Iowa quilts

Grimes, Iowa            High 94 Low 75

The high today was the same reported in Yuma, Arizona with Yuma having 10 degrees cooler at night. Yuma had 17% humidity, while her we had 54%. Almost makes me wish we were in Yuma, if it weren’t for the 115 degree predicted for next week there.

We went to Winterset which is the county seat of Madison County. Yes, the same town in the movie “The Bridges of Madison County”. The County Building was constructed in 1876 and is surrounded by very old buildings. 

Our first visit was to the Iowa Quilt Museum. We were a little disappointed in that most of the exhibits were of Quilts of Valor, an organization that presents quilts to our Nations wounded. I quilted some for them before I retired and started traveling. We thought there would be mostly old quilts.

They did have a few old quilts, the oldest being from 1933 which had a lot of hand embroidery work on it.  There were other displays from the old JC Penney building in which the Museum is now housed.

Old JC Penney display case.

They also had display of metals awarded in the Civil War along with some relics from the atom bombing of Japan at the end of World War II. So in spite of our initial disappointment the Museum was worth seeing.

While we were there we went a few doors away to the local quilt store and Cindy got pictures of some of the quilts that were hanging.

We were close to the John Wayne Museum and birth place, so we walked (and Cindy’s Mom got pushed) to go around the block to see the old house where he was born. We had seen the house a while ago and chose not to pay the entrance fee to go inside this time. While we were there it was awfully hot for my Mother-in-law, so she stayed in the car the rest of the trip.

We also drove to some of the Bridges and saw the old rock school, but this post is getting quite long, so I will show them on another post.

Thanks for visiting.