Happy 1st Anniversry to Us!

Today...August 1...marks our one-year anniversary as fulltime RVer's. Happy Anniversary to Us. We couldn't be happier with our chosen lifestyle and look forward to many, many years of roaming the countryside.

We will continue to spend a few months in our "hometown" of Tumwater, Washington and also a few months on the road. We'll mix it up a bit each year and we can never say for certain where we will go. We plan a little bit, but also like to be spontaneous once in a while.

Please keep up with our travels on this blog, and let us know what you think or if you have any questions for us.

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

Iowa's Amish Country

We didn't realize it until we arrived in Oelwein, but there is a bustling Amish community in the nearby town of Hazleton. Hazleton lies south of our campground and only 1 mile away. We thought we'd take the car and drive through the area looking at their farms and their community. The main town center is along Hwy. 150 and it isn't much to look at, truthfully. Mostly a few run down buildings along with business concerns trying to stay alive during these hard times. But when we ventured a block or two to the west of the downtown area, we found what we were searching for.

Since I first discovered the Amish people around Lancaster, Pennsylvania in 1980, I've been intrigued by their lifestyle. You can watch the movie Witness, with Harrison Ford, and get a bit of an idea on how the Amish live, but I think there is more to their way of life than depicted in that film.

I know of large Amish communities in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana and now Iowa. I'm sure there are more areas with these "plain folks", but I haven't seen them. This photo was taken on Grant Avenue, which is the usual dirt and gravel road found in these parts. Check out those beautiful clouds in the sky. It was always like that while we stayed in Oelwein.
In downtown Oelwein, we saw this Amish family leaving the Fareway grocery market. There are hitching posts in the parking lot for them to tie up their horses while they shop. I'm not sure whose job it is to scoop up all of that horse manure. Maybe the bag-boy from the market.

Again, down in Hazleton we saw this farmer go whizzing by in his black Amish buggy. They are all like the original Model T Ford....only come in black.

At this farm, the farmer had made neat rows of haystacks. The field was full of them. Must have been hundreds, but we didn't stop to count.

Here is a typical Amish farm from what appears to be a more prosperous farmer. I thought this was a great photo with the windmill at the back of the farmhouse. Again...check out those clouds.

Over on 130th Street, we stopped to take another farm photo. You can see the buggy hitched up by the barn.

Since the Amish only travel by horse-drawn buggy, a lot of the farms we passed had the most beautiful horses grazing in the pastures.

There were many farms that had beautiful flower gardens as well as kitchen gardens you could see from the road. Again, this farm appeared to be one of the more prosperous ones.

It was wash day today. Many of the Amish use washing machines powered by gasoline engines. Amish homes do not connect with public utilities in order to lead a more "simple life". There is no electricity to run a washing machine. The laundry then gets hung out on the lines to dry in the wind.

On the corner of Amish Blvd. and 120th Street we saw several cars and buggies parked in a parking lot. A sign said something about farm produce for sale. We thought it might be like a Farmer's Market so we parked and went inside. It was actually an Auction House. People were there, Amish and English (as they are called), bidding on produce and other farm goods. Interesting, but we didn't have a clue as to how to enter the bidding process....nor did we want to. We watched for a few minutes and quietly left. The photo below shows some of the buggies parked at the Auction House.

The Auction House is in the background and a very impatient horse is waiting with his buggy. He kept stamping his foot like he was restless and ready to go home.

This is a photo of one of the Amish schools in the community. They are all one-room schoolhouses and have outdoor plumbing.....another feature with the Amish. We counted at least 11 one-room schools is this community. All were painted white just like the farmhouses.

Here is another school with the outhouse toward the left of the photo. I guess that can be a pretty cold place to go out to when those bitter, freezing Iowa winters come along. Brrrrrrr.

As we were leaving the town of Hazleton, we followed this buggy down the road. We enjoyed the little side trip to see this fascinating town with these interesting people. I think they would be interesting to have a conversation with and I wish I could have been able to do that.

Next stop will be the town of Forest City, Iowa and the Winnebago factory. Check back in a few days...I'm sure I'll have something to report on that.

Until next time....so long for now!

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!

The Great River Road

When our stay in Monticello's White Oaks on the Lake was done, we drove west on Hwy. 24 to Illinois. Sometimes we take an Interstate route and sometimes we take those secondary, 2-lane roads to our next destination. On this day, we took both types of roads and ended up at the far end of Illinois in the town of Colona. Here we stopped for the night at a Coast to Coast membership park. It was a so-so type of place, but good for a one-night stopover.

The morning after, we pulled out of Colona and drove the short distance to the Iowa border. Here, we decided to take a very scenic route to our next destination of Oelwein. After crossing into Iowa, we picked up Hwy. 67 North. You travel on this and connect with US 52, part of The Great River Road, in Sabula, Iowa. The Great River Road (GRR) follows along with the Mississippi River. It was a wonderful drive and this photo shows a view of the mighty Mississippi in Iowa.This route followed beautiful, scenic 2-lane roads. We were surprised to find a lot of hilly terrain in northeastern Iowa....some very big hills, too.

As we drove into the river town of Bellevue, we saw Riverfront Park on our right. There was a nice place to park the motorhome and we could walk down to see Lock and Dam No. 12 on the Mississippi. The photo (above) shows the dam at this location.

We were lucky to be present as a number of river barges were inside Lock No. 12. They were traveling upriver and a tug was with them to push them into the lock as they waited for the waters to rise to the proper level.

This is the south end of Lock No. 12.

When the water in the lock reached the proper level, the gates opened and the tug pushed the line of barges out into the Mississippi to continue on their way north.

With the show over, we climbed back into the motorhome and drove back out onto US 52. After Bellevue, we leave the Mississippi valley and drive along some bluffs where you travel slightly inland. About 20 miles north, the GRR rolls gently into the river town of Dubuque. There is a large bridge here that allows the driver to cross the Mississippi into Illinois and Wisconsin. That was not our intended route so we just continued on US 52. Here is the bridge in the city of Dubuque.

Here was a beautiful red barn we passed around the town of Edgewood.

Our travels today took us through so much of the beautiful farm country of Iowa. It was a nice, leisure day and we enjoyed it.

We got to our destination town of Oelwein in the late afternoon. Our campground was Lake Shore Resort and it was right in the middle of great farm country ! What else?

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