Dubuque, Iowa

 After hiking four miles yesterday, we both had a good night's rest and woke up ready to explore Dubuque.  Dubuque is about an hour's drive south of here.  It was another beautiful day...sunshine and 70's.  

We have noticed so many very large farm houses.  We have no idea how old the houses are but there must have been many children raised in them.

The road to and from Dubuque was curvy and hilly as it wound through the many fields of corn and beans.

I don't think this is your typical water tower.

We followed our GPS into our first stop in Dubuque.  GPS took us through beautiful rural areas and neighborhoods of homes.  It was definitely the back way to "Mines of Spain" where we stopped to see where the founder of Dubuque was buried.

The Indian Tribe Meskwaki (their story is in Monday's blog) lived on banks of the Mississippi River before Dubuque was established.  They were fur traders with French fur traders.  The Indians also worked lead mines in the area.  Julien Dubuque was the first European to settle on what is now Iowa soil in 1788.  He received a land grant from Spain to be named as "Mines of Spain."  He continued mining lead on the land.  Lead mining slowed down after the Civil War.

This is the grave of Potosa the daughter of the  chief of the Meskwaki tribe and the wife of Dubuque.  He and Dubuque were good friends.

  

When Dubuque died the tribe buried him with tribal honors beneath a log mausoleum at the site where the current monument now stands.  The site provides a scenic view of the Mines of Spain, the City of Dubuque, the Mississippi River Valley, and Illinois.

The monument under which Dubuque is buried.

Views from the monument.

View of Dubuque from the monument.

View of Illinois across the Mississippi.

We stopped at an interpretative center for the Mines of Spain and took this picture of a wikiup.  This was what the Meskwaki Indians used for homes instead of a teepee.

Our next stop was this Shot Tower.  It was constructed in 1856 to produce lead shot.  Lead was melted at the base of the tower, hoisted to the top, poured through screens of different gauges, tumbling smoothly round as it fell into the water vats below.  The shot was then sorted and packed.  When completed, the tower could produce between 6-8 tons daily.  It is 120 feet tall.

It is located in a commercial area of the Port of Dubuque.  Even with the GPS directions, we passed the street it is located on and had to cross the river into Wisconsin before we could turn around and try it again.  The area was so industrialized that we thought we should not even be driving there but the GPS was correct.

Next stop was the Fenelon Place Elevator.  Dubuque has an interesting downtown area.  There are lots of old buildings and houses.

Dubuque Courthouse.

Old clocktower. 

Some of the original brick street is still visible under the new coating.

Dubuque, like many other towns has murals painted on the sides of buildings.  This one is of Julien Dubuque

The Fenelon Place Elevator.  JK. Graves built the original elevator in 1882 because he lived at the top of the bluff but worked on the bottom.  In 1882 Dubuque was an hour an a half town - at noon everything shut down for an hour and a half when everyone went to dinner.  Mr. Graves had to spend half an hour driving his horse and buggy round the bluff to get to the top and another half an hour to return downtown, even though his bank was only two and half blocks away.  He liked to take half an hour for dinner and then a half and hour nap.  That added up to two hours!  He was a world traveler and had seen incline railways in Europe and decided that a cable car would solve his problem and it did.

His gardener would let him down in the morning, bring him up at noon, down after dinner and nap and back up after work.  Soon other asked for a ride.  The original car Mr. Graves rode has been replaced several times and the original hemp pull ropes replaced with metal cable.  It was a fun ride.

After you enter the car, you pull a bell on a rope which lets the operator at the top know that you are ready to ascend.  The operator also takes the fee for riding which for us was $8.00 round trip.  We thought it was worth it for the experience and view from the top.

Picture above and below were taken from the top of the elevator.

This is the turn style that has been used since a fee of five cents was charged to ride the elevator in the late 1890's  People began to rely on it to get from the top to bottom for shopping, business, school, and church.

After riding the elevator, we drove back to our campsite arriving home around 2:00.  We ate a late lunch and spent the rest of the afternoon reading and relaxing.  It was nice to sit outside under the trees in the shade.  Around 6:00 we took a walk around the campground.  When we had Sandy we used to that every evening but haven't done it since.  This is a very nice campground.  The roads are all concrete and the sites are well-spaced.  It is well-maintained.  We really like it and would camp here again if we ever came this way to camp.

We loaded the car on the dolly so we don't have to do it tomorrow morning.  We are only 100 miles from Mississippi Palisades State Park in Illinois so we won't leave here until noon.  We have enjoyed exploring Iowa.  It has some very interesting history.  

Exploring the Driftless Land

After a good night's rest we awoke to fog in the campground.

Our first stop was an overlook in the park.  Instead of seeing the Mississippi River, we saw more fog!

Spider webs fascinate me.  

The Mississippi River is below.

Because of the fog we couldn't see the river so we drove to Effigy Mounds

 National Monument.   To get to the park, we drove through MacGregor.  Above and below are pictures of main street.  There are all kinds of neat shops.  Maybe next time around, we can stop but today we were on a mission to see Effigy Mounds .

The road had limestone bluffs on one side and the Mississippi River on the other side.

The Mounds is celebrating 75 years as a National Monument.  I had to admit to the ranger that I had never heard of this park until the Iowa Quarter came out with the Mounds pictured on it.  She said she has heard that so many times.  There are three kinds of mounds preserved in the park:  effigy, conical, and linear.  The conical and linear were probably places of burial.  The effigy mounds of animals were probably clan symbols used in seasonal ceremonies.   It is estimated that in the 1800's there were over 10,000 mounds of all types; however, fewer than 1000 survive today.

We took one trail which was on a boardwalk.  This tunnel goes under the highway.

Along the trail were a couple of linear mounds and a conical mound.  

Most of the trails to see the effigy mounds were at least two miles long.  We started on one but the first part of the trail was mostly up so we decided to save it for another time (maybe?)

This and several pictures following were taken along the boardwalk trail.

After we left Mounds, we drove across this bridge over the Mississippi to Wisconsin and the town of Prairie du Chien.  

We stopped at the Welcome Center for suggestions of what to see and do in Prairie du Chien.  We decided to eat lunch first before visiting the site of an old fort.

This is where we had lunch.  It was very good.  Carol had fried chicken and I had a chicken/bacon wrap.  Both were very good.

From there we drove to the site of Fort Crawford.  Fort Crawford was actually built two times.  The first time was in 1816 on St. Feriole Island right on the Mississippi River.  It was built out of wood and the wood deteriorated very quickly due to heavy moisture.  The second fort was built higher on the bluff of limestone and survived until the Army closed the fort  The fort was built to help control the Plains Indians and protect European settlers moving into the area.  The commander of the second Fort Crawford was Col. Zachary Taylor (future president).  Also on the post was Jefferson Davis (future president of the Confederacy).  In fact, Jefferson Davis married Zachary Taylor's daughter.  

The only building which survived is the hospital.  Today this building houses a medical museum.  The doctor of the fort Dr. William Beaumont became well known for his medical experiments concerning the digestive system.  He had a patient who had a gunshot wound in his stomach that would not heal.  He called the hole "his lid to the stomach" and performed 56 experiments on the patient.  I guess you could say that this bad thing resulted in good things!

This island in the east channel of the Mississippi was once a big fur trading hub for the Upper Mississippi River until over hunting ended the trade.  One fur trader became a land speculator and during his lifetime became Wisconsin's first millionaire.  His name was Hercules Louis Dousman.  He was quite a character and scallywag.  

His first house.

After his death, his wife and son built this grand house called Villa Louis.  Tours are offered on the hour but we couldn't catch the tour at the right time and didn't want to wait around so again next time (maybe?).

About three o'clock we drove back to our camp site to relax.  About 5:30 we drove back to the first overlook we were at this morning to take pictures that we missed because of the fog.  This picture shows the confluence of the Wisconsin River and Mississippi. In the middle of the picture there is a railroad bridge going over water.  That is the mouth of Wisconsin River flowing into the Mississippi. 

This picture shows the bridge we crossed into Wisconsin and Prairie du Chien.

After we took the above pictures, we decided to take the trail to Bridal Falls.  This is Bridal Falls.  The water level limited the falls to no more than a trickle but the hike into the canyon was very nice.  The trail was all boardwalk and stairs.  By the time we finished this hike, we had hiked four miles for the day.  Hooray for us!

On the trail we saw this log with interesting moss on it.

An enlargement of the moss.  It was very pretty

Carol got this picture of a speedboat on the Mississippi.

The title of my blog today was "Exploring the Driftless Land"  Driftless lands were words that we read all day about this area.  Nothing explained it so when we got back to camp, I searched the internet and found out what it means.  The Driftless land is comprised of land from Southwest Wisconsin, Southeast Minnesota, Northeast Iowa, and extreme Northwest Illinois.  This area of land was never covered by ice during the Ice Age.  Because of that, there was no ice to wear down the land into smooth rolling hills and prairies as the ice receded.  Instead it is characterized by steep hills, forested ridges, deeply carved river valleys, and spring-fed waterfalls.  From the little we have driven around this area, I would say it perfectly describes the terrain in this part of the country.  It is "driftless."  In all my 77 years I had never heard of land described in that manner.  A person is never to old to learn something!

It has been another good day.  The temperatures were in the low 70's with sunshine.  We saw a lot but also had a lot of "maybe next times."  We learned more history and about the land in this part of the country...a good day!