Blue Goose ~ Day 292 and 293

March 15, 2015 ~ Bethany, MO to Pella, IA

A chilly and windy but sunny Sunday morning as I figured out a plan for the day which ended up being driving to Pella, Iowa. (I thought Esther and Ger had gone to college there but realized it was Sioux Center, IA.) I stayed here two days in a Holiday Inn four miles out of town, on a golf course surrounded by grand new homes of the type I see in the upscale subdivisions in Holland or Grand Rapids. They dominated the landscape.

I found the Smokey Row, a downtown coffee shop where I knew the pastries would be delicious and had a couple of lemon cookies. The town was founded in the mid 1800s by 800 Dutch immigrants. In the 2000 census the town was 96.32% white; in 2010, it was 95% white. (Check out the insert in USA Today of March 20 on Race Together for the pertinence of this statistic.) And Wyatt Earp spent much of his childhood in Pella, not exactly my first choice had I had to guess.

For now, Pella is a little town on the prairie surrounded by rich farmland. The city plants tulips, and there is a Tulip Festival in May.  The Vermeer Windmill right downtown "is the tallest working windmill in the United States." And Pella has a relatively new opera house which Sarah Palin visited in 2011 when it showed the film based on her life.

The motel was pristine in a sterile way.

Vermeer Windmill - Pella, IA

The Des Moines River is dammed near Pella creating the Red Rock Reservoir, Iowa's largest "lake." I thought about birding there as it was only a few miles from the motel, but not much is happening right now with the birds in this part of the country, AND it was very windy.

I worked and then poked around this town of 10,000. The wind blew hard all day, but the temperature was over 80 degrees! I had salmon at an Applebee's on the edge of town. Many of the commercial and city buildings have an architectural style with a nod to the Dutch influence, including a Walmart.

I also did some housekeeping inside the van and washed my clothes.