Last Sunday in Iowa

Sunday October 2, 2011
Sugar Bottom Campground
Coralville COE Park
North Liberty, Iowa

 

On Sunday we had chocolate chip pancakes for breakfast.
Very YUMMMY and eaten too quickly for a picture!!

Thus fortified we went off to the Farmer’s Market
which is in the Recreation Center parking lot
in North Liberty from 11 to 2pm every Sunday.
I thought Iowa was a big church going state
so I was surprised at the hours.
But I guess they catch a lot
of folks on their way home from church.

When we got there, about 11:30,
there was only one vendor.
He had vegetables and his wife had baked goods.
He told us that there was some sort of festival close by today
and everyone else was over there.
Sure wish I’d gotten a picture of the smallest
farmer’s market I’ve ever seen.

 

But we did get some lovely end of the season (boo hoo) tomatoes,
some potatoes and a bag of fresh green beans.

We then went on to the grocery store
to fill in the rest of our needs
but it WAS closed on Sunday. LOL

Really beautiful day to be outside here at the lake.
I sat around reading in the warm sunshine.
Later in the afternoon I went back over to Prairie Lights
to pick up Donald Hall’s memoir,
Unpacking The Boxes,
which I’d seen on
the SERIOUS SALE table
when I was there previously to meet up with Jude.

I needed something more appealing to read
after trying over 400 pages of Songs in Ordinary Time
and just not being willing to go the distance
with all these dysfunctional people.
If any of you have read and liked this book
could you tell me what I missed, please.

.

I was very sorry I hadn’t taken my camera on this trip
since I parked around the corner  from Prairie Lights
and there were literary quotations
written in swirls in the cement sidewalk
all around decorated bronze plaques
also in the sidewalk.

Here are a couple of the plaque quotes that I particularly liked
and have been pondering.

We are all of us sentenced
to solitary confinement
inside our own skins.
Tennessee Williams
Orpheus Descending

and

We are what we Pretend to be
So we must be careful about
what we Pretend to be
Kurt Vonnegut

 

Both sides of the street had these two different types of quotations
in the side walks and at the corner, there was a
GIANT book sculpture
with open pages and print so large you could read it.
It was The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo.
Talk about a literary town Iowa City is apparently one.

Until I saw this, I had assumed
that the quotations were perhaps
all from writers who either attended or taught
at the famed University of Iowa’s
Iowa Writer’s Workshop
one of the premier creative writing programs in the country.

But Steig Larssen was from Sweden
so there went that theory.

But it’s fun having theories anyway isn’t it?
If we pretend to be smart and happy then
according to Kurt, we will be. 
Works for me!!

 

On the way back, on impulse, I stopped
and had a German Chocolate Blizzard.
Definitely good tasting junk food.

No junk for David, he was getting healthy while I
was consuming those chemicals.
He went out for a run on Cedar Valley Nature Trail
and took the only pictures of the day

 

Every trail here goes somewhere near the lake.

 

In case you want to do this hike, here are the rules.

BUT be careful what time of year you are here.

 

He also ran by the Frisbee golf course.
I guess we need to get official golf Frisbees
so we can play
since we have seen a fair number of these courses.

Do any of you play frisbee golf and have advice
on its “equipment”??

I don’t think pets are allowed to catch
the frisbees though probably a penalty.

 

And the bike trail

 

which had the first bike wash station
we’ve ever seen.

These engineers think of everything.

 

and the beach

 

where those same engineers are apparently
going to get to play with their toys.

I’ll leave you with a last look at Sugar Bottom’s
summer flowers.

We’ll be movin’ on tomorrow!