Day Trippin' in Iowa

These are the grounds at the Lake Shore Resort where we are staying for a couple of days. This resort is about 1 mile south of the town of Oelwein in Iowa. This is another view of the lake here at the resort. It was nice and serene. The park was very quiet, too.

Our motorhome had plenty of space for us to enjoy with no neighbor on the one side. Plenty of room for the Explorer to park also.

We decided to do a little day trippin' while we were here. We packed up our picnic lunch and put Annie, the Schnauzer, into the car. We decided to explore north of our resort location. We drove directly north on Hwy. 150. Naturally, we passed lots and lots of farms. There were corn fields as far as the eye could see in any direction. Iowa farmers also grow a lot of soybeans in their fields.

We stopped for gas along the way and we saw this guy with his John Deere getting diesel fuel. They just drive them right from the farm to the gas pump in town.

We drove as far north as the town of Decorah, which is only about 17 miles south of the Minnesota border. It was a nice town and we found this beautiful city park up on a hill. We parked and got out our lawn chairs and our picnic cooler. Annie enjoyed her own picnic treats. The park was Phelps Park.

Phelps Park had this little look-out shelter. Bruce and Annie ventured inside to check out the views.

Here is the view of the Upper Iowa River that you can see from Phelps Park.

We decided to travel home by a different route. We took Route 9, west, until we came to County Road W14. This was a dirt and gravel road much of the way and it took us past new farms to see. We were heading toward the village of Spillville when we came to a ROAD CLOSED sign. No alternate route was given so we just took our chances and turned left on a dirt road we saw. We wandered all over the countryside but were eventually going in the right direction. We found Hwy. 150 at last and followed that for a short distance. Up on a hill to our left we spied a large structure sticking out from the tree tops. It looked like a church. We turned off the road to get a closer look. It was in the tiny hamlet of St. Lucas (pop. 200). We found it easily since the town is so small. The church was HUGE. It was St. Lucas Catholic Church and we stopped so I could get this photograph. It was a beautiful building, but a surprising find in this area of low population.

We'd had enough for the day now, so we turned our attention to getting back to our RV home in Oelwein. Our resort was on Ave. Q and right across the street from the entrance is....what else?....a large cornfield.

By the way...we bought several ears of fresh corn here, too. Delicious.

That's it for now....so long until next time!