Since last winter, Sarah and I have planned tentatively to visit a state park in northeastern Iowa called Maquoketa because of the caves it is known for. After some relief from the very warm end of the Iowa summer, and possibly from a recent motivation we've gotten to camp, we finally made the trip this weekend. We got there a little late on Friday night and found one campsite left, waiting just for us. It was a very pleasant, windless, clear, and comfortably cool evening to sit around a fire.
We explored the caves on Saturday. Neither of us quite knew what to expect. Apart from three large interconnected openings with one or two small offshooting tunnels, the other dozen or so caves in the park were not connected and went from ten feet into a hill to about fifty feet deep; some had rooms large enough to stand up in, others were much more cramped. Crawling on your belly was necessary for several of them, if the caver was up for the tight fit. Sarah and I were game and were filthy at the end of the afternoon. I also crouched through one opening with a shin-deep stream coming down it later in the afternoon. In one such moist area, we were puzzled by the walls seeming to glitter around us. After closer looks, we realized it was from condensation on the walls in the form of speck-sized droplets. No pictures would have given those rooms justice, and will simply have to be experienced and remembered.
Unlike Lewis and Clark Caverns' guided tours with restricted access to it's upper and lower openings, these caves were wide open to the general public and always have been. This was reflected on the park by its well-traveled feel and lack of geological growth in the caves; foolish souvenir hunters robbed the place clean of stalactites and stalagmites years ago. Nonetheless, we were glad to have experienced them.
We drove through Davenport to get to Maquoketa, so we had planned on stopping by there on the way back. Sarah went to St Ambrose College in Davenport, so she showed me the campus and around town.
Sunday morning we woke up to rain, which was absolutely welcome, especially since didn't need to rely on a campfire to cook our breakfast. Another adventure accomplished!
9/15/13
9/4/13
The State Fair, Stockwhips, and Labor Day
Another Iowa State Fair has come and gone. Sarah and I attended both weekends of the ten-day affair, though in hindsight two solid afternoons there is plenty; either the crowds were more obnoxious than last year or I was more averse to them, and it didn't seem as magical to me this year as last year. I did enjoy the good (and more restrained) sampling of fair food, craft beer, the draft horse pull, visiting with friends, and watching my friend and coworker Mike Buban play with his band.
It's been intensely dry here for close to two months. It even sounds like Montana's gotten more rain the last few weeks than this part of Iowa. The corn is drying out and some farmers have started chopping it for silage. I believe some corn was chopped several weeks earlier than this time last year due to the drought, but this year still seems very dry. Wildfires aren't a concern in the midwest like they are in the mountains, but fields of dry corn still make me wonder if it's possible. I'm told crop fires do occasionally start here, but there's no way they'd have the ferocity of a forest fire.
I've been trying my hand at leather braiding and made a four-foot stockwhip in July. I just finished a ten-footer that is being tried out here before it will be sent to Dave Clark in Winston so he can tear it up and give me suggestions for improvement. I've already got some ideas for what to do differently next time. I also decided to use the Vermeer serial numbering system, with the first prototype being '100'. I made the bold decision to give the ten-footer the '101' stamp of the first production unit, instead of the '99' of the second prototype. Hopefully it's worthy.
Sarah and I enjoyed a perfect Labor Day weekend: busy enough to keep us entertained and pleased about not wasting our holiday weekend, yet not frantic. Friday night was pleasantly laid back with no plans. I spent part of Saturday morning stacking small square bales for a local friend whose paints I've ridden several times before. Tyler Schiferl and his wife Jamie had another great get-together at their place featuring a fire and music, though I didn't add much to the music. Sarah and I made a mini-road trip to northwest Iowa to see the Grotto of Redemption in West Bend. It is the work of a lifetime of a local priest who passed away in the 50s, and is a collection and construction of shells, petrified wood, and crystals. It's the largest such structure in the world, and there certainly isn't anything like it anywhere else. Northwestern Iowa is hardly the place you'd expect it either. From there, we met my MSU buddy Bret Orner in Spirit Lake. I've seen Bret only once since 2008 and only twice since 2007 but we still keep in touch often. His Grandmother lives in southwestern Minnesota so it was an easy drive and good opportunity to see him. We also didn't want to pass up the chance to camp before the end of summer, which is somehow upon us already. Fall doesn't seem as unwelcome as it used to though.
It's been intensely dry here for close to two months. It even sounds like Montana's gotten more rain the last few weeks than this part of Iowa. The corn is drying out and some farmers have started chopping it for silage. I believe some corn was chopped several weeks earlier than this time last year due to the drought, but this year still seems very dry. Wildfires aren't a concern in the midwest like they are in the mountains, but fields of dry corn still make me wonder if it's possible. I'm told crop fires do occasionally start here, but there's no way they'd have the ferocity of a forest fire.
I've been trying my hand at leather braiding and made a four-foot stockwhip in July. I just finished a ten-footer that is being tried out here before it will be sent to Dave Clark in Winston so he can tear it up and give me suggestions for improvement. I've already got some ideas for what to do differently next time. I also decided to use the Vermeer serial numbering system, with the first prototype being '100'. I made the bold decision to give the ten-footer the '101' stamp of the first production unit, instead of the '99' of the second prototype. Hopefully it's worthy.
Sarah and I enjoyed a perfect Labor Day weekend: busy enough to keep us entertained and pleased about not wasting our holiday weekend, yet not frantic. Friday night was pleasantly laid back with no plans. I spent part of Saturday morning stacking small square bales for a local friend whose paints I've ridden several times before. Tyler Schiferl and his wife Jamie had another great get-together at their place featuring a fire and music, though I didn't add much to the music. Sarah and I made a mini-road trip to northwest Iowa to see the Grotto of Redemption in West Bend. It is the work of a lifetime of a local priest who passed away in the 50s, and is a collection and construction of shells, petrified wood, and crystals. It's the largest such structure in the world, and there certainly isn't anything like it anywhere else. Northwestern Iowa is hardly the place you'd expect it either. From there, we met my MSU buddy Bret Orner in Spirit Lake. I've seen Bret only once since 2008 and only twice since 2007 but we still keep in touch often. His Grandmother lives in southwestern Minnesota so it was an easy drive and good opportunity to see him. We also didn't want to pass up the chance to camp before the end of summer, which is somehow upon us already. Fall doesn't seem as unwelcome as it used to though.
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