Author: bbpeck

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.

Bob and I had a great meet-up and hand-off with Kris, who will be housitting for the remainder of our homeowners’ trip. They chose to split the sit since they weren’t sure if anyone could or would want to do the whole thing. Kris is another experienced house sitter (30+ sits, sometimes with her daughter), who is also a former work colleague of one of the homeowners.

We will definitely miss the super sweet Bijou and Nala but may be coming back in December for a month long sit.

Other photos from our final days in Pella.

A few pics of the tulips in bloom.

And a mystery solved. A design feature that we (Bob first) noticed on many of the buildings downtown (see top level of Jaarsma Bakery and store 2 to the left) is a representation of Danish windows.

After our transfer with Kris, we drove 1.5 hours to Iowa City, home of the University of Iowa to do a repeat housesit for two cats for a week before heading back to Des Moines for more medical procedures for Bob and potentially jury duty for Beth along with one more housesit.

During our walk through with our homeowners they mentioned that we might enjoy a visit to Lake Red Rock, which is close to Pella. We got some additional information about it from a travel brochure that we had picked up downtown. Since no rain was in the forecast for today and it was to be less blustery than it has been, we decided to go check it out.

We started at the park’s Visitor Center, which was about a 15 minute drive from the house. There we learned that Red Rock is actually the largest lake in Iowa. It is 11 miles long and has a water surface of 15,250 acres. The lake and the Red Rock Dam were created by the US Army Corps of Engineers in 1969 to reduce the risk of flooding along the Des Moines River. The dam is also used to provide hydroelectric power.

From the Visitors Center, we drove about 18 minutes to Cordova Park to climb the observation tower there and then walk some of the Volksweg Trail.

The Cordova Observation Tower was constructed as a water tower in 1972 as part of the park’s water system. The water tower was 15’ in diameter and 100’ tall. It could hold 130,000 gallons of water. In 1984, the park was able to utilize rural water, so the tower was no longer needed. It was converted into an observation tower in 1998 with the addition of stairs, the observation deck, and a red light on top to help with navigation for boaters. It is the tallest in the Midwest and is recognized as having the tallest and longest continuous fiberglass staircase in the world.

The following are pics from our out and back walk on the Volksweg Trail.

Happy April Fools’ Day! No pranks within this blog however.

On Sunday afternoon, Bob and I drove about 12 minutes due east of us to the local winery in the area, Tassel Ridge. We got there about 3:30 to find that their electricity had gone out. They apologized and said that if we did a tasting, they would have to substitute cheese and crackers for the usual warmed bread with dipping. Since we rarely are offered any food with a paid tasting, that still sounded good to us. There were a couple of tables being served, and we found a table on their patio where there was plenty of natural light and a nice view.

I will not remember this visit for the quality of the wine. Most was okay, but something I would have been disappointed with in a restaurant, but I will remember the staff’s friendliness, professionalism (they had old time credit card carbon-paper receipts ready to go since they couldn’t use their computers), and their generous portions of food and drink, as you’ll see below. They even brought us the bread and oil for free in addition to the cheese and crackers after the electricity came back on.

Today, after a breakfast at a downtown cafe that our homeowners left us a gift card for, and after walking a few blocks in the very cool temps (feels like temp in the high 20s F) to exchange a book at a Free Little Library, we headed to Frisian Farms Cheese House for some locally made, Dutch inspired cheese. Note: the cheese we were served at the winery was a Frisian Farms Gouda.

The farm is located between where we are staying and the winery. It is run by two local men, who eventually both returned to Iowa to pursue the dairy business after realizing they missed the cows their dad sold when his land was annexed by the city. They decided to make Gouda cheese as a nod to their own and the community’s Dutch heritage.

A nice young man talked us through the cheese making process and encouraged us to sample their varieties of Gouda. Not wanting to be rude, we did try a few and bought their flavored herb variety to take with us.

Today we stopped into a museum that we regularly drive by when going between downtown Pella and the house we are watching. It is associated with and on the campus of the Vermeer Corporation. This international manufacturer of agricultural and industrial equipment is headquartered in Pella on a campus known as The Mile. It borders a one mile stretch of road, now named Vermeer Road, starting with Plant 1 and ending at the property where fonder, Gary Vermeer lived and raised his family. The museum is located in the Global Pavilion at the one end of the campus.

The museum was free to visit and even has a gift shop, if you’re so inclined. It provided an informative overview of the corporation’s history, charitable efforts, agricultural and industrial equipment lines, and even a few ideas that never really caught on.

There was a whole exhibit on the effects of a tornado that hit the plant on July 19, 2018. 400 guests from around the world and nearly 3,000 team members were on site celebrating Vermeer’s 70th anniversary. Towards the end of the day, the campus sustained a hit from an EF3 tornado,, with wind speeds reaching 144 mph. While no major physical injuries or loss of life occurred, there was quite a bit of destruction to the campus as shown on the photos below.

As non-farmers, there was a lot of information that was helpful for us in learning about the many processes that the Vermeer equipment was designed to help facilitate/improve.

Additional exhibitions detailed their expansion into the design and manufacturing of industrial equipment, including for landscaping/clearing land and the laying of pipelines or utilities.

My favorite section might have been the 10 innovations that didn’t make it, just ‘cause that seemed like something most companies might not share.

All in all, it was a pretty interesting museum. We would recommend to others. The price is right, the exhibits are helpful without being overwhelming, and if you are really impressed, the gift shop sells some quality items.

One of the main sights on the main square in Pella is the Vermeer Windmill. It was designed in the Netherlands and disassembled and shipped to Pella for reassembly in 2002. It’s replica of an 1850s city mill that would be built high on a hill to catch the wind. At 12 stories high and 124’ from ground to blade tip, it’s the tallest working mill in the US.

Bob and I decided not to spend the $40 that it would have cost for both of us to tour the windmill, but we did check out the very cute gift shop. Instead, we decided to walk around Central College near downtown. Central College is a private college that is associated with the Reformed Church in America. It was established in 1853 and has been accredited since 1942. It has an enrollment of just over 1,000 students.

After our walk around campus, we checked out a cute local market down the street.