So what's in Iowa other than a field of dreams

[punkorange]

Sunday morning my wife and I will be leaving Arkansas to head up north to DeWitt, Iowa to visit her grandma for a few days. I'm looking for something worth seeing while up that way. Anyone have any suggestions? This will be my first paid vacation and I don't really care to spend all of it sitting at my grandmother in-law's

(posted and then thought, sorry... Could someone move this to off-topic?)

 

[Mishihari Lord]

I'm from Bettendorf originally. There's not a whole lot of things to do up there, but I do have a few suggestions:

1) Maquokata caves. Go with someone who knows the place if possible, because the best caves to go through aren't obvious to find even with the map. Dancehall cave is neat to walk through, and the Wye cave is the best crawl.

2) Putnam museum in Davenport. Mummies and holograms, in addition to the usual. The place has an Imax too.

3) The District in Rock Islands has various types of music festivals. There may be one whil you're there.

4) The Rock Island Arsenal has a neat military museum and a visitors center for the lock & dam. You can see the barges go up & down close up.

5) There will probably be a corn maze or two in operation this time of year.

6) There are several minor-league sports teams in the Quad Cities: baseball, hockey, and indoor football.

7) Hoover's bithplace and Buffalo Bill's home are interesting too.

 

[Barendd Nobeard]

The John Deere Pavilion in the Quad Cities is supposed to be good. Especially if you like tractors.

Also, there is Anamosa, boyhood home of painter Grant Wood (The American Gothic--the farmer with pitchfork and a woman who is either his wife or daughter (or both, if you like the movie Chinatown)). They have a Grant Wood Arts Festival every year, but that's in June.

There's also the Effigy Mound National Monument park in northeast Iowa.

Finally, for true enlightenment, go visit my birthplace. What could be more exciting than the hospital in Iowa City on the campus of the University of Iowa?! Well, ok, anything else already listed is probably more exciting than that!

 

[Barendd Nobeard]

Also, the man who invented the Palmer Method of handwriting (very close to what is still taught today in the US) had extensive ties to Cedar Rapids. A building he built there, the Ausadie bulding, still stands (at 845 1st Ave. S.E., Cedar Rapids). It looks cool from the outside, but you can't go it and even if you did, all you would see are apartment doors.

I had relatives living in that building for almost 50 years. But their handwriting wasn't any better than average, so I guess his ghost doesn't haunt the place.

The National Czech & Slovak Musuem and Library is also in Cedar Rapids. It is supposed to be interesting, but I've never been in it.

 

[Sequoia2]

just more and more fields that have already given up on their dreams...