Tag: Iowa

Marion, Iowa to Chicago, Illinois

This morning we left our friends house outside of Marion, Iowa about 10 am and headed east. We crossed over the Mississippi River and entered our seventh state on this trip, Illinois.

The Mississippi River

Tonight we are staying quite near Lake Michigan in downtown Chicago. We have a wonderful view of the lake and the river from our room at the Swissotel. Surprisingly our three nights at the Swisshotel will only cost us about $100 more in total than our three nights at our motel in Manchester!

The view from our room

When he was planning this trip, Duke made reservations for us to go to Andy’s Jazz Club and see a quartet with the drummer Charles Heath IV. We had an excellent dinner and the music was great. It was a perfect evening.

Andy’s Jazz Club

Marion day 2

This morning we went for a hike in Wanatee Park.

Butch, Myra and Marion

Then we had a fabulous brunch at West End Diner in Marion.

Duke and I and our new friends

Every Tuesday at noon Indivisible Linn County has a 30 minute Dump Trump protest across from the Federal Building in Cedar Rapids. Butch and Myra go every week. So today Duke and I protested with them. We estimated that about 35% of the cars driving past gave us a thumbs up or honked. We enjoyed ourselves.

Myra and I at the protest

This afternoon we relaxed, visited and played some cards and a game of giant Jenga.

Butch and Myra’s yard is beautiful
The corn across the road, and pretty much all the corn we have seen is probably ten feet tall!
Our Jenga game

Manchester to Des Moines to Marion, Iowa

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.

Manchester Day 3

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.

The men memorialized
The painted rock

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

Hiking in Backbone State Park
Richmond Spring in the park

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

Pork tenderloin
Outside The Shot Tower Inn where we had 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.

Overlooking the Mississippi
A boat exiting the lock

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

Dinner

Manchester Day 2

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

The house where Duke grew up.
Manchester Fish Hatchery
Everyone had a quarter to buy fish food
Feeding the fish
The farmers market
At the site of the Quaker Mill Dam
Before the dam was removed there was a lake here

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

At the reunion