill.

I'm not sure why they call it "historic" since it's been here only since 2002; I suppose because it's modeled on an 1850s Dutch windmill. They claim this is the tallest working windmill in North America - 124' 6" tall from the ground to the top of the sail. It wasn't sailing while I was there, but I'm sure it could if it wanted to.

I'd heard that Pella had an unusual sundial, and I found it easily in Central Park. Unusual and beautiful, though not very accurate on a thoroughly overcast day like today.

Apparently the big event for the town is the annual Tulip Time, next planned for the first week in May of next year. Visitors can expect to see more than 300,000 blooming tulips - which would actually be worth the trip, I'd think. The visitor center was closed while we were there but carried on with the town's theme.

visitor center

Just out of sight to the right of this photo is a statue that almost seems out of place in all this Dutch stuff.

I'm sure that's a Union soldier but I can't figure out what the C. A. R. is, the ladies of which erected this statue. I couldn't find anything on the base of the statue (or online for that matter) that explained it.

Less than a mile from the town's center I came to the Pella Corporation.

This company, that makes excellent windows and doors, has been a family-owned company since it began in 1925. This (above) is its corporate headquarters, presumably named for the town, since this is where it was founded.

Nearby I stumbled on a historical marker that explained some of the town's history.

side 1

side 2

From there, we were almost instantly out in the country. I saw several signs that seemed to be opposing something about an airport. They said, variously, "Honesty Wins" and "SCRAA 28E Illegal!" and so forth. As far as I can tell online, the SCRAA was formed by towns in this area for the purpose of building and operating a regional airport. It's been around for at least a decade but recently some parts of the public have become committed to opposing this project. I'm not sure why, unless their land could be victim of noise pollution. This is not a high-density population area, though, so I'm wondering if they're imagining a problem that won't exist. Anyway, that's the local controversy.

The American Gothic painting, by Iowan Grant Wood, seems to be everywhere in this state. Anyway, it's certainly in the town of Eldon, because many signs told me to turn to go see the house that's in that painting. He painted a real place, and this tiny town wants people to know that. I didn't bother; I've never quite understood what all the fuss was about.

American Gothic
by Grant Wood

I took a little detour down to the tiny town of Keosauqua to see their courthouse.

the historic Van Buren County Courthouse

Built in 1843, it's not only the oldest county courthouse in Iowa, it's considered the oldest courthouse in continuous use west of the Mississippi River. The county has done major restoration work both inside (in the 1980s) and outside (in the 1990s) for safety and to bring it up to code. But as you can see, they were very careful to preserve as much of the historical elements as they could.

We stopped in the empty parking lot of a bank, closed on Sunday, to have some lunch. I took this photo before everybody had realized we'd stopped and mobilized themselves to sell me on providing food.

And from there we went on down the road. I saw 4 dead deer along the road today and 5 dead raccoons. That seems like a lot given that I only drove about 200 miles.

The road took me through lots of 90° turns, which my experience in Texas told me was because I was driving through farmland, and the road turned to accommodate someone's property.

Just past the down of Denmark (they aren't shy about proclaiming their heritage here) I came back to the Great River Road National Scenic Byway. I haven't seen it in a while and it was like greeting an old friend.

Then we came to Burlington, where I'd come to see Snake Alley. I knew it was supposed to be a steep winding 1-block road, but as I came into town I noticed the land seemed too flat to have any hills, let alone steep ones. But as I drove further into town, I could see that Burlington does indeed have steep hills.

This road is so steep, you can't see beyond the first turn.

This road was built in 1894 and is still in use today, though certainly not by me. It's quite clear those turns are too tight for my 24' RV to make it around, let alone being too steep for us. Ripley's Believe It Or Not! has named it the crookedest street in the world - even more than Lombard Street in San Francisco. Here's some interesting information about it (and how it's too steep for horses) and a photo that I think is misleading because of not showing clearly how steep it is. https://en.wikipedia.org/Snake-Alley-Burlington-IA

I'm glad I went to see it. Though to be fair, the whole neighborhood had streets running precipitously down to the Mississippi River. They just weren't this crooked.

Continuing along the highway, I noticed that many houses in Iowa don't have cover for the front door, let alone a porch of any kind. Of course I'd expect that with the salt box style, of which Iowa seems to have many, but even the regular looking houses don't have as much as a narrow roof to shield the front door from the elements. I'd always thought of that as a basic need for a house, but apparently not everybody shares that view.

I've also noticed that quite a few houses have daylight basements; Iowa has one of the highest numbers of tornadoes each year. I think those 2 facts are connected. A lot of houses here are built into hillsides, at least for the lowest level of the house, and I'm assuming it's connected to bad weather.

Iowa has a town called Mediapolis, which seemed like a very odd name so I looked it up. It comes from the town being exactly half-way between the county seats of Burlington and Wapello - "media" meaning "middle." And there I was thinking it was some communications mecca.

I saw an Iowa license plate that said: HAWXRUS. The Iowa Hawkeyes. Get it?

I've seen signs in several counties directing me to their Freedom Rock. At first I thought it was something unique to that county, but after seeing several of these signs in different places, including today for Louisa County (in Grandview), I looked it up. An artist (named Bubba of course) has been painting large rocks in each of Iowa's 99 counties to honor our veterans. Here's a link to the information if you're interested. https://www.traveliowa.com/the-freedom-rock-tour

We got to Muscatine's Riverside Park at 1:15. A sign told me this town is the home of the National Pearl Button Museum. I'm sorry I hadn't known about that in advance because it sounds interesting. But the park had a bit of a contribution to make to that history: a statue to the local mussel fishermen of the Mississippi.

In all the river towns I saw bridges going to Illinois. Here's the one in Muscatine.

Tonight's campground was less than 10 miles from the park. I wasn't sure what to expect, since this was the first state park I'd seen in Iowa. But it was very comfortable. The Mississippi River was immediately next to it - the boat ramp led directly into the river.

Note how full the river is,
shown by how level the walkway is by the boat ramp.

The park was bounded on the other side by a railroad track that was just feet behind the campsites on that side. I didn't actually hear any trains come through, though, until about 3:30 in the morning, so it wasn't a problem for us. We stayed near the river.

The state parks ask folks to pay upon arrival via little envelopes deposited into protected boxes. $12 a night. It was electric only but still that seemed like a bargain to me.

The park had a couple of signs about the local mussel harvesting. One of them was titled "Canaries of the Deep," and discussed the various factors that have resulted in half of the country's 300 species of freshwater mussels now being classified endangered. Unfortunately, much of the sign was so thoroughly weathered that it was hard to read in person, let alone via photos. But this one I'm adding here shows something about the local folks who made up the harvesting side of mussels.