Land of the two-finger wave...

 

I am talking about Iowa.  We left Denison this morning.  It was a relatively short stay there, but it set my mind at ease being able to see John.

We decided to head north out of Denison (more on that in a bit).  This is Iowa farm country...

 Traffic is sparse and when a car or truck comes the other direction, the driver often raises 2 fingers off the steering wheel as a wave.  Unlike in Phoenix, where the wave is generally 1 finger, sometimes followed by gunfire.  But, I digress.

This farmer must have wanted to be a lighthouse keeper at one time...

 The GPS didn't warn us that our routing took us on gravel - we looked for the fasted way out of that an plugged in a detour; did about 5 miles of gravel before we got back on pavement again...

 Where there are farms, there is occasionally farm equipment on the highway...

 And road construction...

 And windmills being built...

 Must be a profitable "crop" - we saw plenty of them along the way.

The first stop on our northerly route was in Milford, IA...

 For those not familiar, The Three Sons started "the University of Okoboji" t-shirt sales decades ago.  No, there is no "university."  The sale of shirts and other stuff was so successful, they started at charitable foundation.  It has been at least 10 years since I've been able to update my University of Okoboji wardrobe - we took care of that today.

From there, off to Arnold's Park and Lake Okoboji, to allow me to reminisce about childhood summers here.  It has changed A LOT...

 It needed to.  Damage from a tornado and the growth of Adventure Land near Des Moines left the Arnold's Park amusement park a shell of its former self.  The Roof Garden (home to a concerts and other events) was relocated (on the ground floor) and the wooden rollercoaster in the park was rebuilt.  Other rides and shops came back.  The waterfront area looks great.  We stopped for a couple photos...

 

That boat in that photo above is the Queen II.  The original Queen is no longer here (I rode that a bunch in my childhood), but this is a pretty decent substitute.  I rode it enough that the captains would occasionally let me into the helm so I could see the view from their perspective.  Was that an influence on me eventually becoming a boat captain?  I hadn't thought about that before.  There was also a bigger, fancier, more modern boat called the Empress... I rode it once, then went back to the Queen.  Back in the day, the Queen would stop at a couple resorts on the lake to pick up and drop off passengers.  And, of course, a narrated tour.

There are plenty of new shops and museums - it has a nice upscale feel to it.  We stopped for lunch at Maxwell's Beach Cafe, which isn't really on the beach.  It used to be a nice place to eat on the westside of the lake - no idea if that is still there, but the food was very good and the service exceptional.  And, another selfie...

 We chose a table outside, in the shade, so we could look at the lake and see the people walking by.  Surprisingly busy for a Tuesday in early June.

It made my heart happy to see this area come back. 

From there, we pointed the van west.  Miles to make to get us back to Arizona, and this trip north to Okoboji added time, but brought back a lot of memories.

We are down for the night at another casino.  No idea if we'll even go in... it was a convenient stop for the day and a reasonable price for full hook-ups.  The wind really piped up as we drove west.  Good time to settle in for the evening.