Around the state in 8 days: Day 3
Decorah to Spirit Lake on the roof of the Hawkeye State
Part of an intermittent series.
One treat in northeast Iowa for the afternoon of Day 2 and the start of Day 3 of this 2015 trip was on the radio. KVIK in Decorah had an extremely varied music set. There was an ad for UffDa Fest in Spring Grove, Minnesota. How can you not want to go to an UffDa Fest?
I started the day with a visit to the Decorah library, where I met the historian. She talked about the city applying for historic district status for downtown. Interpretive panels were being put up. The district would be named to the National Register of Historic Places in 2017. This trip did not include Vesterheim Norwegian-American Museum, but that was because I had visited in 2004.
Across the top of Iowa
Construction prevented my original route plan, so I had to do a little meandering. By the county line and the south end of Iowa Highway 139, I was out of the Driftless Area and into the flatlands.
In Cresco, I stopped to see the Iowa Wrestling Hall of Fame. Among the many wrestlers featured in the hall was someone known for much more than wrestling: Norman Borlaug. Cresco’s favorite son, the Nobel Prize-winning father of the Green Revolution, also has a statue in the park across the street.
The hall of fame doubles as a welcome center, so there’s a display for Cresco’s favorite daughter, Ellen Church. She was a nurse who loved airplanes. Although options for women were limited in her era, she managed to persuade the forerunner of United Airlines to hire her as its first stewardess. We say “flight attendant” today, but the position started out very gendered. To quote from the Goldfinch magazine:
The early planes could not carry much weight, so a stewardess could not weigh more than 115 pounds. The planes had narrow aisles and low ceilings, so the women could be no taller than 5 feet 4 inches. The age limit was 25.
From Cresco I headed north and west to Lime Springs. 2015 was not a good year for the town. In February of that year, it found out it was losing both its school and its newspaper. Four miles west of Lime Springs is Hayden Prairie, which the Iowa DNR says is “the largest remnant prairie in the state outside of the Loess Hills.”
I was now squarely in the flatness of north-central Iowa, but that added a new dimension to the driving. When you have great pavement, as I did for much of this segment, and a clear sky above, you can set the cruise control and just fly.
Toeterville is unincorporated and was featured in a news story in 2011. To its west is also-unincorporated Otranto. Iowa’s “Castle of Otranto” is the abandoned school, which closed in 1966.
At the Top of Iowa Welcome Center, I ate at what I call the “Burger King in the Middle of Nowhere.” The area is home to Worth County’s only stoplight, and it’s not the only place like it in Iowa. In the far southwest corner of the state, where I-29 and Iowa Highway 2 meet, is the “Wendy’s in the Middle of Nowhere.” That’s near a pair of truck stops and the only full stoplight in Fremont County, not counting those on the county line in Shenandoah.
The school in Rake was closed in the 1980s, during a period of turmoil for Iowa’s rural schools. In this area, there were lawsuits, “sham guardianships,” and “alleged educational deficiencies” as the Lakota school district to the east tried to hold on to its students. (News coverage at the time was provided by Kossuth County Advance reporter, and now Writers’ Collaborative member, Art Cullen.) By 2015, only Rake’s gymnasium remained, with posters saying “NO TRESPASSING, THIS BUILDING IS NOT ABANDONED” on various windows. A grant from the Iowa Department of Natural Resources in 2021 enabled the city to demolish it.
When you have great pavement and a clear sky above, you can set the cruise control and fly.
Longtime Minnesota U.S. Sen. Walter Mondale was almost an Iowan. He went to school in Elmore, just across the state line. Current Minnesota state Rep. Bjorn Olson (now that’s a Minnesota name, don’t-cha-know) lives in the house where Mondale grew up. Rural Minnesota, like rural Iowa, has its school difficulties. Elmore’s school (and Walter F. Mondale Auditorium) closed in 1997. Shortly after my visit, the site became an assisted-living facility.
Continuing west and southwest, I hit Dolliver, Gruver, Terril and Fostoria. The last is just off U.S. Highway 71, but its city limits don’t quite touch. Heading north, I traveled old 71, which as late as 1930 was the only rural pavement in Dickinson County. The road from the county line to Milford is one of the few in the state that was paved and bypassed before World War II.
My final stop before the hotel was at Gull Point State Park. I saw a deer walk across the road as I entered. I stopped at a beach and took pictures across West Okoboji Lake.
When I finished the long day there was only one thing to say: Uff da.
Incorporated communities visited: 17, 6 new (McIntire, Rake, Dolliver, Gruver, Terril, Fostoria); 43 total
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I had no clue that the flight attendant profession had such a limiting start. Good gravy! Most folks don't even know what they want to be when they grow up by the time they turn 25 years old. I know because I was one of them. It took 3 career shifts, 2 deployments, and becoming a parent before I figured it out. There's another Uff da for ya!