Easter Weekend 2021
At the beginning of April, we traveled back home for a weekend to celebrate Easter and spring birthdays with my family. Curtis had just returned from a short work trip and was able to take a long weekend, so we left Omaha on Thursday morning. To change things up, we drove East on IA-92 all the way to Indianola, then North on US-65, East on IA-330, and US-30 to Cedar Rapids. By doing so, we were easily able to see the Adair county courthouse in Greenfield, IA.
Along the way, we also stopped to see one of the covered bridges in Madison County. This time, we saw the Cedar Bridge which was a short drive from IA-92, just Northwest of Winterset. We’re sort of participating in the Iowa Scenic Byway Passport challenge/sweepstakes this year, and all of the covered bridges are stops on the passport. We checked in using the phone app there, took our pictures, let Charlotte lead us around on a little walk, and then continued on.
We intended to stop in Indianola and get a picture of the courthouse there, but unfortunately we found that it was currently under construction — it appears they may have taken the old building down. Bummer! We decided to forgo taking a picture of the construction site hoping that a finished building will be completed sooner than later, and instead finished up our drive home.
While visiting with my family, I was able to go to my sister’s first tennis match of the season and we went for several walks with the dogs. We were especially excited and fortunate to see my grandparents who are now vaccinated, and had a good time catching up with them.
On our last afternoon together, we heard about a local “attraction” reopening that we had never visited before, and decided to go check it out. The attraction is called Mount Trashmore — the former city landfill from the years 1965-2012. After capping the landfill following the 2008 flood, the city and Waste Management created a park out of the mound. You can now walk up the trails to a scenic viewpoint of the downtown area and Cedar River. That’s right, our flat, midwestern hometown built themselves a mountain out of trash! Anything is possible! 😉 There was only one trail open that day, so we made the short climb up to the overlook (then a little further to the true highest point) and back. As we strolled up the mountain, we wondered how much of our own trash we contributed to the mound. If you’re interested in visiting Mt. Trashmore, you can learn about park hours and more here.
Easter Sunday was our last day together, so after one more walk around Wikiup Hills we packed up, said our goodbyes, and made a relatively late drive straight home (i.e. without any courthouses).
