Month: August 2025

We had a wonderful day except for one thing. I forgot to take pictures! First we had breakfast at the hotel in Manchester with Roger, Gayle, Rick and Elaine. But we don’t have a picture of the six of us!

Then we drove to Des Moines and had a marvelous lunch and played cards with our friends Becky and Stu. We had so much fun we forgot to take pictures!

Finally we drove to the town of Marion and had a great dinner, lots of talk and some more cards with Butch and Myra. About 11pm I managed to remember to take a picture.

Today we had fun exploring a bit of northeast Iowa with our friends. Apparently the artist who painted the rock in the picture below has placed a painted memorial rock in each Iowa county. The Iowa locals in our group knew some of the Iowa men from Delaware County who died at war in the late 60s and early 70s.

Next we went out and hiked a bit at Backbone State Park overlooking the Maquoketa River.

We had an Iowa specialty, pork tenderloin, for lunch in Dubuque

Our last stop was Eagle Point Park in Dubuque where we watched some boats going through a lock on the Mississippi River.

We had excellent Mexican food for dinner at Fiesta Cancun in Manchester.

This morning we had a great time exploring some of the places Duke and his Manchester friends remembered around Manchester.

These evening we had fun at Duke’s 55th high school reunion.

Today after breakfast we left Moville and drove east to Manchester, Iowa, where Duke grew up. We met up with two of Duke’s buddies that he went to high-school with. Their high-school reunion is tomorrow.

We had a fascinating tour of some of the sites of Sioux City today. We started at the excellent city museum. They had a really interesting movie to start our tour.

Next we went to the Sioux CityArt Center.

Next we went down to the Missouri River to the Lewis and Clark Interpretive Center.

Then we went next door to the Sergeant Floyd River Museum. The museum is in a towboat built for the Army Corp. of Engineers in 1932. It is named for Sergeant Charles Floyd who was the only member of the Lewis And Clark Expedition to die during the journey. He died near the present site of Sioux City and is buried nearby.

We ended our tour at the Oscar’s Carl Vineyard. We shared a bottle of wine, had a picnic lunch and played some cards. The vineyard building is very cool because they allow you to bring in your own food and use the tables with no hassle.