HBGALLAVANTERS

  Decided to try staying in local state and county campgrounds.  Somehow I came across this lake as a park that did not require permits and could be booked without getting local licenses. It is a beautiful county park about an hour south of St. Paul. The lake is picturesque with bike trails and boat ramps. And to my surprise, pretty empty for the week leading into July 4th.  It has two amazing playgrounds, a groomed beach, fire wood at the local store and nice setbacks between sites. Here for four days before we head north.  The view from my Adirondack chair. 

 Never in my life had I heard of this phenomenon.  Someone with a jeep leaves a little rubber Duck (or some other rubber bath toy) on your jeep.  Our first experience with this was when we were driving down Main Street in Hannibal. Mo.  A fellow jeep owner who was driving in the opposite direction on the street pulled up really close to us and handed Phil a pink rubber pig. A week later we came out of a grocery store in Springfield, Illinois and found this on our jeep.   Then last week we had a tiny duck left on our jeep in our campground.  I finally looked up what this all meant and found that we were supposed to regift the ducks to other jeep owners.  So I left the little duck on a jeep at a winery  in Minnesota. The jeep was from Wisconsin.  I left the pig on a jeep from Florida that was parked in our campground.  I’m saving the unicorn for  a special jeep that I find along the way.  I hope we get “ducked” again. It’s very fun. Wish I had known. I have a whole collection of ducks at

  Today we met our friend Laurie who lives in Rochester and we toured the SPAM Museum. It was so fun, so interactive and so colorful.  They even had samples for tasting. Lots of exhibits with lots of recipes.    The town of Austin is dominated by the Hormel Family.  The family has been making meat products here since the beginning of the 20th century.  To diversify their portfolio they have recently bought such interesting products as Skippy peanut butter and Herdez salsa.  The museum details how important SPAM was to our troops serving in WWII not only our troops but we sent SPAM to the Allies as part of Lend Lease and to the Russian troops.  Very funky spot to stop. The town of Austin is also a great little midwestern town. 

 Phil has repurposed the bbq that we had on our boat and it is working great. Steaks taste really good when you cook them in a campground.

 One of the reasons we came to this part of Iowa was to attend the art festival.  I read about it in Sunset and thought if we were near the area in late June we would come. We had a great time visiting with artists from all over the country.   The festival takes place in the Western Gateway Park in downtown Des Moines. The artists set up on the streets around the park that also houses the Pappajohn Sculpture Garden.  The show was wonderful. The location was great and we were both very impressed with this Midwest capital. The city has amazing architecture, great restaurants and small businesses.    

  Today we moved to the outskirts of Des Moines in anticipation of this weekend’s art festival in that city. Since we had some time this after we decided to set out to visit the remaining covered bridges in Madison County.  Bridge one: Imes Bridge Bridge two: Holliwell Covered Bridge Bridge 3: Cedar Bridge (see Facebook for video) Bridge 4: Hogback Bridge Driving between these bridges took us through some beautiful farmland here in Iowa.