Saturday, June 4, 2011
Winterset City Park, Winterset, IA: 5/30-6/1
Jan also recommended visiting Winterset and the nearby Bridges of Madison County, so we decided to make another stop after just 60 miles. It was well worth it. The city park has a nice campground, which had many empty spaces after the holiday weekend. The town square has been restored and is lovely. The courthouse in the center of the square was still being refurbished, and will be quite lovely when that is done. We enjoyed walking around the town and looking at the houses. We found a map to several painted quilt blocks that had been put on houses or garages. We also viewed the John Wayne birthplace home. Before the making of the movie about the bridges, John Wayne was the most famous thing to come from this town.
We got a map to the 6 remaining bridges and spent a day visiting them. They are each lovely in their own way. You can walk through them all, and you can drive through one. Because of the increase in tourism from the movie, funding is available to keep them well-maintained, and it is nice to see them looking so good. We learned that bridges were covered in order to protect the more-expensive floorboards from the elements. It was cheaper to cover the bridges than to replace the floorboards. The highway commission actually ordered all bridges to be covered for a period of time.
One of the bridges had been relocated to the City Park, and we visited it several times. Also in City Park was the Winterset Hedge Maze, designed like the hedge mazes in England. It was a delightful maze, with several decision points, and privet hedge "walls" of just the right height. At the center of the maze is an old English sundial purchased at an antique shop in London, England.
We also visited Pammel State Park, currently under the (mis)management of Madison County. We were quite thankful that we had decided not to camp here! There was road construction on the gravel road leading into the park, and the detours to it were not well-marked. It was easy to get onto roads that would have been quite problematic while towing. Once there, we found the cg had 2 parts, one a flat gravel open area that was quite unappealing and the other a wooded, crowded, gloomy area with very unlevel spots. Plus the two main attractions were closed! The Harmon Tunnel (the only highway tunnel in Iowa) was blocked off with orange tape & cones, and the Middle River Crossing, which you can normally drive across, or wade & play in the river (if you're so inclined) was gated due to the high water.
# posted by Doug and Willie @ 1:26 PM 
