Wednesday, September 23, 2020 - Winterest, Iowa - What A Wonderful Town and A Beautiful Countryside

Wednesday, September 23, 2020 - Winterest, Iowa - What A Wonderful Town and A Beautiful Countryside

This is great sleeping weather since I added a quilt for additional warmth on these cool nights. The coffee sure helped warm us up.  We were ready to pull out of West Lake Park at 8:25am.  We probably would not have been ready this early, but we decided to stop and eat breakfast on our way this morning.  We were already hungry!  

I'm sure these are weeds but they sure put a bright spot in our morning.

Only a short distance from the campground we made our stop at the  World's Largest Truck Stop, Iowa 80.  We chose Gramma's Cafe.  While there are several restaurants and fast food facilities we chose the first one we came to.  The food was quite good.

Cute coffee cups/sayings

We were both happy with our breakfast choices.

Dean had eggs, ham, sourdough toast and hash brown casserole.

Eggs, biscuit & gravy, and a half order of fries.

A few pictures I took along the way

When I looked at this later, that's when I noticed the motorhome next to the silo.  It was the semi that caught my eye.

Kinzie Farm Equipment - neat ideas to draw attention to their product

We saw a number of beautiful farms.

We traveled I-80 again today.  A very busy Interstate.

All of a sudden clouds appeared - however, no rain!  Yea!

Our site at Winterest City Campground & RV Park

We thought the GPS had directed us wrong since there was no campground where Bobbie led us, but later we discovered it was RV Parky that led us astray.  Their directions led us to South 10th Street.  We discovered the park was instead located on North 10th Street.   We had made our reservations online, so all we had to do was find site 10 and it did not take long at all.  It's a very nice campground, with decent space between rigs.  We were soon set up.  We even set  outside for nearly an hour enjoying the beautiful afternoon, before we left to explore the area.

Several years ago on our way to New York to see Matt & family, we noticed a sign advertising John Wayne's boyhood home.  I didn't remember the town but thought it was in Iowa.  I did a little research and discovered we had time to fit a stop here in our travels as we make our way back to Kansas.  Unbeknownst to either of us, as we approached the county where Winterest is located, we discovered it was Madison County and they had a number of covered bridges.  Yes, Winterset is the location of the movie Bridges of Madison County.  We enjoyed visiting three of the bridges in the area this afternoon, and then happened on a fourth one later in the late afternoon/evening.

Holliwell Covered Bridge

Loved this metal horse sculpture 

The small community of St. Charles is using this former church as their Welcome Center.  The stained glass was beautiful!

Imes Covered Bridge - these bridges are really interesting to see.

I asked Dean stop here so I could take a picture of this hillside.  I wished I could have just walked the field.  It was so beautiful.

The most well known covered bridge in Madison County - Roseman, famous from the movie Bridges of Madison County with Clint Eastwood and Meryl Streep.

These are some really incredible structures.  We have enjoyed visiting these beautiful structures.

On our way back, we turned a corner and this hound dog was running right down the middle of the road toward us with his ears flapping and his tail wagging.  It was just hilarious and cute all at the same time.  I had to take his picture.  

And, somehow on our drive, Dean managed to find a golf course....lol!  It was a beautiful course.

We made a stop at a local grocery store Hy-Vee, for a few groceries that we needed for our dinner tonight.  We had taco salad and it was a perfect light meal.

After cleaning things up, we decided to walk across the road to the city park.  This shelter house was really amazing.

Here's our campground - can you see Bentley?

And we found another covered bridge - Cutler-Donahue Bridge

We walked the loop around the park where the last thing we found was this original log cabin.

We enjoyed our day and look forward to another great day of discovery tomorrow.