Like the parts of western Missouri we visited, we quickly discovered that our stereotyped views of Iowa as being nothing but flat cornfields was completely off the mark. Yep, there are cornfields galore, but flat? Uh, no. Perhaps some parts of Iowa, but certainly not Shelby County. You can actually see a representative hill at the upper left of this photo. There were also a lot of hills in the park. If you aren't familiar with Iowa, here's where Shelby County is, in the western part of the state, fairly close to Omaha, Nebraska. Although Prairie Rose State Park has a Harlan address, it's actually located down at the lake you can see in this zoomed-in map, about 11 miles southeast of Harlan. Another thing we learned about Iowa is that in the rural areas, there are very few paved roads. In fact, the roads you see on the map to the right are the only paved ones: the highways in yellow, and the county roads in gray. There are a lot of other roads, but they're all unpaved. Barry had drawn a detailed map showing all the roads in the area from Google maps, but once we got out there on our bikes, we realized we had very few choices since most were unpaved. We'd just cleaned and detailed our Bike Fridays, so we weren't going to ride them on the dusty gravel roads! So our planned ride to Harlan for a couple of groceries ended up being mostly along Highway 44, not exactly our favorite type of riding. The main part of the shoulder was gravel, so we only had a small lip of the road to ride on as there was also a serious rumble strip. Fortunately, drivers were courteous and gave us the whole lane when passing, if they could. We appreciated that! We didn't take any photos along the road, as we were too busy concentrating on holding our lines. The first grocery store we came upon in Harlan was Fareway and even though it was a little small, it turned out to be a real gem, with a good selection, and bag boys wearing white shirts and ties and assisting customers by taking their groceries to their cars. We felt like we'd stepped back into the 1950s! On another day, we rode over to the little Danish-American town of Elk Horn, also shown on the map above. This route was hillier and a little longer than the route to Harlan. We also had a hotter day for it. As a result, I really suffered, but it was very pretty ride, and the town was cute. There's a Danish-American museum and the only working Danish windmill in the US! .The 60-foot windmill was built in 1848 in Denmark and purchased here for the US Bicentennial in 1976. However, it took the people of Elk Horn until early 1977 to fully re-assemble it, so they missed the Bicentennial celebration (Source). It was a beautiful day to view the windmill. On the way back, I took this photo of Barry; you can see some of the hills we tackled. Fortunately, traffic was light, and the area really was beautiful. I love the hex signs on barns. Most in this area had one. Although Iowa was beautiful, we're still looking for flatter roads to ride. Maybe in Minnesota?
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Major holidays present a problem for RVers like us who don't like to make reservations, at least not months in advance, since we don't want our route or timing to be constrained too much. The 4th of July in particular is a major vacation time for US families, so parks that accept reservations can book up months in advance. We knew we'd have to do our research to find a spot where we could stay for the duration and not end up spending the 4th in a Walmart parking lot! Our research turned up Prairie Rose State Park near Harlan, Iowa, which only takes reservations for half the sites. After leaving Weston Bend State Park in Missouri, we made our way into Iowa. A new state to color in on our "states visited in the RV" map! Upon arriving at Prairie Rose a full week before July 4th, we discovered that here a camper could actually "save" the "non-reservable" sites by showing up ahead of time, paying, and putting his or her payment receipt card on the post, whether or not they actually occupied the site. For the 4th, a lot of local folks had done that, planning to arrive for the coming weekend and wanting to ensure themselves a spot. This practice makes it a bit tougher for we out-of-towners to get a site! Fortunately, though all the full hookup sites were taken, we were able to find an electric-only site right across from the lake. We experienced a bit of a rough day as one of our leveling jacks broke (the housing for the motor at the top), so we had to use boards under the driver's side front wheel, as you can see in the photo above, to level the coach. After getting leveled, slides out, and all set up in our site, we needed to fill our water tank. Our luck was getting no better; we discovered that the water spigot right next to our site was broken! I walked up to the camp hosts' site and asked them about it; yep, they were aware it was broken. They generously drove me back to our site with two of their extra water hoses to help us try to reach a farther spigot, but even using their hoses and two of ours, we could not reach the next spigot, so we had to pull in the slides, move Pearl, fill the water tank, and get her all set up again. Whew! Fortunately, once we did get all settled in, this view made the ordeal worth it. We enjoyed some amazing sunsets during our stay. And it was pretty nice during the day too. We ended up staying at Prairie Rose until July 6th. Most folks arrived on Thursday or Friday before the 4th of July weekend, then left on the 4th (a Monday), so after a very full park for the weekend, it was much more to our liking the last couple of nights we were there. And of course, there were the sunsets! We surely wished we had kayaks here as this small, tranquil lake did not allow motors that caused a wake, and it was so peaceful and tranquil. Kayaks, canoes, and pontoon boats made up the boating traffic.
We'll have a couple more posts on things we did while staying in the park, so stay tuned. It really was a gorgeous part of Iowa! |
Emily & BarryWe're a long-married, early-retired couple who are currently traveling as nomads with no fixed home base. After years of living in North Carolina (Emily's home state), we spent 18 months living oceanfront on Ambergris Caye, Belize, a year road-tripping the US in a Honda CR-V, a year in Playa del Carmen, Mexico, and are now roaming North America in our 32' motorhome, Pearl, following warm weather whenever possible. Archives
July 2019
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