On the Road is a weekday feature spotlighting reader photo submissions.
From the exotic to the familiar, whether you’re traveling or in your own backyard, we would love to see the world through your eyes.
Apologies for not getting the schedules posted for this week.
Tonight After Dark, it’s JanieM. Friday night After Dark is BillinGlendaleCA.
Friday morning is Cleek!
stinger
Barred from overnight travel by pandemic and 4 pets, I’ve been making day trips now that I’m mostly retired. Since visiting friends and eating in restaurants is out, I look for places to hike. Iowa has no national parks, but more than 80 state parks and countless county and city parks. Access is free, if you’re not using a campsite, and weekday visits mean fewer people and more nature.
And sometimes there are things to see without leaving home!
First Day Hike — The national state parks association has been promoting First Day Hikes for several years now. Start off the year right! The first year I was aware of it, the program was canceled statewide due to wind chills of minus 30. The past two years temperatures have been in the low/mid 30s (above zero), which is bearable if you dress for it and keep moving.
I love the name of this park – so Civil War-y. Tenting tonight, tenting tonight, tenting on the old campground….
Not sure how widespread this practice is, but all towns around here do a cemetery Avenue of Flags on Memorial Day. There’s a morning ceremony with the high school band and a short speech or two, but I prefer to go near sunset when the cemetery is deserted. A hundred flags snapping in the breeze is the only sound you hear. I always seek out the flags honoring my two uncles, killed in WWII and Korea, respectively, before I was born, and my dad, a WWII veteran and gone these thirty years. Some day my flag will be snapping there too.
Sunrise taken through a window of my house.
The low bluffs are a popular place for climbers. Makes me dizzy just to watch. That slender rope!
White-tailed deer taken through a window of my house. The log on the lawn is derecho detritus.
Horse Thief Cave and Ice Cave are among the attractions.
Miles of trails and I was the only person in the park that day.
The Cedar River near Sutliff. Sunset with a little mist along the river’s edge.
JPL
Wonderful pictures and a reminder that there is beauty all around us,
MagdaInBlack
Fun to find the little treasures close to home, isnt it? Thank you.
Yutsano
@JPL: I should submit the snow covered hills pictures I took a couple of years ago. There is something about the contrast of white on semi-arid brown that is just amazing.
EDIT: This is in the hills outside south of Richland WA. I forget the year off the top of my head.
LeftCoastYankee
“Horse Thief Cave”. A name like that’s gotta have a good old story behind it.
OzarkHillbilly
On a blue highways trip to see my Minnesota sis, we stopped at Maquoketa Caves State Park because, duh, caver. Absolutely beautiful park in absolutely beautiful country. I love finding and seeing state parks.
MazeDancer
What lovely photos!
SiubhanDuinne
“Is this heaven?”
”No, it’s Iowa.”
Dorothy A. Winsor
Nice pics, Stinger
West of the Cascades
Thank you! These are so beautiful.
WaterGirl
wow. These are so lovely. thank you.
cope
Thank you for showing us that we don’t need to go to far-off exotic lands to find beautiful places.
The cliffs and dangling climbing ropes reminded me of my days as a fledgling rock climber, learning the basics of the sport in Illinois. Climbing at the Mississippi Palisades State Park right on the river, we would occasionally run into groups of climbers who were members of The Iowa Mountaineers.
An unlikely organization that is, sadly, no longer in existence, it was once the 4th largest climbing club in the country. To quote from a description of a documentary about them: “Club members would go on to found Climbing Magazine, start the National Outdoor Leadership School (NOLS), and participate in the first successful American expedition on Mount Everest.”
Thanks again for the uplifting pictures.
Wag
Great photos. I especially like the foreground mist in the final photo.
susanna
Iowa has gems to be explored in its relatively flat land, as these pictures show. Comforting, enlightening (esp the last one!), lovely. Thanks for these from my parents’ home state.
JanieM
Beautiful. Love the last one especially much. Well, both sunsets, actually.
After all the grand and spectactular places OTR takes us to, it’s nice to get a taste of our quieter, more local pleasures, too.
Redshift
Very pretty! We went for a walk in our nearby county park yesterday evening. It was quiet enough that at one point a large flock of birds flew over about twenty feet up, and you could hear their wings rustling!
TheOtherHank
Derecho Detritus is the name of my next band
SkyBluePink
Wonderful pictures!
Miss Bianca
Eastern Iowa is so beautiful. Back when I was still living in Chicago and married to my ex, we took a long weekend down to his boss’s house in Fort Madison. A beautiful red-brick Victorian high up on the bluffs over the Mississippi. I’ve never forgotten it, and we explored some of the state parkland with our beloved, long-gone Siberian Husky, Sovay. It was then that I knew that we had to get out of the city. I would not have minded going down to that area, to be honest, but somehow we ended up in rural CO instead, where I remain. Thanks for the pics!
mvr
Nice! Thank you for the pictures. I enjoy traveling to the Driftless region in the Northeast of Iowa to go (catch and release) flyfishing for trout. There’s been a ton of good work to restore fish habitat up there with lots of public access. And some of the streams are gorgeous.
stinger
@LeftCoastYankee: “Story” is right — I’ve never seen any actual names or dates associated with the horse thief legend, but it coulda happened!
@SiubhanDuinne: I love driving around just looking at fields of corn (and soybeans) too! It’s all pretty heavenly to me!
@cope: When I was a child, my parents had friends who were Iowa Mountaineers. The sport has frankly never appealed to me, but looking at slides and now digital photos of what they see when they climb is great.
@WaterGirl: Thank you for the pleasant surprise during a week when I can hardly bear to read even BJ.
And thanks, all, for the kind words!
The Fat Kate Middleton
Long time resident of Eastern Iowa here. We’ve visited and camped at many of these parks – Wapsipinicon has served as the site of numerous family reunions, birthday parties, wedding receptions, etc. Absolutely beautiful place, as is Maquoketa Caves – during the summer, our 11-year-old granddaughter demands to go there regularly. Husband and I have enjoyed the Sutliff Bridge view more times than I can count. There’s a funky little bar and grill just across the road from the pedestrian bridge there, and the owners have placed picnic tables all up and down the length of the bridge.
WaterGirl
@stinger: Yeah, I realized late last night that I was so distracted by the election that I forgot to post the schedules for OTR and OTR After Dark for this week.
I always like folks to know in advance when their pics are going up. Apologies to everyone for that
Tonight After Dark, it’s JanieM. Friday night After Dark is BillinGlendaleCA.
Friday morning is Cleek!
Sandia Blanca
When I was a teen (back in the ’60s), we were early adopters of the home computer. My Dad bought a PET computer, which allowed us three budding nerds to load up text-only games from a tape. My baby brother spent many happy hours playing the “Iowa Parks Quiz.” It’s so fun to see what some of those parks look like–they are lovely, and I thank you for sharing them.
Dan B
@stinger: Hi from a fan of Iowa greenness. I thought Wisconsin is a lovely green state but Iowa was amazing – nearly Ireland green. When I moved to Seattle from Ohio, with an excursion through Chicago, people would say, “Ohio, that’s where they grow corn.” I’d say, “No, that’s Iowa. Ohio grows factories.” I don’t own if that’s true anymore but the township system put a factory town every six miles. There was corn as well.
Tehanu
Lovely. I had no idea there were so many scenic places in Iowa. Thanks.