What Cheer, Amana, Vespers, and Dubuque

 

Yesterday Travalon and I left Des Moines and drove east on I-80, stopping at a rest stop outside of Grinnell with stunning views of the landscape.

Then we drove south on Highway 21 until coming to What Cheer, since we were curious about it.

This is the What Cheer Museum.

Sadly, What Cheer must have been much larger once. This monument lists all the men who fought in World War I, and there are more names on it (all sides were covered with names) than there can possibly be people in the town today.

This is a shot of downtown What Cheer.

This is the What Cheer Opera House.

It says the Everly Brothers are playing, but on another billboard we saw it was the "Everly Brothers Experience."

Then we drove to the Amana Colonies. We only went to one, Amana; there are also North Amana, South Amana, East Amana, West Amana, and Homestead. The buildings are old and full of shops.

We got chocolate at one shop (to eat next week), and at the bakery I asked if they sold almond letters. The woman looked at me like I was nuts, and then she said, "Dutch letters?" They do sell them, and they look more like a Z or N than what I remembered from two decades ago, which looked like an S. They were also very large, so Travalon and I split one. They were, however, just as delicious as I remembered. The little sparrows knew the flaky pastry would create a lot of crumbs, so they gathered around us.

I also went into a rock and mineral store and bought a crystal. Then we drove to New Melleray, and Travalon clearly thought it was beautiful, since he took lots of photos.

We got there in time for Vespers. Afterwards we went to the Dubuque Riverwalk.

This is the shot tower at the end of it.

The Riverwalk ends at the old Star Brewery, which is now a winery. We had a pizza and Jazzberry wine, which is like port made with raspberries. So good!

Now we are back to the workaday world, and I was charging my FitBit and forgot to put it back on before my lunchtime walk, so no credit for those steps! Here are some things I bought on our trip. First are a goldstone and an obsidian pyramid from Junques in Cuba City and the mystic merlinite crystal I bought in Amana.

Blogspot put these on in the wrong order. I got these blacklight paintings in Nebraska.

Here is what they look like under ordinary artificial light.

The two rosaries on the left are from the Holy Family Shrine, and the two on the right are from Junques. The one on the far right had no crucifix, so I got a dirt-cheap four-way cross also at Junques to put on it.

These rosaries are from the antiques shop in Nebraska, just like the blacklight paintings.

When I got to work today, my boss said, "I thought you weren't back until tomorrow!" so then I was wishing I had stayed home and slept in. It was hard hearing that alarm after so many days of sleeping until I woke up!

Famous Hat