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Books : Travel : United States : States : Iowa
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For the outdoor enthusiast, Illinois has it all: rivers to canoe, lakes to fish, trails to hike and bike, and plenty of quiet places to camp. This indispensable guide is aimed at the tent camper who wants to enjoy these things up close. Unlike other guides that merely list all campgrounds, The Best in Tent Camping: Illinois profiles in detail the 50 best sites in the state for campers who seek the serene and secluded. Here is essential information about each campground (including season, facilities, rates, directions, GPS coordinates, and websites), as well as a description of the campground, the best sites, and nearby activities such as hiking, canoeing, fishing, and mountain biking. The guide covers well-known parks as well as some campgrounds that are local secrets that can’t be found on Internet searches.
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This zany travel guide presents a more peculiar state than the Iowa Tourism Office might like out-of-towners to imagine. Leaving out the traditional scenic trips to the Mississippi River bluffs and the Amana Colonies, this guide will take the adventurous traveler to the future birthplace of Captain James T. Kirk, the home of the "Lonely Goat Herder" marionettes from The Sound of Music, and the world's largest Cheeto. To enhance the experience of this unusual side of Iowa, the guide includes facts about numerous events in Iowa's history, such as Ozzy Osbourne's infamous bat-biting incident and Jesse James's first moving-train robbery. Iowa is depicted as the birthplace of the Roto-Rooter, the Delicious apple, the electronic computer, the reinforced concrete bridge, and the Eskimo pie. The accompanying photographs and maps will direct travelers to other fun vacation spots and attractions, including the butter sculptures at the Iowa State Fair, the annual National Skillet Throw, the Hobo Convention and Museum, the Ice Cream Capital of the World, and the National Balloon Museum.
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The Shelf2Life Nature Studies Collection is a grouping of pre-1923 monographs focusing on the natural world and environment. Ranging from landscape surveys and field guides of flora and fauna to scientific studies of botany, biology and the environment, the collection provides a unique glimpse into the 19th and 20th century history of the study of our natural world. Given the rapid nature of environmental change and our scientific understanding of it, these volumes are an opportunity to learn about the landscapes of the past as well as the evolution of scientific discovery. Filled with photographs, illustrations and maps, the Nature Studies Collection offers naturalists, hobbyists, historians, gardeners, birders and anyone interested in our natural environment a fresh glimpse into our understanding of the world around us, as well as our place within it.
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Wander prairies blazing with color. Climb up ridges and discover stunning vistas. Dip into quiet valleys and peaceful canyons. Glide through a golden forest, stroll a city street, stand beneath a waterfall or in a cave. In this book, Lynn Walters guides you to some of Iowa s most scenic and diverse trails.
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Who are the “plain people,” the men and women who till their fields with horse and plow, travel by horse and buggy, live without electricity and telephones, and practice “help thy neighbor” in daily life? Linda Egenes visited with her Old Order Amish neighbors in southeast Iowa for thirteen years before writing this informative and companionable introduction to their lifeways.
Drawn to their slower pace of life and their resistance to the lures of a consumer society, Egenes found a warm welcome among the Amish, and in return she has given us an equally warm perspective on Amish family life as she experienced it. The Amish value harmony in family life above all, and Egenes found an abundance of harmony as she savored homemade ice cream in a kitchen where the refrigerator ran on kerosene, learned to milk a two-bucket cow, helped cook dinner for nine in a summer kitchen, spent the day in a one-room schoolhouse, and sang “The Hymn of Praise” in its original German at Sunday service.
Whether quilting at a weekly sewing circle above the Stringtown Grocery, playing Dutch Blitz and Dare Base with schoolchildren, learning the intricacies of harness making, or mulching strawberries in a huge garden, Egenes was treated with the kindness, respect, and dignity that exemplify the strong community ties of the Amish. Her engaging account of her visits with the Amish, beautifully illustrated with woodcuts by Caldecott Medal winner Mary Azarian, reveals the serene and peaceful ways of a plain people whose lives are anything but plain.
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Combining photographs and prose, this book explores the rich diversity of flora, fauna, landscapes and habitats in Iowa. Including personal observations, and interesting facts about the geology and natural history, it presents a multifaceted picture of Iowa as the author has grown to love it.
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Winner of the third biennial Center for Documentary Studies/Honickman First Book Prize
Robert Frank, Prize JudgeIn Driftless, Danny Wilcox Frazier’s dramatic black-and-white photographs portray a changing Midwest of vanishing towns and transformed landscapes. As rural economies fail, people, resources, and services are migrating to the coasts and cities, as though the heart of America were being emptied. Frazier’s arresting photographs take us into Iowa’s abandoned places and illuminate the lives of those people who stay behind and continue to live there: young people at leisure, fishermen on the Mississippi, veterans on Memorial Day, Amish women playing cards, as well as more recent arrivals: Lubavitcher Hasidic Jews at prayer, Latinos at work in the fields. Frazier’s camera finds these newcomers while it also captures activities that seemingly have gone on forever: harvesting and hunting, celebrating and socializing, praying and surviving.
This collection of photographs is a portrait of contemporary rural Iowa, but it is also more that that. It shows what is happening in many rural and out-of-the-way communities all over the United States, where people find ways to get by in the wake of closing factories and the demise of family farms. Taken by a true insider who has lived in Iowa his entire life, Frazier’s photographs are rich in emotion and give expression to the hopes and desires of the people who remain, whose needs and wants are complicated by the economic realities remaking rural America. Poetic and dark but illuminated with flashes of insight, Frazier’s stunning images evoke the brilliance of Robert Frank’s The Americans.
To view an image gallery, click here.
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The often overlooked sites and attractions of Iowa are revealed in this guide to the Hawkeye State: 160 acres of preserved prairie in the Great Lakes region; sculptures made from ordinary kitchen matches at Matchstick Marvels; and a tribute to the history of balloons at the National Balloon Museum.
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Michael Harker drove past old barns on gravel roads and blacktop highways for years. He generally dismissed them as obsolete outbuildings until November 1993, when he felt compelled to photograph a windmill in Clutier, Iowa. This single photograph launched him on a seven-and-a-half-year mission to document Iowa's barns and all they represent. The result is Harker's Barns: Visions of an American Icon.
Each of the seventy-five black-and-white images featured in Harker's Barns beautifully and heartbreakingly captures the glory and ultimate demise of one of rural America's most enduring icons. From square to round, wood to brick, Dutch to Swedish, occupied or abandoned, the barns documented in this stunning collection are a testament to a passing way of life that was once the lifeblood of Iowa and the Midwest.
Complementing Harker's photographs are vignettes by poet and writer Jim Heynen. Both whimsical and endearing, each vignette treats barns as organic and intelligent entities, reflecting the living history that can be found inside each rural structure.
Iowa's barns are disappearing and with them a way of life; Harker's Barns brilliantly documents their heritage for future generations. As Jim Heynen says, “A good photograph can maintain an old barn through blizzards and hail storms and tornadoes. It is the best support beam and wood preservative an old barn can have.”
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Experience an unhurried, simpler way of life, full of friendly faces and fresh air. This guide will steer you to historic frontier forts, charming covered bridges, authentic farms, and delightful small towns -- Americana at its best. Take a tour of Iowa's many galleries and museums or relax in quaint cafes and cozy bed and breakfasts. Visit one of the nation's last soda fountains still in operation or pedal down one of the many scenic bike paths. From the historic bridges of Madison County to the unusual Field of Dreams, you'll find the best information on attractions, events, restaurants, and lodging throughout the Hawkeye State.
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Take a mysterious and fascinating tour through Iowa's underground treasures. This guide will reveal the state's subterranean attractions including show and wild caves, mining sites and other geological and man-made sites. If you are a sport caver, a scientist, or curious tourist, this guide will give you all you need to know to begin exploring Iowa's underground world.
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This is a detailed map of Des Moines and Ames, Iowa. Complete coverage for the cities and surrounding areas, with an inset map for downtown. Plus most major tourist and business districts. When you flip the maps over, you will find a complete street index and a "city and vicinity" map of the entire metro area
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VIVID and TRUE recollections by early immigrants to America’s mid-West.
Recounted in the immigrants’ OWN WORDS.
Painting COLORFUL and THOUGHT-PROVOKING pictures of experiences encountered on their way to America. Here are some samples:
I grew up in a village where we all readily realized the purposes of the new-comer in town (we called him “the candidate”): he was there to teach the sons of the local pastor, the magistrate, the commanding officer, and the merchant. Undoubtedly, it was the sight of these well dressed, happy, fun-loving boys – who had nothing else to do but to play games and acquire knowledge – that raised the agonizing question (sharp as steel) in my young heart: “What have I done, and what have these done, that there is such a difference between us?”
And when they ridiculed me for my torn clothes. laughed and joked about me and called out: “Look at him!” each time I came by, bent and hunched under a heavy burden, with my nose to the ground, I cried and swore and was deeply insulted. – Knud Langeland
Some time before he [Bjørn Anderson Kvelve] left Norway for the U.S. he married Miss Abel Kathrine von Krogh, the daughter of Colonel Krogh in Vikedal. This marriage created much commotion, since the relatives of his wife never forgave her this misalliance. She, the high society daughter of a prominent military man, had married a simple man, the son of a local farmer. From that time on she was completely neglected by the Krogh family. Her husband became the subject of hatred, because it was he who had caused all this outrageous injustice. – Svein Nielsen
Depressed both physically and mentally he stood there before us, like the subject of every kind of worldly misery, and described conditions here in terms so incredibly negative that I will never forget it. "God help and support you", he said, "because here [in America] there is no work, food, or land to be had! And whatever you do, don't go to Fox River, for there you most certainly will die from malaria.” – Ole Nattestad
Due to this carelessness during the landing [in Quebec] a chest fell into the water, such that its lid was knocked off, and all the content floated about. The chest had held all the belongings of a very poor family; they lost almost all they owned. There they stood, four children, no money, no other clothes but what they were wearing, and almost no food. The woman’s name was Ragnhild, a sister of Sindre Dækko. Her husband is Swedish. – Gro Svendsen
These are some of the pioneers:
Elisabeth Hysing Koren (1832–1912) from Larvik, the beautiful young bride of Pastor Vilhelm Koren, who kept a very personal and detailed diary of the trip to America in 1854 and her first year of marriage in Iowa.
Caroline “Linka” Keyser Preus (1829–1880) from Kristiansand, the daughter of a Norwegian pastor, who kept a diary from the day she married her cousin, Pastor Herman Amberg Preus, until years later in Wisconsin.
Gro Nielsdaughter Svendsen (1841–1878) from Hallingdal, who as a happy, vivacious young lady, newly married and curious about almost everything, wrote numerous detailed letters home to her parents and siblings in Norway.
Elise Tvede Wærenskjold (1815–1895) became known as “the woman with a pen,” advicing compatriots to come to Texas, because, “for poor people Texas is like Paradise. Anyone willing to work will make good money all year round; children are no burden - they can pick cotton.”
Søren Bache (1814–1890) from Drammen, young son of a well-to-do businessman, who went to America in 1839 and invested in several tracts of land in Muskego, selling it to newly arrived settlers on easy terms.
Johannes W.C. Dietrichson (1815–1883) from Stavanger, a pastor who in 1846 was sponsored to go to Wisconsin and gather the Christians into organized Lutheran congregations and provide religious services for them.
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With the down-to-earth style and far-ranging knowledge that have made him America’s favorite stargazing instructor, Mike Lynch guides amateur and expert alike through the wonders of Iowa’s night sky. Whether watching the sky from a backyard lawn chair or manning a high-powered telescope, stargazers of all levels will learn how and when to identify the major constellations visible at Iowa’s latitude (4043° north). With chapters on the origins and movements of stars, the mythology of constellations, the phases of the moon, the planets, and even buying a telescope, this book serves as an accessible and in-depth beginner’s guide to the night sky. It includes 12 monthly star maps for Iowa skies, 21 constellation diagrams, a local resources guide, a list of the brightest stars in the state, and more than 80 beautiful color photographs of the heavens.
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Iowa is the most normal place on the planet, so the people and places covered in this book will be as everyday as a peanut butter and jelly sandwich on white bread, but as twisted as a corn dog dipped in horseradish. As filmmaker David Lynch ("Blue Velvet", "Eraserhead") shows in his movies, it's what's beneath the surface that's really tells the story. As for Iowa's story, let the facts speak for themselves.