This was an overlook near the interstate and just gave a nice view of South Dakota.
Journal
Late Summer 2016 Road Trip - Day 2 - Corn Palace, Mitchell, South Dakota
Clearly a touristy area, however they have straight up atrocious lighting on the inside. The design and textures are pretty cool.
Late Summer 2016 Road Trip - Day 2 - St Peter's Grotto, Farmer, South Dakota
Again to the attraction to churches and perhaps the depth of loss that people can feel. It was quite windy that day.
Late Summer 2016 Road Trip - Day 1 - Great Plains Zoo (Sioux Falls, South Dakota)
There is a problem with this zoo. It is clearly updating to be a new zoo, but many of the exhibits and habitats are in the old style, where it's more about making sure that the animals are there for viewing, rather then actually having some what of a semblance of a decent life for the animals.
Large parts of the zoo felt wrong, very very wrong.
Late Summer 2016 Road Trip - Day 1 - Grotto of the Redemption (West Bend, Iowa)
I do have a fascination with religious buildings and often times am drawn to them. The amount of effort involved in making them and etc. That being said, the crappy buildings that most people are putting up these days (religion, on the cheap!). That being said, there is a clear indication that guy was a bit obsessed. I'm not a huge fan of the iconography and the statutes used are kind of terrible, but the structure itself is oddly alluring. There was a conversation about one of the angels being perhaps similar to Moroni, but on looking a bit closer, icon Moroni tends to be portrayed as more clearly masculine, while these angels were feminine or gender neutral.
Visiting La Quercia
Yesterday I got a chance to go tour the La Quercia ham processing plant. Because of timing, Shannon wasn't able to join me (over lapped with her work schedule), but I wasn't going to pass up this opportunity. I joined a group of people from the Cheese Shop of Des Moines. So we learned a few things about the process, heard a few stories, but I'll just highlight a few things that I found interesting.
It takes about 7 times as long to trim hams after they are finished, then it does to trim the legs before they start curing.
A few rooms have specially designed temperature control units. In the "salting rooms" (not pictured), have cool air that comes down from a passive cooling unit (no fans) then heat that comes up form closer to the floor, and is piped up to meet in the middle, which creates circulation and a consistent floor to ceiling temperature (again important for the consistency of the hams).
They try to keep the aging rooms consistent with the general seasons of the year. This is how the hams of old were cured.
They initially planned on 3 expansions in this location and are starting their 4th (or just finished their 4th).
The location is in a U shape, so you can start in shipping, go to the start and go through the seasons, then end back in shipping from the final processing room (good work design flow).
They don't have backup generators. The areas have plenty of mass in them to help maintain the temperature, and apparently generators are not common in the industry. While I can see the point, and generators a expensive as hell to maintain (I remember the announced visits of the generator techs (quarterly, I think) and the diesel fuel deliveries, etc, for computer backups at my office). I get it, but there's an amount of risk there.
After the tour, we headed back to the break room and had some Arugula, Chicory, Balsamic and tomato salad, Butter and Prosciutto sandwiches, and some beautiful La Quercia meat.
The general smells were milder than I thought they would be, but still delightful at all points of aging. They certainly made a rumble in my stomach. Probably didn't hurt that I really didn't have much to eat that morning.
I would like to go back sometime to see the work in process (leg and ham trimming, general movement, meat slicer in use, etc). Though most of the developed goodness is due to time. I'm also curious about the mechanics of it. Similar to the visit to the Story City Locker, where we saw them cutting up the meat, making some sausage, etc.
I really enjoyed myself, and this probably just for food or science nerds, and not really for someone that isn't that interested in where their food comes from.
A little family reunion
So on Thursday my sister Lovina and her family Flew into Des Moines and we ate a late lunch at Hoq (minus Shannon who had to go back to work) where my brother is working these days. It was nice to chat about the things in our lives.
Friday Morning Shannon and I headed up to our Hotel in Cresco, Iowa, via a meandering, avoiding highway route through the middle of the state. Our first stop was in Grundy Center. We started to play the "Find Premium Gas" game, and ended up filling up at Family Foods, because nobody else in town had Premium. Then stopped across the street at Park Place for lunch. The food was ok, their secret sauce was basically thousand island with dill. The peach pie was pretty good. Good Crust, and since they were canned peaches (which made me sad), I also thorized, and am probably right, that the secret to their peach iced tea is the peach syrup that comes in the can. That's pretty much what it tastes like.
Then we moved on. Driving down roads, through small towns, and generally enjoying the ride.
We saw a sign for a historical marker, and then quickly turned on to the side road to see the marker. We passed a small cemetery, but saw no indication of a historical marker after that, and after a mild detour, we ended up at The Little Brown Church in the Vale.
Near Nashua, it is a little brown church (clearly an accurate name). It has models of the church (Littlest, little little, and then the actual church which is just little). It was a nice place and certainly a good stop to take pictures. A bit more driving and we were in Cresco and checked in.
We went on to the campground where the rest of my family was staying and proceeded to spend time with the family.
The drive back to the hotel, we went the wrong way, ended up what really seemed like some creepy roads, lost phone signal (no more maps) and stumbled our way back to Cresco on this creepy path not knowing if the road was going to end beyond our headlights and because of the hills, sometimes you just couldn't see anything further. Eventually data returned to my phone and we got back along gravel roads.
The next morning we went to go get me some decent coffee (the coffee at our hotel was undrinkable). I was missing my DTFM, and we stumbled upon the Winneshiek Farmers Market and bought some fresh parsley for the meal I had planned for that evening. We then took a seat at Java John's and I had an ok latte. Then we waited for the rest of our family to show up to tour the Vesterheim (their website needs some help). Then some lunch at Mabe's (website also needs help) and the Whippy Dip (suggestions of Josh and Lindsay).
This is where Shannon and I parted ways with my family. I was on call and needed to be relatively close to a way to deal with a work issue if they arose. So instead we decided to go to see the Chapel of St Anthony of Padua near Festina, Iowa.
This is a tiny little church that a mother built for her son on his return from the Russian Campaign of Napoleon. It has a tiny cemetery and a little park right right by it, which is also right next to a river. We were joined by a couple riding on a pair of ATVs who hung out at the park.
Nice stained glass, a small altar and 2 rows of benches. It seems like it'll seat 8 or so. Then we decided that our time was growing short and we'd need to meet up with the family so we headed back to Decorah, stopped by Toppling Goliath's tasting room and I sampled a few varieties and settled on PsuedoSue Pale Ale and picked up a growler and a chalice to drink it out of.
We headed back to our hotel, dropped off a few things for the day, and headed back to the campground where we (well me) were responsible for dinner. I recruited people to help me assemble hobo packs. Of course these were hobo packs as I would make them, so they were:
- A health dot of oil
- Crooked Gap Green Onion Sausage or Graziano Sausage
- Sliced Potatoes
- Fresh Parsley from the Farmer's Market
- Some Salt, Pepper (or smoked black pepper) and oregano
I sent Issac off to prepare the corn on the cob using the Parmigiano Reggiano and Smoked Black Pepper butter. Cara prepared a salad (which I never got to taste, cause by the time I was done cooking it was gone). Emily and Brent help prepare the fires for cooking and we monitored the doneness as we did so.
They turned out pretty good. I was generally happy with the results.
More chatting with the siblings relatively late into the night, we head back. This night, we had another experience, we went the right way but saw a family of racoons (mom and 4 or 5 young), a kitten, a possum and what appeared to be a bobcat (or other small wild cat, but clearly not a domestic cat) lounging in the road.
I did something to make me feel better. I drank some of the PsuedoSue, listened to podcasts and updated my spreadsheet of money, while Shannon went to bed. After a bit I ended up in bed sleeping.
Sunday morning, the majority of my family headed off to Church and we met up with Joseph, Lovina, and her husband Eric at Magpie's Coffeehouse for breakfast. We were first again, but I got to enjoy my first latte, which was made from Kickapoo Coffee. This made me so happy and I was able to create a connection to home and routine by the mere process of drinking this helped relax me. A bit later they showed up (we thought it would be Lovina, Eric and their kids, but were surprised by the addition of Joseph and subtraction of the kids). We chatted, ate and had a good morning. We figured out where to get potatoes for mashing for Joseph's lunch (brisket). Lovina, Shannon and I headed down to see the Bily Clocks.
We got there a bit early and drove around to find the spillway or the mill, which apparently had been recently knocked down because it was no longer safe to be up (thanks for the info nice lady on her walk). So we headed over to St Wenceslaus Church (oldest Czech Catholic in the US) and wandered around, headed inside, saw the old pipe organ that Antonin Dvorak played the time he spent there. We wandered around the old cemetery, where we found many metal crosses (which we later found were done because there was someone there that worked in that method). Then when the museum opened up we headed over and went in to tour around.
We listened to their walkthrough on the clocks, which I've gotta say are pretty amazing. Lovina had quite the look of fascination on her face looking at them. I really wish we could've taken photographs.
We then ran back to share lunch (with a quick stop again at Toppling Goliath to pick up chalices for Josh and Nathan) and then back to the campground.
We took, yet another way there, and drove by the Laura Ingalls Wilders Museum and headed into the road where we were stunned by a road closed sign. We decided to risk it, and headed towards the path where we should go, eventually running into what closed the road. A bridge...being rebuilt, not exactly the easiest thing to get around. So we turned around, and drove down a gravel road. After a bit of a detour, seeing a bald eagle getting attacked by a little bird (while it was chasing other birds in that flock), almost going off the road because I was watching the eagle, we ended up back on the other side of the bridge and cruising back to the campground.
We had a good lunch (Brisket over Mashed Potatoes) and took some pictures, then after a bit of chatting we headed home.
This started the "Find Premium Gas" game again, We stopped by Klunders (decent pie) and then basically chose our route based on where we could fill up my car. We ended up in Waverly, and then took Highway 20 over to I35 and home.
The road home was long and boring, I really enjoyed the drive on the small highways, this way, my speed kept creeping up.
Exploring Des Moines
So we were given a project by our niece to take a bunch of pictures around Des Moines, sometimes the shots were to good to just have ones with a little paper girl in them. The first set from the Franklin Avenue Library and on or around the capital grounds. The Second is from the Des Moines Botanical Center, and the third is from the Blank Park Zoo. Pictures taken over the last two weekends.
Week 51 Cooking Results
Ham and Split Pea Soup (p58 The New Best Recipe: All-New Edition)
This was quite good...but I made lots...and still have lots. I used the ham bone from the honey glazed ham.
Honey-Glazed Pork Chops with Sweet and Tangy Slaw (RC Cook's Country December/January 2010)
This turned out well. The pork chops were great and the slaw was pretty good with it. Considering neither of us like slaw too much, and we liked this, I guess that means something.
As a point here. I was just thinking about it and when we had the glazed pork chops we had pork quite often in the past week...and the pork was almost exclusively from Eden Farms (I did have to subsidize the pea soup with other ham, cause I didn't have enough meat left).
Good stuffs.
We did a whole lot of travelling this past week. The first trip to Cedar Rapids, we left early, Spent the 23rd time with my family, spent Christmas Eve morning with the Matta's, and the rest of Christmas Eve day and eve with Shannon's family. Christmas morning we spent a good chunk of it with the Matta's (the two girls were so excited) and then spend a good chunk of the rest of the day with my family (Cara and her family, Lovina and her family, Jed, Joseph, Isaac, parents and us).
We kept an eye on the Iowa road conditions map and decided to risk it, even though a good portion of central and western Iowa were "Travel not advised", we decided to head back home. Shannon had to work Saturday and all that. The trip back was normal for the most part until around Altoona, where roads went from fine to "I think I'm gonna slide off the road" in the space of a few moments. At one point we were going 30 or so on I-80.
First trip: ~297 miles and 6 hours 27 minutes of driving (google estimate + 1 hour for some awful driving)
Saturday afternoon we headed up to Ames for a meet up that normally happens around Thanksgiving to see Shannon's Uncle, cousins and her sister and parents. We ended up at Black Market Pizza. The food was quite good. I really liked that place. We had: The Reuben, Bacon Double Cheeseburger, Barbecued Iowa Chop, Mr. Meaty, and The Iowegian. All were pretty good, but the reuben was quite fantastic. We were late and left in a hurry, which I felt bad about. I'm thinking we should visit uncle Jan more often.
Then we headed back over to the Matta's to have a little get together with some old friends (Dave, Mark, Cam, Rich, Lena, Jenny, Nathan Shannon and I). We stayed up late chatted, shared some stories, remembered old times... It was a good time. We had a lazy morning at the Matta's and headed back home.
Second Trip: ~300 Miles, 6 hours 4 minutes of driving
So a grand total of nearly 600 miles and over 12 hours of driving...
Quite worth it though.
Frank Lloyd Wright Weekend (Taliesin, Wisconsin)
Our trip from Dubuque, Iowa to Spring Green, Wisconsin was fairly uneventful. We first went to our hotel..er lodge that we were staying at The Round Barn Lodge first, though on thew as we saw the Spring Green Fire Department / EMS building, which just struck me as very pretty.
Up close you can kind of tell that it's not super special construction or anything, but it still looks very good, and fitting for the area, I suppose.
The Round Barn Lodge was chosen because we were on the off peak rates, which are quite a bit less expensive then the regular rates. It was clean, the staff was helpful and quiet. Though we did have a bit of a problem in Dave and JoAnne's room with one of their neighbors being a bit loud, though they did quiet down, not too late. Apparently during the night, there was a firetruck that came near by our hotel...That's what Dave and JoAnne said, I never woke up...so I had no clue.
For dinner that night, we headed over to The Bank Restaurant and Wine Bar. As the name suggests, it is a converted bank. We sat in the vault room, so we had a little bit of privacy (I think perhaps it was the Brother Ali t-shirt I was wearing that got us separated from the other guests). I have to say that dinner was pretty good. Certainly a surprising experience in a small town. Though I don't think it was really worth what was paid. Maybe 10-15% less would've been more fair. I had a glass of Boom Boom Syrah (which is one of my favorite wine grapes) from Washington, which was really quite good (I have since bought a bottle). I guess my biggest complaint had to do with my dessert.
First, all three of the cupcakes were surprisingly dense. I don't know if this was on purpose, or not, but I guess I'm used to light and fluffy in my cupcakes. My biggest problem was with the rightmost cupcake, which was gingerbread with crystallized ginger on top. The problem I had is ginngerbread does not have the same flavor as the crystallized ginger, so the crystallized ginger just dominated over the pretty good taste of the gingerbread. So if there was a lot less and a lot smaller pieces or no crystallized ginger at all, it would've been better.
For breakfast, we headed over to the Spring Green General Store Cafe, which was quite good and inexpensive (Shannon and I ate for under $20, if I remember right). A good hearty breakfast before a day of hiking.
We stopped by the fire department (see above) on our way out of town to take a few pictures. We headed over to the Taliesin Visitor Center. This building used to be a restaurant, and is (partially) again. But it is very nice and has a great view of the Wisconsin River (I think that's what the river is), across the road.
I love the geometric shapes that are inspired by Wright. My brain just loves them...I can't really explain it. I believe that's me in the background there...
We wandered around the store for a bit... If we had the money, we could have spent a whole lot (there were these chairs, about $1k each, and a table, near $6k and a ton of other things). So when the time came, we gathered up and headed out on the ~4 hour estate tour.
We got on the mini-bus and started off at the Unity Chapel (the private chapel of the family of the Lloyd-Jones, including Wright). We saw the grave marker of Frank Lloyd Wright (he's not actually buried there).
There were other markers there of the family since the building was dedicated in 1886. Apparently it is tradition in the family to get married and etc in the building. We then headed to the Hillside Home School.
Apparently people still live and learn here in the school. We actually heard a few. I was really quite sad that we couldn't take pictures inside the building. There were great shots that I could have gotten, were I able to...but I can understand why, to some extent. The building was certainly showing it's age, or the inability to maintain and upkeep it at the level that it probably should be. There were certainly areas where I was shocked as to how much age was showing. Kind of detracts from the whole mystical ideal that I believe is tried to be put forward with Wright.
We went through various areas of the building, the drawing studio, around the building, the theater and then headed up to the Romeo and Juliet Windmill.
The windmill has been rebuilt and restored, and the area provides a great view of the surrounding area. The concept is that the taller building, Romeo, protects and breaks the wind for the shorter building, Juliet, who supports Romeo. Certainly a nice story.
We passed several other buildings on the estate, which had been used for other things, but are now occupied by the Fellowship members, including Tan-Y-Deri. We also passed the more then appropriately named Midway Farms building. as we headed on towards the home and personal studio of Frank Lloyd Wright, Taliesin.
We met Sherpa, the cat, and headed up to the terrace to have tea, coffee, water, and a rest before we continued on. The terrace had a wonderful view, which just seems natural of the area...
Even Sherpa enjoyed the view.
After the break, and my fat ass needed a bit of one, we headed in and saw courtyards, indoors, and several buildings. The inside itself, in certain areas, I found pretty frustrating (again with me being taller then the "human scale"). When I look back through the pictures that we took (they got less, because the camera that Shannon was using was running out of battery power (didn't bring the spare battery), I noticed that many different views of the building could be homes in and of themselves.
To me, the use of space, indoors, often seemed to be highly experimental, which I also got the impression that things would often get remodeled based on who was coming or etc. So something that weren't so annoying at say, Cedar Rock, were more troubling at Taliesin. The designs were still good, and provided great views, and again, I would've loved to be able to take pictures.
So in this last picture here, we have a shot through the grate, where you can see the burned out timbers of Taliesin II and III (the original burned all the way down, I believe).
While I can understand the emotional reason for rebuilding, to me, I often find myself complaining that I am not given the time to do things right the first time... I suppose if he had planned a bit, that end of the building wouldn't be having the problems that it is (it's basically built on the ashes of Taliesin II). That really kind of bugged me. Then again, it was his own house, and I suppose he can do what he wants with it.
After our tour ended, we bought some things at the store. We got some coasters, a Christmas ornament (continuing the tradition of getting at least one ornament a year), magnet and a few other things (maybe a Christmas present or two?). Then headed over to Mineral Point and had lunch at Brewery Creek Inn. I had a pint (I wasn't driving), and it was pretty good. The food was pretty good, though they did mess up Dave's order.
We did do a little, not much, searching for some Wisconsin cheese, and Dave bought some cheese curds, and then headed home. At one point, I think everyone but Dave was napping in the car.
It was a good weekend trip, and even though I'm a bit disenchanted with some of the stuff surrounding Frank Lloyd Wright, I think we'll be taking more trips to see stuff. Perhaps to Mason City (day trip), Chicago, and maybe more, depending on how things go. I also appreciated having Dave and JoAnne on the trip, because they've traveled to way north east Iowa more then we have, so they knew of good views to stop and see.
I also liked that other then the trip home, we basically took our time, had many stops, didn't have everything planned out (a nice combo of planned and seat of our pants).
I would suggest visiting Cedar Rock...and soon, because apparently the Trust for the house and grounds, which is not funded by the state, will run out in ~2 years. And after the trust runs out, it is unknown as to what will happen.