Thursday, August 16, 2018

Boondocking at Badger Creek State Park, IA, day 2

Such a nice location and having the time, I decided to stay an extra day.

The dawn's colors were not bad:



This allowed me, thanks to Martha for the reminder, that I was a short distance from the small town of Winterset.  It's where John Wayne, one of my favorite actors of all time, was born and the town has a museum there dedicated to the site and some memorabilia.  Back in 2013, on a road trip to Wisconsin (deja vu) and the first time towing my rig (deja vu again), we had stopped by this museum but it had been closed.

Martha told me to read the last part of that old posting and deja vu for the third time:

"Long day on the road and yet it was done in guilty comfort within the confines of the BMW X5, I could get used to hauling my rig over the long boring interstate slab portions of trips."



The museum is pretty small but has some nice exhibits:


 Memorabilia from John Wayne's boat: The Wild Goose

 One of John Wayne's cars...caring more for comfort
than style.  1972 Pontiac Grand Safari Station Wagon.

 The cart from one of my favorite movies starring John Wayne:
The Quiet Man.  

 My favorite John Wayne movies were of the U.S.
Cavalry theme.


After watching the 11 minute film of "movie moments" showing John Wayne, I wandered outside to go to the small house he was born in.  On the way, there's the Madison County Freedom Rock:


The house itself is quite small by today's standards, all the furnishings are donations from the area so nothing really belonging to John Wayne that I could establish in the very short time I spend inside.

The house where John Wayne was born.
He was a 13 lb baby....big boy.

This being Madison County and me having ridden partly on the Madison County Covered Bridge Scenic Byway, I stopped at Hogback Bridge which is three miles from State Highway 169:




I also stopped at Cedar Bridge since it was along the way but found it burned down and torn apart.  Bummer.

Spent the rest of the day back at the URRV,  working on minor things for work.  Sunny weather replaced earlier overcast skies and the predicted rain happened while I was inside the museum.

Not as hot as yesterday either, a pretty nice day overall.

Here's a nice Iowa sunset to round out a pretty good day of boondocking.










7 comments:

Jason said...

This is my favorite kind of trip. Both purposeful and aimless. I need to figure out how to make more of these happen.

Glad to hear you're enjoying your time in Iowa! I'm a few hundred miles north in St Paul. Hope you're not seeing the same smokey skies that we have. From our AQI alert: "An expansive area of Canadian wildfire smoke is slowly moving into northwest Minnesota and will envelop much of the northern portions of the state by Friday morning."

VStar Lady said...

It's always nice to have time to take time ... just for things you want to do.

redlegsrides said...

Glad you like this stuff Jason. I'll be in Holmen, WI this weekend for a family reunion. My FIL said it was probably just haze but the sun this afternoon as we were having dinner on his front porch looked more like the moon!

redlegsrides said...

Exactly VStar Lady, too much rushing about most of the time

SonjaM said...

I was under the impression that John Wayne was of Texas breed, thanks for the information. The first movie I have seen was The Shootist. I have seen many of his films, but loved The sons of Cathy Elder the most. I don't know why, part of it certainly was the music.

MotoVentures said...

That second image looks like an ad for "Go RV'ing" - well done!

redlegsrides said...

SonjaM, if you've not seen Fort Apache, you must....one of his best.

Thanks MotoVentures