May 19, 2013

Greetings vicarious travelers-

We are in Julesburg, Colorado which is in the very northeast corner of Colorado, about six miles from the Nebraska border. We did not blog yesterday because if we had all we would have said is “seeing lots of corn, talk to you tomorrow.”

Actually, that is not entirely true. We did leave yesterday morning and stopped in Coldwater to have breakfast with Tim’s Dad. As always, Illinois was boring to drive through. Iowa was somewhat better. It was, in fact, never ending corn fields, but we must say they were very impressive. We stopped yesterday afternoon in Iowa City to drive around the University of Iowa campus. There are several campuses around Iowa City. The one we toured was the medical/sports campus. Unfortunately, medical campuses generally are not picture postcard pretty. All of the buildings were tightly packed together. We drove by Kinnick Stadium, the football home of the Hawkeyes, and saw no areas for tailgating. It was a pretty stadium but looked cramped with the other buildings surrounding it. We also drove by the Carver-Hawkeye arena. You would not know it was a basketball facility if not for the sign in front. That is actually meant as a compliment. Props to U of I for an architecturally interesting athletic building.

Leaving Iowa City, it was a short drive to the Amana Colonies. This is a group of small towns situated within a mile or two of each other that were settled in the 1850’s by a German religious sect. Originally, the towns were communes. No one paid rent or paid for food and no one received a wage. They subsisted on what they were able to produce. In the 1930’s they started to divest themselves of the commune ideals. Too many of the members were beginning to have individual goals and no longer wanted to subjugate themselves to the commune. By the 1950’s they began to realize there was money to be made as a tourist attraction. Each of the little towns still have remnants of the original buildings and businesses. They were very picturesque.

We stayed overnight last night in Des Moines, Iowa. This morning we stopped at the state capitol. We like to collect state capitols and have been doing it for years much to the chagrin of Jil and Jeff. The Iowa capitol was quite beautiful. Of particular interest was the law library. The library had three levels of bookshelves with wrought iron circular stairways connecting the floors. We were suitably impressed. Both chambers of the legislature were ornately decorated in a tasteful manner. We were envious when comparing the Iowa capitol to the Michigan capitol. It was very quiet in the capitol because Iowa has a part time legislature. In talking with the information desk we discovered that Michigan is one of only seven states in the U.S. that still has a full time legislature. The information desk lady felt sorry for us!

While driving on towards Nebraska we came across the Adair Wind Project. The Adair Wind Project is located in Adair county Iowa. For at least 10 miles we saw nothing but windmills in all directions. There were literally hundreds of them. It was quite a sight.

We arrived in Omaha, Nebraska at lunch time. Sally Starr had recommended finding the Old Market area of Omaha because of its wonderful shops and restaurants. She was right. We had a wonderful lunch and then did some browsing. We ended up buying a new side table for our living room. We are having it shipped home. While arranging the details of shipping the table the salesperson, upon seeing our address said “Go Michigan” and explained that her son or son-in-law was a big Michigan fan. Tim told her that was too bad as we were Michigan State fans. She was a bit embarrassed as well she should have been.

It was about a 45 minute drive from Omaha to Lincoln, Nebraska. We took a quick drive around the University of Nebraska campus which, like most campuses, pales in comparison to MSU. We must say, however, that Memorial Stadium was impressive. We also drove by the state capitol. It looked like a tall office building with a dome plopped on top of it. Not nice at all.

Our last stop was at the Memorial Arch located in Kearney, Nebraska. It is visually stunning but turned out to be a wild west museum. A tourist trap actually. It was about a 4 hour drive across Nebraska to Julesburg, Colorado. The landscape for most of that distance was similar to Iowa: lots of humongous cornfields but much flatter topography. As we drove further west the corn fields gradually gave way to rolling prairie land. We did not hear a discouraging word, but, unfortunately, did not see any buffalo roaming all day.

Tonight we witnessed a flood. The water crested here in Julesburg this morning. They have 3 rivers through the area and 2 of them had barely a trickle of water in them until the Colorado floods - now there is just one huge river that is over its banks. The sewage treatment plant is sandbagged but looks like it is an island. Our motel is about ½ a mile from the water - we’ve been told that the next few towns toward Denver have no-flush edicts and that all restaurants close when that happens. There are lots of railroad personnel in the area building up the berms around the tracks - we’ve seen extremely long trains throughout IA and NE - the crews are trying to keep the tracks from washing away - especially important during harvest time here.

Tomorrow we have a reasonably short trip, two and a half hours, into Denver. We plan on spending a couple of days there. The original plan was to include Boulder in our itinerary. That plan has been washed away. In its place we may visit the Air Force Academy instead. Check back in a couple of days.

It was our intent to post this blog last night but because of technical difficulties that did not happen. So, let us bring you up to date on today’s doings. We arrived in Denver about 11:00 and did a bit of driving about and reconnoitering before finally parking the car and doing a bit of a walk about. We saw all we wanted to see in downtown Denver so we headed for the Red Rocks Amphitheater. Lynda had seen it about 50 years ago, really, and thought Tim would enjoy it. On the way we tried finding a hotel and found out that all the hotels in area were sold out due to a Grateful Dead concert at the Red Rock Amphitheater. We drove up to Red Rock and were told we could not visit the theater because they were preparing for tonight’s concert. We drove to the theater anyway, parked illegally, Lynda stood look out while Tim ran to the top of the theater and took pictures. We then made a quick and clean get-away.

Plan B was to head to Colorado Springs. On the way we stopped at the Air Force Academy. The biggest attraction at the Academy is the Cadet Chapel. It is absolutely beautiful. The wood at the end of each pew was shaped like a wing as was the cross pieces in the huge crucifix hanging in the front of the chapel. The second pew from the front on the right side was blocked off. In the middle of the pew a large candlestick holder was standing on the floor with a lighted candle. A plaque indicated that this pew was reserved in honor of POW’s and MIA’s. Very moving.

That brings you up to date. Hopefully this will get posted.