Adler's Midwest Meandering Spring 2021

 We stayed in the Madison area before returning to Wittenberg, and visited some family, and we went shopping at REI.  I bought a new pair of hiking boots there but Jim couldn't find anything.  They were really out of a lot of things, and blamed it all on the cargo boats that were held up in the Suez Canal.  They told us that things would be stocked up again in June, hopefully.                                 These boots were made for walking, and that's just what I'll do!   We stopped in Waunakee to visit Jim's sister, Barb and pick some items that she had for us.  We didn't see her all winter, as she didn't go to Arizona, so it was good to catch up with her and 'see her in person'.  She had some of her famous chocolate chip cookies for us, too!  We haven't been going inside anyone's home, even with having our two shots and she did, also.  They are relax...

 We are in our last day at Monticello, Iowa and will go out and grab a few caches in town, then go to Cascade to find some interesting ones.  It's very chilly here today and the wind goes right through us!  We have thin blood from being in Arizona for so many winters, and we aren't sure how long we will be able to stay out today.   This might be hard to read, but it is written on the back of a tombstone in Cascade, Iowa.  The title for this cache was called, "I Will Take It To My Grave".  I guess Maxine Menster was known for her sugar cookies.  One has to wonder if she wouldn't give out the recipe.  I think it's an honor if people as me for a recipe.  I have heard of some people who will give out their recipe, BUT they leave out one key ingredient!  I could never understand that.  We had to take some numbers on this inscription and turn it into our coordinates to take us to the final cache.  It was a bison tube hanging in ...

 Hello to all, Our daughter called to tell us that our account has been hacked on our hotmail account.  Spread the word!  We are working to correct it.  We have no idea where we picked this up, but we have heard from our daughter, Judy, Jack Gable and Ruth Gamble.  Sorry for any inconvenience.  I hope we all know NOT to send money to anyone via gift cards or other means.  This has put a wrench in our day!         Jim and Marlene Much later today.......we notified most people on our address book that we could and hope we didn't overlook anyone.  With the threat of a scam artist, I'm sure we are all aware to first check out the source of it and you will find that it is a hoax.  Now about the rest of the day.  There was nothing more we could do, so we went to Anamosa, Iowa, just south of where we are camped.  We wanted to go to the virtual cache there, as it was called, 'The Big House'.  As it turns out, i...

 We got up fairly early today to get packed up and moved out of this beautiful campground outside of Pella, Iowa.  We just finished at the dump station when we saw snowflakes!  By the time we got west of Pella, going toward Monroe and then north to I-80, it was snowing so heavily, that we only had about 1/2 mile visibility.  The snow was sticking to the ground and it looked cold!  The snow was to head southeast and we are going northeast to Monticello, Iowa.  By the time we reached Cedar Rapids, it was clearing but the winds were picking up.  We changed our plans for this stop.  We wanted to stay 3 nights in Urbana, IA so we could cache and bike.  Well, this weather is not fit for biking, so we cancelled there and was able to get into Jellystone Park in Monticello.  We aren't impressed.  So, we hit a snag in our great planning.  We got in and set up and decided to go south to Springville to get some caches, as that is Linn Coun...

 We have a sunny day, but cool, so we are going to Keokuk County to claim a cache for our Arizona challenge cache.  The county is named after Sauk Chief Keokuk.  We wondered if it was an Indian name, and indeed, it is.  We found two cemetery caches in Keokuk County and the first one took us to a quaint old outhouse!  Here we go again.  One for the Outhouse Club!  This time the cache was hidden near the corner post of the perimeter of the cemetery, and not in the outhouse.   Our next cache took us to 'The Rock' of Mahaska County.  It is a Freedom Rock and is a permanent memorial honoring all the past, present and future veterans of Mahaska County.  It was painted on all four sides, with the flag painted on top of it.  These were all prominent servicemen from different wars that are painted on this side.  We had to file a DNF here, as we looked within a 30 feet radius of our G-zone and we came up empty.  That happens so...

 Our family had set up today as our monthly Google Meet and Euchre Tournament to celebrate April, Spring, Easter and Max and Nick's birthdays.  As you can see some of our family really get their creative juices flowing with the hats, different backgrounds, scarves, and some even added strings of lights.  Our daughter, Karla took a screenshot of our craziness and Jim managed to turn it into a photo that I could attach to the blog.   We have gotten together every month to celebrate the birthdays in our family, and it has brought our family closer together in this time of Covid-19.  Our son, Mike is to be credited with the idea of the Google Meet and the Euchre game online.  We use Trickster and it connects all of us.  When we were in Arizona for the winter, we had three time zones that played at the same time.  Because I don't have any other pictures to post today, you will notice that our background is a picture of the Chiricahua National Monu...

 We had another good weather travel day today, with overcast skies, and not so breezy, so that works well for us.  We arrived in Pella, Iowa and we were surprised to see so many campers in the park.  I just think people are anxious to get out and finally get together.  It's been a long winter!  We settled in and went into Pella to the bakery.....of course!  We were here 3 years ago for the Tulip Festival, which happens every first full weekend in May.  We are seeing lots of Tulips blooming already in town, but then again some beds are just buds.  We had to stand in line at the bakery for over a half an hour, but it's worth it.  We are finally getting the bread that we didn't get in New Mexico!   When we came to the Tulip Festival in 2018, they were lined up for 1 3/4 blocks long to get into the bakery.  We heard about the bakery from an Iowa geo-cacher, that spent some time in Arizona, and we met him at a meet and greet.  ...

 We had a quite the diverse and varied day.  We waited for the 33 degree temperature to warm up a bit and we struck off to geo-cache.  We needed two counties that we had to cache in today but anything extra was a bonus.  I think we got three.  Our first stop was in Cameron, Mo and there are three counties in Cameron.  It is kind of like the 4 corners of NM, AZ, UT, and CO.  Depending on where we found our caches, determined the county we could claim.  We found three in Cameron, and I think they are all in the same county.  One took us to a Veteran's Home and a memorial on the grounds.  The little fake item was on a huge artillery gun, and it was hidden in plain sight!  It took us a bit to find it, as it blended in so well.  Then we had to go to a Do-nut Shoppe and answer some questions to give us the clues from the sign outside.  The correct numbers and letters open a padlock to a large object in the parking lot.  We ...

 Today was our travel day and we came up the Expressway from El Dorado, KS to Emporia and then took I-35 into Kansas City.  We went 435 west around Kansas City and that was a breeze.  We usually go 435 east to go to St. Louis and there is much more traffic on that.  We aren't going to St. Louis this trip, but we plan to do that in the fall.  We arrived at Maysville, MO and will spend two nights here.  We will cache tomorrow.  We are at the Pony Express RV park and it is quaint and has a hiking trail, which we did when we got in. It has a pen with small animals, so we can see that this is a summer draw for families.  They also  have a small restaurant connected to the office and I guess their pizza is really good. We're eating in again tonight.  We saw a car pass us today and some young gal was driving and her license plate said, HIKE GC so she hikes and geo-caches.  A gal after my own heart!  We have no television reception her...

 Hummm, wondering why the blog was so late on getting published, other than our Geo-caching site was very slow yesterday, also.  We checked to make sure the counties we cached in, were on our map for the challenge cache and they weren't yet, as of today.  So, we covered for that today, and went west toward Wichita thirty miles to a cache titled, 'I Scream, You Scream, We all Scream for Ice Cream'.  Of course we were thinking we would get an ice cream treat when we got there.  Well, the joke was on us.  It was out on the fringe of the city and they are laying some big sewer pipes, so progress is being made.  There was nothing at the cache site but a hollowed out tree trunk and a hidden ammo can in there!  At least we got our letterbox cache that we drove all that ways for, but no ice cream.  Back to El Dorado to go east thirty miles to get Greenwood County.  We hadn't planned to go to Eureka, but the caches that were just inside the Green...

 Today makes up for those days that we didn't have much to report.  We drove a loop up Hwy. 177 north, through some small towns and ended at Hwy. 50 at Strong City.  We took Hwy. 50 west to Hwy. 77 and south again to El Dorado, KS where we are camped in the state park.  It took us through the Flint Hills and Tall Grass Prairie Area, and it was a beautiful drive.  Again, we saw so many Redbud Trees blooming, and we spotted some Tulips in some yards.  We had seen Tulips before in Ponca City, so we are hoping when we get closer to Iowa that we will see them again.  The weather changed today, so maybe not, too.  I will answer some questions about geo-caching that we got overnight, before I post pictures of our day.  Geo-caching started on May 3rd of 2000 in the state of Oregon, so it has been nearly 21 years since then.  There is a plaque in that spot now, so no tangible cache.    The headquarters for geo-caching is in Seattle, but...