Iowa -- high expectations

Iowa’s welcome center is the first one we’ve visited that exactly portrays the state.  First, it looks like a barn.  The staff was friendly, the place offered free wifi and a brochure on just about anything you could want to know about Iowa, there was a coffee shop that offered fresh rhubarb pie and cookies, and there was a huge wall map of the state -- very visitor friendly. 

 

Other interesting sights on the road today – a street sign for 260^th Street in the middle of corn fields, huh? A gravel road named Eagle Avenue.  Trucks tearing down rural gravel roads leaving a cloud of dust in their wake like a jet plane – agri-jet?. Fran’s Bowling Superstore – not a business likely to make a profit in MOCO.  Signs advertising a Norwegian museum, a Czech and Slovak museum, an African American museum, and the Polka Festival in Ely  – celebrations of the melting pot.  And every highway we’ve driven, signs recognizing the Eisenhower Interstate System – thanks POTUS.

Iowa City, the last genealogy stop, held a lot of promise when we started this tour.  This was where my first generation Irish-American grandmother was born – surely I’d find a birth certificate and who knows what else.  Not to be, despite the knowledgeable and enthusiastic help of Carol K. at the State Historical Society of Iowa.  Charlie and I both culled through their online databases and historical references, but left with a clear understanding that, one, we needn’t spend more time in Iowa City and, two, I absolutely must find my great-grandfather’s death certificate.  Without it, I’ll likely never find the name of the man who left Ireland with his family and came to America.  Looks like a request is on its way to the Des Moines vital records gurus.

So we now have an extra day in the itinerary.  Will it be a more leisurely drive home or getting home a day early?  Either way, it's been a trip we'll never forget -- me and my traveling man.

(Photos: Iowa welcome center; grain elevator; lake at Myre Big Island State Park; doe and fawn in Helena cemetery)