Iowa

After the Lincoln museum, we drove on to Iowa. About 60 miles west of Cedar Rapids is the Grant Woods Scenic Byway. Who knew how scenic Iowa actually is? I thought it was mostly flat, but it has lots of rolling hills and beautiful farm land. Grant did not exaggerate in his lovely landscapes. Apparently, the only way to do justice to the hills and valleys is to paint them, because all the pictures I tried to take looked awful. Along the way we passed Grant Wood's childhood school house. Yes, this portion of the trip was devoted to Wood, another great American artist. The next day we visited the studio Wood renovated and lived in for many years. It was amazing what he did with a little space. Every corner was put to use. Our plan was to then check out the Cedar Rapids Museum of Art and see some of his paintings, but it was still closed from the June floods.

So, we drove on to McGregor, Iowa for our last evening on the road. We stayed at another B & B. I thought it would be a nice treat for our last night. The house was OK, not nearly as quaint and awesomely over done as the Seneca Falls one. The breakfast was just OK, too. The whole stay would have been OK, had I not woken up with little red itchy spots all over my legs and arms. These small spots developed into big red splotches and have been most irritating.

The original plan for our final day on the road was to visit the Effigy Mounds just north of McGregor. But in Cedar Rapids, I saw a brochure for a museum in Austin, MN that I thought would conclude our trip more appropriately. So we headed off to the SPAM Museum. It was great! Definitely should be part of any road trip to MN. We lunched on more SPAM at Johnny's across the street.

We arrived home at 3:00, whew.

~xzfz