Welcome to...

We had another geocaching goal: to collect 100 or more caches with the words "Welcome to..." in the title. Hubby found a day trip to northwest Iowa and southwest Minnesota which could potentially add   about 30 caches to our list. I had book club at noon on Tuesday, then played in the flower beds in the afternoon. About 4:00 Hubby said, we should leave for Sioux Falls today and knock 100 miles off our trip planned for Wednesday. We were ready and on the road in one hour. Impressive, huh!

So the "Welcome to..." road trip took us to some new communities, many of which were first settled by Dutch immigrants. It was interesting to notice the clean and orderly farms and small towns.

I took this photo for my mother, who grew up near two small Dutch settled communities in North Dakota, one of which was named Hull.

 The water tower is to remind me of the name of the community where I took the following photos.

This was the highway leading into town. The mall area was at least a half mile long, with street lights and baskets of flowers, very inviting and green.

The street lights along the main street, which did not have the center green space.

Hubby finding another "Welcome to..." cache, which I located, but he climbed the rocks to sign and return.

Arnold's Park is a well-known name, but a place I had never been, until last week. Since all the photos were taken from the passenger seat in the van, I guess I can say, I still have not been to Arnold's Park.

Although it was the week before the Fourth of July, there were not many people at this tourist attraction. The temps were in the mid-70s, and the skies (as you can well see) were overcast due to off and on sprinkles and probably the smoke from the forest fires in Canada.

people were playing miniature golf

Interesting to me that Arnold's Park is 125 years old. It is along Lake Okoboji, which I thought was the name of the town. WRONG.

Now I know. Actually, there are 3 communities, West Okoboji, Okoboji and Spirit Lake, which make up this area for every conceivable water sport for water-loving people. 

We had two geocaching reasons to stop at Okoboji. The second reason was to complete a couple of web cam caches. I am thinking a marina might install a web cam to watch over the boats docked at its pier. To geocachers, it is an opportunity to find the correct spot and get your photo in the web cam span, using an iPhone or computer. Cachers are able to take a photo and post it as proof of our being at the cache location. (It is always exciting when technology works like it is supposed to work.)

We stopped at a second marina, boat dealership, and lakeside restaurant and bar for the second web cam geocache.

There were quite a few boats outside the building on the property. Since we aren't boaters, the prices of the water craft were interesting to us. The units priced over $100,000 were inside the building.

The pontoon type boat is more my style, although the price was still interesting.

The third business at this location, the Barefoot Restaurant & Bar.

So there we are on the patio of the restaurant/bar trying to find the video/web cam. We could see waitstaff in the video, but when we stood where they had been standing, we were still hard to find. It made for an entertaining 15 minutes of the two of us moving around the tables and cabanas trying to find the 'right' spot for our geocaching photo. Luckily, there were not many people around having lunch. Can you find us? (Where's Waldo?)

I couldn't resist a photo (or two or five) of the huge hibiscus bush near the gate to the marina/dealership/restaurant. I miss having a hibiscus. That might be one of my first AZ purchases this fall.

This was another of our "Welcome to..." stops in Iowa before we headed north to Minnesota. Actually, this community had two.

I noticed these abandoned passenger train cars as we were driving from Esterville to our first MN town.

It wasn't until I snapped the photo of the end cars that I saw the elephant logo. Maybe an old circus train????

Another thing I noticed on many of the farms in Iowa was the copula on some of the buildings. I thought the copula buildings were barns, but Hubby said they were granaries. The granary idea made sense, as it would be a window/door for an auger to load or unload grain. But, I'm not sure that is correct as the buildings were usually hip roofed like the barns and I did not see any doors or windows big enough for the grain augers. Anyway, I saw enough of them to make me speculate.

The decorated brick silo was also intriguing. The first one I saw was on a farm next to the highway. Those folks had installed a wooden garage door at the base making the no-longer-used-as-a-silo building usable as a garage for smaller farm vehicles, like maybe a riding lawn mower or 4 wheeler.

One of our southwest Minnesota stops was in the Dutch community of Edgerton. There was a historical plaque near the windmill, but I was just lucky Hubby was willing to drive around the block so I could get a photo of the windmill! There were 4 "Welcome to..." caches in this town.

We found 31 "Welcome to..." caches on that 3 state, 600 mile day trip. We added the 2 web cam caches to our count. Hubby and I now have 100+ "Welcome to..." caches, enabling us to sign several challenge caches. 

It was a successful trip on several counts: the collected geocaches, the traveling to new areas AND... 2 new heart stents for Hubby. He shared on the way home Wednesday, that he was having some chest discomfort. No pains. Nothing consistent. Just irritation and the feeling of something is not right. We agreed it needed attention sooner, rather than later.

He called his cardiologist on Thursday morning. He had an appointment within 30 minutes. Two hours later, he was in the cath lab having two stents inserted. He was released 24 hours later. Hubby is home and doing well, but laying low for a week or so. Life is good...