Madison County / August 2022 in Iowa
Seeing the Covered Bridges in Madison County | Visiting Family in Iowa | August 2022
This summer has been much less eventful compared to summer 2021. We’ve stayed close to home, visited a few local attractions we hadn’t seen yet, and mostly focused on preparing for the future. But for the first weekend of August, my family was going to be in Des Moines which is only 2 hours away, so we decided to go meet them there, and then spend a few more days in our hometown.
We started off with visiting my grandparents in Des Moines and celebrating my Grandmother’s birthday. We went out to eat at their favorite restaurant, Waterfront, and got caught up on their life and Grandpa’s travels.
That evening, we went out on a little road trip around Madison County with my parents and the dogs. The heat was sweltering even past 7PM and with high humidity, but thankfully all our stops were short and sweet. My dad had never seen any of the covered bridges before, so we made a small loop around to see a few. We started at Cedar Covered Bridge North of Winterset, then made our way through town to Winterset City Park to see the Cutler – Donahue Bridge. There was also a pretty stone bridge, and tree stumps that had been carved into fun little statues.
We tried to see the Imes covered bridge in St. Charles, but were thwarted by the Hinterland Music Festival taking place right across the street. The traffic was crazy here, but we were able to open the windows and hear a snippet of the artist that was currently playing. We didn’t envy the festival-goers at all having to be outside and packed together in the heat!
The next day, we spent a little more time with my grandparents before making our way East. On our way to Cedar Rapids, we stopped to see my Nanna at her farm. We enjoyed walking through her gardens as always, which were still doing well despite a lack of rain, and left with plenty of tomatoes.
During the few days at home, we spent lots of time with my sisters and niece, who had grown up so much since we had seen her 2 months ago. She was much more expressive and “talkative,” and we spent lots of time doing anything to make her smile and laugh. Curtis and I also took our kayak out to Pleasant Creek Recreation Area and enjoyed paddling around the East side of the lake.
After a few fun and relaxing days, we returned to Omaha, where Curtis continued the job hunt and turned in his final project for his master’s program!
