Frost on the Pumpkin!

I am home now, have unloaded the trailer and drinking a beer, contemplating my next move...a shower!! Everything is either muddy (from the snow) or smells of smoke, from the campfire. My face and lips are chapped and windburned and I think I even have a small patch of poison ivy! It was a swell trip!!!

We had so much fun!! Winterset, Iowa is a beautiful little town. We got to tour John Wayne's birthplace, there is a museum with all sorts of memorabilia from his years of movie making. We visited six covered bridges and "shopped til we dropped" buying all sorts of souvenirs and postcards. We ate like Kings or little piggies, you can choose the word which seems more descriptive and/or politically correct!!!

A wonderful highlight was watching "The Bridges of Madison County", on the big screen at an old fashioned local movie theater!! FOR FREE!! Funny thing, what we used to think of as a big screen is very small compared to today's movie complexes. The theater was almost full to capacity for the 4:00PM showing. Everyone was munching on buttered popcorn and slurping big diet pepsi-colas. ( ugh...I prefer Coke!)
But towards the end of the movie, the slurping stopped and a lot of sniffling and nose blowing competed with the on screen voices of Robert and Francesca. It was so enjoyable to see that movie, right there in Winterset, where it was filmed, after we had spend the day touring the bridges and walking on ground where CLINT EASTWOOD had trod!!! I know it sounds corney, but it was a thrill!!!

Thanks to the community of Winterset, Iowa for hosting such a special event!!! Put it on your calender for next year. The second full weekend of October, make your reservations early! We camped in Pammel State Park, if you pull a big rig, make sure you mapquest the alternate entrance. There is a low tunnel that you must pass through, if you enter form the highway 92 side! Be careful!!! It certainly startled one of our gals pulling her big fifth wheel!!! And once you start down that route, there is no good place to turn around!!! So you would be backing up a long way!!!!! That is not good!!!!

Laureen, being a super driver, got through but made it a priority to figure a way out of the park, avoiding the tunnel!!

Remember Charlie Brown's The Great Pumpkin? click on the Great Pumpkin Waltz link over on the right!