Iowa City

After driving for about an hour and a quarter I found breakfast in Blair, the last town in Nebraska, at Billy's Blair Maple Cafe. In some ways it was Klub 81 (see yesterday's post) all over again - same chairs, same tables but here there were booths as well, and the same hard-working friendly waitresses, though these were bubbly kids rather than down-home women. The space was a storefront rather than a box and the food, when it finally came, wasn't worth reviewing here. The "weekend cook position available" sign on the front door gave me pause but the amazingly slow arrival of the food was apparently due to a rash of kitchen equipment breakdowns.

I'd hoped to photograph the Missouri River as I left Blair and crossed into Iowa but saw no place to pull off the road. Meaning no disrespect to Iowa, I saw nothing on the 250 eastbound miles of I-80/U.S. 6 to Iowa City that was worth a photo or a side trip in hopes of a photo. Maybe the Amana Colonies near here, though it has less personal meaning for me than Spillville, where Antonin Dvorak lived for much of his U.S. visit. Alas, Spillville is almost three hours away and I'm not that devoted to the Czech composer.

Trivial note: on my winter trip I complained about my GPS's bizarre sort-of-Spanish pronunciation of Texas and California place names. Well, today Chatty Kathy told me about 100 times to take I-80 toward "day mwan" (her French for Des Moines).

So after checking into my hotel I went to the local visitor information center and then headed for a trail along the Iowa River. What I found was interesting: another river flowing full, fast, but rather flat like the North Platte and the Middle Loup in Nebraska, but as you can see here the Iowa was over its banks. Much of the park where I started my walk had standing water in the grassy areas.

I crossed to the east bank, the side where downtown Iowa City and most of the University of Iowa campus are located. This photo of the University Capitol Centre (sic), the 19th-century State Capitol when Iowa City was the capital, is from the first spot where today's walk intersected my walk with Rachel when we were here for Lisa's wedding June 12, 2004 (still on my calendar, I just looked it up!).

The walk was very hot and felt very long.

That's it for today. I'll be here for at least two nights or as long as it takes to connect with Lisa, Francine, and Art, all of whom are traveling this weekend. Fortunately, this motel is also inexpensive - and it has Net access.