Month: April 2025

Bob and I have been having a great visit with my mom in my home town of Janesville, Wisconsin. As we have in the past, we are staying at the TownPlace Suites Hotel by Marriott. For unknown reasons, we’re in a handicapped suite with a kitchen/living area separate from the large bathroom and bedroom. The hotel has some state and local information posted in the lobby.

We took my mom out for dinner last night as a combination late Easter/early Mother’s Day dinner, and today we drove to the small town of Brodhead for some amazing grilled cheese sandwiches at an award winning dairy. The weather was nice enough to sit outside and enjoy the rural views.

From the dairy we drove about 15 minutes to my uncle’s house in Albany, another small town, and had a good visit with my aunt, who has just moved back to Wisconsin from California, her daughter, and my aunt and uncle who live in Albany.

Tomorrow we’ll park our car at the regional bus station and take the bus to Chicago, where we’ll stay at another Marriott hotel before flying to Florida on Friday for Bob’s nephew’s wedding on Sunday.

Bob and I are spending the night in Davenport, Iowa, after leaving Des Moines about midday after a follow-up exam for Bob’s eye surgery. The appointment went okay, and he’ll have another exam in July, when he’ll also be able to get a new prescription for glasses.

We then drove about 2.5 hours to Davenport, Iowa, one of four cities that are known collectively as the Quad cities — Davenport, Iowa, Bettendorf, Iowa, Rock Island, Illinois, and Moline, Illinois. The Iowa and Illinois cities are divided by the Mississippi River in the only part of the River where it flows east to west. The region has a population of about 500,000.

We are staying in The Current Hotel, which is a Marriott brand hotel and got upgraded to a suite with separate living and sleeping areas. It is located close to the riverfront with a great walking/running/biking path.

It also has some fun art.

We had time to do a little walkabout of downtown Davenport. The downtown area gives the appearance of a city struggling to find its footing or maybe in transition. There is some residential housing along with businesses and evidence of construction/improvements to the riverfront, but the area itself seems worn with a number of homeless individuals. Everyone we’ve spoken to has been really friendly and helpful. We hope good things for in store for the area.

After our walkabout, we used our $10 food and drink voucher to get a drink in the Skybar in the hotel and check out the views.

Bob and I were thrilled to have our first Easter Sunday with family in years. Bob’s sister Cheryl and her husband had us over for lunch, where we enjoyed great company and a delicious meal. Bob insisted on making a dish, so we could contribute a bit. It was a great afternoon!

We left our housesit on Thursday after a few more days with the sweet Ollie and Baxter.

Since we left our last housesit, we have had our housesit in Scotland cancelled due to visa issues with the homeowners. We have applied for some replacement sits in the UK for similar dates and hope to have a new sit confirmed tomorrow in England.

Tomorrow we also have Bob’s final follow-up appointment for his eye surgery and then head towards Wisconsin, where we’ll see my mom and leave our car for two months while we’re in Florida for a wedding and then Europe and the UK. The year is moving fast!

No medical updates today. It was a pretty Saturday before what promises to be a rainy Easter Sunday, so we had to head outside. While the dogs get out during the day into the backyard, we’ve been taking them on walks as well around the neighborhood. Ollie isn’t that thrilled about the walks, but Baxter loves them.

After we took the dogs out, Bob and I headed down the busy 128th Street to hit the Clive Greenbelt Trail, which runs along an old railroad line. Our initial walking plan was thwarted by a trail closure; so we switched directions and got some lovely views of the nearby Country Club neighborhood and Clive Lake (for use by Country Club residents only)

It’s been a busy couple of days here with a medical procedure for Bob, a follow-up appointment, and another dog to care for for a few days.

Yesterday morning, Bob had outpatient vitreoretinal surgery in his left eye that is supposed to remove scar tissue from prior procedures and hopefully improve some issues he’s had with vision in that eye. He came out looking a bit pirate-ish.

Today we had a follow-up appointment where they seemed to indicate that all went well. The recovery process includes 4x daily of two eyedrops and no sleeping on his back for the next week or so.

Also today we took temporary possession of Baxter, the dog of our homeowner’s son, who is joining the family in Phoenix for his sister’s wedding. Baxter is cutie, and he and Ollie cohabitate well except during feeding time, when we need to keep them separated.

Bob and I had a short 15ish minute commute yesterday afternoon to our current sit from the town of Grimes south to the town of Clive, both suburbs of Des Moines. Grimes has a population of about 15,000 while Clive has a population of about 18,600. Clive is known for its Greenbelt Park and Trail system, which we hope to check out while we’re here.

We spent a bit of time at the Clive Public Library before heading to the house at 7:00 pm for our transition with the homeowner.

We had a great transition without homeowner, who left about midday today for her daughter’s wedding in Phoenix. Bob drove her and her traveling companion to the airport for their flights. We get to spend the next 10 days with the very sweet Ollie.

He’s an Australian Shepherd, who really likes food, so we need to be careful about not leaving anything out. Other than that, he likes keeping an eye on the neighbors through the glass front door, playing in the fenced yard,or chilling by one of us.

The city of Clive is only 7.73 square miles, and our home lies very close to its border with the city of West Des Moines as we discovered on our walk to the grocery store today.

This past weekend in Iowa finally felt like spring, so on Saturday Bob and I met up with Bob’s sister and brother-in-law and our nephew and his wife to take in a baseball game between the University of Iowa Hawkeyes and the University of Nebraska Cornhuskers. It was the second of a 3 game weekend series, with Iowa coming out on top on Friday, 1-0.

Bob and I had about a 45-50 minute walk to the stadium. The game started with the ceremonial first pitch being thrown by Ben McCollum, the newly hired head coach for the Iowa basketball team and an alumnus of the very small St Mary’s Catholic School in Storm Lake, Iowa, from which Bob and his siblings graduated. The game was packed, and Iowa was once again victorious, 11-6.

Late morning on Sunday, Bob and I left the adorable Sam and Maddy to head to Grimes (Des Moines suburb) to spend 2 nights with Cheryl and Jody, Bob’s sister and brother-in-law, before heading to our final central Iowa sit for the spring. We have been notified that I will not have jury duty after all, but Bob has 2 more medical procedures before we head out.

After arriving in Grimes and watching some of The Masters coverage, Cheryl and Jody took us to the small Dosaage Winery very close to their house. It was a love country setting with a great outdoor seating area and with some yummy still and bubbly wines.

When we got back to the house, we watched the dramatic end to the Masters, with Rory McIroy trying very hard at the end not to win, but then winning in a 1 hole playoff with Justin Rose to capture a career Grand Slam.

Our walk today took us from a dog park in Iowa City at one end of The Peninsula neighborhood to a residential/shopping district in Coralville, Iowa River Landing. Both of these areas are places that we might consider living in if we end up settling in Iowa City.

Before I get to our outing today, a couple of cat photos.

For today’s walk, we headed to a new (to us) small park, Waterworks Prairie Park. This park was a short 8 minute drive from the house. It has a 3 mile paved trail in a quiet setting (even though relatively close to the interstate) with native grasses and ponds. It is also near the Iowa River and connects to other Iowa City hike/bike trails.

Happily, as with our walk yesterday, we saw other people out enjoying the trail.

After our walk at the park, we drove back to the house and then walked to a local co-op about 15 minutes from the house to pick up supper.

Bob and I are continuing a recent theme of returning to prior housesits. This Iowa City one was unexpected, but we jumped on the opportunity to return to care for Sam and Maddy when we saw the posting in Trusted Housesitters a few weeks ago. Their people are in Tennessee on a birthday trip.

We arrived about noon last Sunday and will depart about the same time this Sunday. Happily for us, our nephew and his wife are in Iowa City for a while, so we caught up with them Sunday afternoon at The Airliner, a local institution known for its pizza.

Even though we’re still longing for more spring-like temps, we are hoping to get some walking in while we’re in Iowa City. Today, we drove about 15 minutes west to the neighboring town of Coralville to walk on the Clear Creek Trail starting at the Tom Harkin Trailhead. Tom Harkin served as a Democratic US Senator from Iowa from 1985 to 2015.

From the trailhead we walked for about 30 minutes to the one end of the 4.3 mile trail near West High School. We then walked back to the trailhead and walked about 30 minutes in the other direction.