How would you pronounce Maquoketa?

How would you pronounce Maquoketa? Yesterday, we had a local at the Dutch windmill ask it we were going to the prettiest place in Iowa. We didn't recognize the name of the park he said, but he assured us we shouldn't miss it. It wasn't until later that we realized that the M-word he said was actually where we had reservations for the next night. We obviously didn't know how to pronounce Maquoketa, and we also didn't recognize it when someone else pronounced it correctly!

Likewise, the ranger at the President Hoover Historical Site mentioned the beauty of a nearby state park. When I used my incorrect pronunciation of Maquoketa, she didn't even realize we were talking about the same place. So we arrived at Maquoketa Caves State Park with no clue how to actually say the word out loud. So for the rest of the blog (and the rest of our lives) we decided to call it M-Caves State Park to save ourselves the embarrassment.

We knew we were going to like it here as soon as we drove into the campground lined with tall pine trees.

The M-Caves state park ranger told us earlier on the phone that their trails were very busy on the weekends. So we purposefully waited until Monday morning to see what was so special about the M-caves. We walked from our camp site to the cave trail that winds in and around the 15 caves that were on our state park map. We found the trail in the valley was alarmingly steep with long stair cases to the different cave entrances.

Our first cave was called "Match Cave." It's one of the little ones that you have to lie on your belly and wiggle into. We looked inside and wiggled right back out. We obviously are not hard-core spelunkers.

Besides the caves, the park also features lovely stone bluffs and walk-ways. We were blessed with blue skies, even though it was already getting warm even in the shade.

A recent storm knocked some trees down, and the walkways to some of the caves were closed. We made the climbs to the entrances of caves with names like Dug Out Cave and Up-N-Down Cave. We could feel the very welcoming cool air coming out of the caves, but the entrances were just too small for a couple of grandparents.

The first wildlife picture of the day was a tiny frog on the wooden steps heading to a cave. A leaf nearby shows just how tiny this little guy was.

Wide Mouth Cave was true to its name, and we did step inside that wide mouth to cool off a little.

Visitors are told to bring a good flashlight because there is no artificial light in these little caves.

The cave trail is divided in half by the road we drive on to get to our campground. While the north side was a pleasant walk in the woods, none of the caves were big enough to explore. So we took the foot trail to the area south of the road. 

As we crossed the road, we found that all the parking places were full even on a week-day morning at 10:00. The crowds were thicker on this south side, but the caves were bigger too. We can highly recommend going into the series of Dance Hall caves. Have we mentioned how many stairs we traversed in M-Caves State Park?

These large caverns were used for dances in the early 1900's. We were dancing through the welcoming temperatures in the 60s inside the caves!

Have we mentioned all the stairs to climb up and down in this park?

We could enter at the Upper, Middle, or Lower Dance Hall entrances. But we chose to stay underground and walked through all three of these connected caves for a break from the heat outside.

The difference in temperature between the caves and outdoors was enough to make our eye glasses fog.

The difference between the dark cave interior and the sunshine outside was enough to make our eyes hurt. You can barely see Denisa in the shadows of the cave in the lower left-hand corner of the picture below.

Despite the crowds, we spotted a woodchuck in the forest beside the trail.

He was feasting on the abundant greenery, and pretended not to notice there were so many visitors to his home.

We should have counted the number of stairs we climbed. Most of them were wooden staircases, but some were hewn rock steps that led through narrow rock openings.

We tried the Rainy Day Cave,  but turned around when we saw that the line of high school students coming out were muddy with very wet feet and shoes. Our next favorite was the Ice Cave. On a day when the "feels like" temperature was getting close to 100, it was great to sit inside and spend some time in refrigeration mode.

We walked by balanced rock, and then back to our campground. After sweating through 2.7 miles of trail and stairs at M-Caves State Park, it was time for another shower before we hit the road. We talked about the fact that we still didn't know how to pronounce the name of this very nice state park. All we knew for sure was how NOT to pronounce it. 

Our last stop in Iowa was at the Spanish Mine Recreation Area. Like the name implies, the Spanish mined lead here many years ago.  We were glad to see that we knew how to pronounce all the words in this park's name. We stopped in at the park's nature center, where a raccoon was looking for a free meal at the bird feeders.

In spite of the heat, we took a mile-long hike to see the tall rock walls left from the mining process.

Even when it's hot, Denisa will stop to take a picture of the unusual local wildflowers on a trail.

We were wishing for the shade of those tall pine trees from M- Caves State Park by the time we finished our hike.

A few miles down the road was an easier quarter-mile hike to the Julian Dubuque Memorial. The stone tower was high above the Mississippi River with great views of the largest river in the United States. We were just a few miles from the city of Dubuque, Iowa, named after this Canadian fur trader that bought large tracts of land from the Spanish government and started the first city west of the Mississippi.

Denisa was taking more pictures of the pretty wildflowers this warm day.

The cool waters of the Mississippi River certainly look inviting in July in Iowa.

We drove through the city of Dubuque, and headed over the long bridge that would take us over the MIssissippi River and out of Iowa. We still don't know how to pronounce Maquoketa, but we would recommend a trip to the M-Cave State Park and the surrounding area.

Wandering our way through Eastern Iowa

We left our campground in the Amana Colonies early, for a day of wandering through Eastern Iowa. If we went directly to our next camp site, google map says that would be a 1.5-hour drive northeast. But that would be missing several Iowa landmarks, so we were taking the long way around. We drove 33 miles southeast to our first stop--President Herbert Hoover's National Historic Site. The presidential library was closed for renovation until later this summer, but the national historic park was in an outdoor area in West Branch, Iowa.

Herbert Hoover was the first president born west of the Mississippi River. He was born in 1874, in this two-room house on Main Street.

Herbert was the middle of three children, and he saw his humble beginnings as "physical proof of the unbounded opportunities of American life."

Also in the park was the one-room school house . . .

as well as the Friends Meeting House he attended. That is another name for a Quaker church, where many of the West Branch citizens worshiped. Denisa took this picture from the women's side of the church, while Mark sat on the men's side of the church.

Hoover's father was a blacksmsith, so a shop was moved into the national historic park. This park centers on the first ten years of Herbert Hoover's life, when he was known as "Bertie." There was a seat at the blacksmith shop for the two Hoover boys inscribed with "Tad and Bertie."

Those first ten pleasant years would be followed by a tumultuous adolescence. His father died when he was six, and his mother died four years later, making him an orphan by the age of ten. The children were split up, and Herbert Hoover went to Oregon to live with an uncle.  But Iowa was always a special place to him, and he and his wife were buried on the grounds of this park.

From their burial site, visitors can see the home where he was born. Mark was pointing to that little white house in the distance.

The female rangers at this park were fun, and full of information about Herbert Hoover. They liked to engage visitors in a game of "Hoover Ball." While he was in the White House, his doctor invented a game to give the President more exercise. Six mornings a week, President Hoover invited his cabinet members to join him for a thirty-minute game of Hoover Ball. The game involved tossing and catching this six-pound weighted ball over a net on the White House lawn. We can confirm that it was a heavy ball to toss over a volleyball net.

Instead of taking I-80, we're again on the Iowa back roads for an hour and a half drive to our next stop in Clinton, Iowa. We were headed to this little town on the Mississippi River because we were going to hunt trolls. We parked the pickup and trailer at Bickelhaupf Arboretum and followed the crowds towards our first troll--Marvin.

We were already familiar with the over-sized trolls that Thomas Dambo makes out of recycled wood. We've literally seen them all over the world. He's from Denmark, and we saw three of his trolls near Copenhagen, Denmark. But his trolls' appeal has spread to America, and we were surprised at the number of people we saw troll hunting today.

A close-up shows the detail of the troll-construction. Each one is unique, and this one has wild hair made from scrap branches.

Marvin was reclining under a tree, and we shared picture-taking with over 20 other people that were there at the very same time on a Sunday afternoon.

Our second troll was a rare indoor specimen. The instructions we had found led us to an obscure white building near the Mississippi River. We would have hesitated to go inside with all the "danger zone" and "no trespassing" signs at the door. But a steady stream of people were going inside, and we followed the pack--still surprised at the popularity of these trolls!

We had to weave through a couple rooms of branches before we found Warren lounging inside.

A friendly Clinton volunteer greeted us and offered to take our picture. We also realized that she was efficiently moving people through the building so the line didn't back up. She asked everyone where they were from, and welcomed them to Clinton, Iowa. The couple in front of us were from Brazil!

Based on their poses, one would think that all trolls were lazy.

All this troll-hunting can work up an appetite, and Denisa had read about an interesting place to eat near the Mississippi River. We walked a couple blocks to the 7 Hills Cafe. Since it was Sunday, it just seemed right to be going to church. 

 But we're a little sad that this old church was now a restaurant. The church was packed on this Sunday afternoon!

We ordered the Carnivore wood-fired pizza, and it made a delicious meal with the stained glass background.

We drove the Riverview Road to get our first views of the mighty Mississippi. Lighthouses lined the western edge of the river . . . 

and we found another Freedom Rock. The artist was trying to complete a rock for each county in Iowa. It looked like Clinton County found a nice prominent place for their boulder memorializing local war heroes.

But we were on a troll-hunt, and we headed to the third brother in this family of trolls--Helmut.

While the other brothers were lazing around in a horizontal position, Helmut was lifting that heavy potted plant the entire time we were there!

All of the Danbo trolls have a story, and a number. Hard-core troll hunters have an official list and check them off as they find them.

From the park where Helmut lived, we could see the silhouette of the iron bridge that crosses the Mississippi River.

Since we were parked beside the Mississippi River dike, it seemed a good time to go on a bike ride. We unloaded our fold-up bikes and set out on a looooooong bike trip. We pedaled all the way from Iowa to Illinois!

We've never biked across the Mississippi River, this bridge had a protected bike lane. We paused at the top of the bridge to take in the river view.

At the other side of the water we were welcomed to Fulton, Illinois.

This little town wanted to find a lasting symbol of their community to display on their side of the Mississippi River. Because this area was settled by the Dutch, they decided to build a working windmill. They contacted a company in The Netherlands, who built one to the exact specs of their famous windmills from the 1700s. It was disassembled and shipped to Fulton, Illinois. The "kit" came complete with carpenters and brick masons, and it was completed in 2000.

We arrived just in time for a guided tour of the windmill, complete with information on how they use wind power to grind the wheat they sell in their gift shop. It was a rare treat to get to walk into and around an authentic working windmill.

After our tour, we continued on the paved bike path that runs beside the Mississippi River.

We took a picture of the bridge we crossed, this time from the Illinois side.

We rode back across the Mississippi River, and all the way back to Iowa. What a long bike ride spanning two states on this warm July afternoon!

We had read that after finding the three easy trolls, real hunters can find a fourth secret troll using clues from the first three. Well, the secret was out, and we found out that even google maps will take you right to the trail head for the "mystery" troll. It's no secret when the trailhead is marked with a big sign pointing towards the troll.

Unlike the other three brothers, this secret troll is made from fallen tree branches found in the forest. He looks different than the other Danbo trolls we have seen. That's why he's a secret.

The secret troll is located in Eagle Point Park, and we had a longer hike to find him since we were towing the trailer today. That made finding parking spots on these travel-day explorations tougher. 

Overlooking the Mississippi River, we also hiked to the rock castle high over the water in Eagle Point Park. 

Once again, there weren't RV parking spots at this location, so it was a quick look over the Mississippi before we had to keep rolling.

That was our last stop before heading to our campground. It took another hour to complete the day's drive. We could have driven there in just a hour and a half this morning. But we took the long way so we could learn about the boyhood home of a president, find three brother trolls, see how a real windmill works, ride a bicycle over the largest river in the country, eat pizza in a stained glass church, and hike to a mystery troll. Sometimes wandering the long way around is the right way.