GT of 2020: Iowa Edition

Hello there, my lovelies.

I’m afraid I’ve been too busy exploring and roasting marshmallows and writing stories for The Constellations to keep you perfectly up to date on the Great Trek of 2020. Rest assured, it continues, and I have been trekking about enthusiastically.

Let me catch you up on the last week’s adventures.

The hills of Iowa

Right. The last time I blogged about the Great Trek, I updated you, from a Walmart parking lot, that I had arrived in Iowa. I mentioned the Midwest, dirt roads, and the fact that Iowa hasn’t got much in the way of variety or impressiveness to offer for scenery.

It sounds like I was about to have a dull week, right?

Happily, not so!

Now, those things are all assuredly true. Driving out to the campground, I discovered that most of the roads were dirt roads- paved country roads are the exception to the rule. My GPS actually got lost.

Not me. My GPS.

So, what’s in Iowa, anyways?

Corn. More corn. An occasional cow. The odd road marked “snow evacuation route.” More corn.

The Devil’s Backbone.

Hah! Yes, indeed. The devil may have gone down to Georgia for the purposes of soul-stealing, but at one point or another he dropped his backbone in Iowa.

Oops.

You’d think he’d’ve missed it by now.

The place of interest in Iowa, for me, was Backbone State Park, a 1,200 acres of forest and river that was a sight for sore eyes after all that freaking corn. It was Iowa’s first state park and is exactly 100 years old, having been founded in 1920. Its namesake feature is the Devil’s Backbone, a big ridge of bedrock (dolomite) that honestly does look like the bones of some absolutely massive prehistoric creature jutting up out of the earth. A vertebra here, a few more vertebrae there- it was actually very cool.

There’s a short (1 mile-ish) trail over the Devil’s Backbone itself. I applaud Iowa’s tacit support of natural selection: it isn’t a hard trail in terms of length or incline (if you stay on the main trail, but I did not- in which case, you’d better have good shoes and sure feet). It is, however, a goat trail on the edge of a trip to nowhere if you fall over the edge. Iowa posts no warning signs or legal notices, nor do they provide any railings or other safety devices. There’s a sign marking the trailhead. There’s you and your common sense. You make it back out if you have a lot of common sense or are a highly athletic and determined critter, such as myself.

The views from Backbone Trail are quite splendid. There’s the Maquoketa River on one side (more of a large creek, if you ask me) and Backbone Lake on the other. Then there are all the fascinating rock formations.

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The Cave

On my map of the park, up near the north gate, one of the marked attractions was given the highly informative label of “Cave.” Sure enough, after I drove past the extremely disappointed “Balanced Rock” (which was, yes, a sort of balancing rock), I found a turn off with a trail marked by this sign:

I didn’t have high hopes.

Next thing I know, I’m scuttling sideways like a crab, hunched over with one hand balancing me against the mud, going around yet another corner. It’s (blissfully) cold. The water drips in an incredibly creepy fashion. I can feel the weight of the rock overhead and see my breath in the air, and, holy cow, have I been rereading too much Dracula lately!

If you think it a little odd that I gamely plunged into a dark hole in a rock to see what was there, may I remind you that, whilst exploring a historic cemetery in Louisiana, I came upon an open crypt and thought, “Why, yes, let me just take these steps down here into the earth and explore a freaking empty grave.” Clearly, going down into a dark, open crypt ranks much higher on the “Likely the start of a bad horror movie” scale than going into a cave. Right?

Again, I wish to applaud Iowa for its decision to leave folks to their own devices. Other states would’ve put up a sign about not getting oneself killed. Here, they just plunk down a little unassuming sign at a small turnoff and say, “Have at it, kids!” A bit of warning would have been nice so I could have properly prepped to crawl in a bunch of water and mud on my first trip to The Cave, but, at the same time, the thrill of discovery is a wonderful gift.

Side note, my hiking boots are AMAZINGLY waterproof. However, mud sticks to them like glue.

Also, yes, this is the cave that inspired “Apus.” Read it here, already!

Water adventures

After you’ve been pleasantly surprised with Backbone Trail and magnificently disappointed by East Lake Trail, West Lake Trail also takes you by whole fistfuls of rocks that really do look like scattered, giant vertebrae. It skirts the edge of Backbone Lake, obviously. The fishing on the lake appears terrible, but it looks like a nice spot for a canoe or kayak.

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Now, I am not one for boating or fishing. I’d prefer to be on my own two feet and not bored out of my mind, thank you.

However, this does not preclude my having some very nice aquatic adventures.

I chose to not go swimming at the beach on Backbone Lake- far too many geese and small children in diapers wandering about. Just because they don’t test the lake water in Iowa like they do in Wisconsin, doesn’t mean it isn’t revolting.

Instead, I went for a dip at the northern end of the park, in the Maquoketa River (the CCC dammed this river to form Backbone Lake during the Great Depression).

I have been informed that the precise exercise I engaged in is termed “creek stomping” by the local yokels, which does seem to adequately account for the particulars of this activity. I started by the cave (The CAVE!) and waded up the river until I got to Richmond Springs. The water coming out of the spring is 48°F, a temperature whose true frigidity you cannot comprehend until you swim in it- “startlingly refreshing” about covers it, as would my actual exclamation, “Sonofabitch that’s COLD!!!.” This was an absolutely delightful afternoon. Saw some fish. None of them were anywhere near the fishermen. 10/10 rating, would stomp that creek again.

While I was in my bathing suit and water shoes, I took the opportunity to return to The Cave, being thus more properly attired for wading/crawling through shallow water and mud. I spelunked until to go further would have required wriggling through a narrow aperture on my belly, with no guarantee of a larger space up ahead. Being stuck (literally) in a cave is really rather not the kind of trouble I consider a fun time, so I declared that to be as far as one can go in The Cave and turned around. Came out covered in mud, nicely cooled off, and deliriously euphoric about life, exploration, and the Great Trek in general.

Odds and ends

Happy are they who pack can openers, for they shall eat beans.

Hiking provides me with exactly the right, bite-sized dosages of other humans. You greet each other, make some pithy observation, and keep walking.

On that note, a complaint: a pickup band of folks in their 70s trying to learn how to play bluegrass around a campfire is, well, painful. Lord love them for trying to learn something new, but I sure wish they’d learned a bit more than four chords, three songs, and one strum pattern before they took their show on the road. Never thought I’d be camping with my earbuds in, but here we are….

There is nothing else quite like the smell of a field of corn. Bonus points when pheasants come running out of said field of corn.

Aunt Emmy’s Cupcakes in Manchester, IA

According to park information, the nearest civilization to Backbone SP is a hamlet called Dundee, IA. If you drive there expecting to find civilization, you get a sinking feeling roundabout the time you pass the city limits and see the welcome sign with the city’s slogan: “Dundee. Tiny in size, mighty in pride.” Ten seconds later when you drive through the middle of town, you realize just how much you were set up to be disappointed when you find the downtown consists of a post office and a hair salon.

Just kidding, there’s a bar and a fire station, too.

So the nearest civilization is actually about 25 minutes away. Manchester, IA, is the oasis where I found the Walmart of “DJ, Minister, Videographer” parking lot fame. It’s got a bit more to it than Dundee, but I wasn’t hoping for much when I went in search of a place to sit and edit (and post) the most recent installment of The Constellations, “Apus.”

I spotted a bright aqua green awning over a storefront along Main Street, belonging to Aunt Emmy’s Bakery-Coffee House-Cupcakes. Its nearest competitor for my choice of place to hang out and work was a Dairy Queen, and it looked okay online. In case you’re interested: https://www.auntemmys.com

Well, what do you know- Aunt Emmy’s (complete with Aunt Emily in the back, cooking and baking away) had lovely Earl Grey tea, a cupcake frosted with cookie dough, and I was even tempted into lunch (writing stories is hungry work). I was informed the pot roast panini was good. It seems like a terrible idea, but, like that Black Friday sandwich made of Thanksgiving leftovers, it was, in fact, delicious.

The place generally had a great vibe (despite the fact that the view across the street was just the local hardware store). Look at that- a cup of tea you could take a bath in. Ah, bliss. Good chairs, tables that didn’t rock back and forth as you typed, and one of those historic tin ceilings that make me so happy because they are so shiny.

The people I met in this coffeeshop were just lovely. I had a nice chat with a lady named Rachel. I was sitting in the shadows (as I am accustomed to do, of course) and she came over, thinking I was the friend she was meeting for coffee. “Hi,” she says. Then, “Oh, you’re not who I thought you were. You are cute, though!”

Considering I had put especial effort into my appearance before I drove into town, this remark had a positive effect on my usual disposition. Rachel was enchanted by the idea of my trek across the country, and told me about her trips to the Badlands and Yellowstone.

Perhaps what Iowa has to offer is, in fact, the rare resource of decent human beings.