Wednesday, June 8, 2011

Iowa City, Iowa area

June 4-9.  We are at Coralville Lake & Dam, another Corp of Engineers (COE) campground.  As mentioned earlier, we spent at day at West Branch and yesterday we toured the 6 Amana Colonie towns.  They were established as communal towns by a group of German religious refugees, back in the 1840's.  They are similar to Amish, except they embrace change, therefore, they use tractors, electricity, cars, etc.  They also have a brewery and wineries.
Today, (Tuesday) we went to the old state capitol in Iowa City, the University of Iowa bookstore, and the University of Iowa Sports Hall of Fame.  Three floors of Iowa sports, especially football and wrestling.
Dan Gable, the great Iowa wrestler, not only won Olympic gold, but was US champion 3 times.  When he became coach of the Iowa Wrestling team, his guys won 15 NCAA titles in 22 years! On the way home from Iowa City we stopped at the Iowa Fire  Fighter's Memorial, which is dedicate to those brave firefighters who have made the ultimate sacrifice and to those who still serve.  Finally, back at our campground is an area, washed way by floods in 1994, that exposed millions of fossils from 375 million years ago! We walked the washed out area and got some photos of some fossils.

                                    
Debbie shooting hoops
Nile Kinnick's 1939 Heisman


                             
                      
Iowa Fire Fighter's Memorial
Fire Fighter's Wall of Honor


Fossil
Fossil


Fossil
Old Capitol Building



1 comment:

  1. It has been so nice to follow you on your travels, you have done so much in a short time. Hope all is well with with you both, Happy and safe travels

    Denise

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