The beach bag is washed and put away for the season, my overgrown flower pots have been replaced with lavender mums, and I've got a list of fall meals on the fridge that involve a lot of things cooked in a stove pot, but this blog is still going to be in summer for at least the next few posts. After we returned home from vacation, we still had a few weeks of summer left and a few more things to cross off our summer bucket list. As soon as August hits every summer, I get a little spacey, caught in a tug-of-war between my desire to finish our summer connected and present, yet gearing up for all that goes into an always hectic start to the school year. I found that getting out of the house and changing our scenery was always a good way to prioritize us. And this little August call to escape led us to one of our favorite days of summer and a new tradition staple for our summer days at home.
Cruz woke up bright and early as usual on a sunny Tuesday morning. I called him over to the desk and showed him a zoomed in map of Iowa and asked him to close his eyes and point. Wherever his finger landed, that would be our destination for the day. Everything was within an hour radius. The only stipulation? It had to be a place we've never explored before.
Hello, Independence.
I packed a simple bag of swimsuits, towels, cash for spending money, my camera to document our day, and a blanket for a picnic. We hopped in the car, I put on a road tripping playlist on Spotify, and off we headed eastbound on Highway 20. I knew little about our destination, only that it was the town after Jesup, the community I did my student teaching in, and that the kids I taught often talked about how good the pizza at Bill's was. That's about it.
What I would quickly come to discover was that Independence, Iowa was just about the perfect spot for our very first small town adventure day. As we pulled into town, I immediately fell for the quaint and charming Main Street, the river that flowed right through the middle of town, and the historic mill with the old brick and big arched windows. It was big enough to play tourist and blend in for the day, but small enough to feel like we could easily get a sense of the unique traits that characterized this little Iowa city. And the small town girl in me immediately fell for it all.
Our first stop was a cute little coffee shop right on Main Street. We shared the most delicious homemade cinnamon roll, and each ordered a blended smoothie drink with whipped cream that was actually a big dollop of Cool Whip. ;) We took our treats to a park along the river and spent the morning wandering the pretty shaded banks of the Wapsipinicon River.
My favorite part of this little town was that old mill right on the banks of the river. It first opened its doors in 1854 and was used to make flouring mill. That is about as old as our Iowa history gets! The charm and character of this five-story building abounded and I loved how accessible it was for us to explore. We played hide-and-seek, threw rocks in the river, and the kids humored me with some sweet pictures next to those big ol' windows.
It didn't take long for Cruz to discover the military tank and cannon! In about two seconds time, he was fully immersed in his full-on boy world, climbing to the very top, hiding in the eagles' nest part, and making a lot of shooting noises. :) I'm not sure we were actually supposed to be climbing them in the first place, but I figured we'd play ignorant tourists if asked.
I had planned to find a local place for lunch, but we played at the park too long and were eager to check out the new Independence pool for our afternoon. We settled for a Burger King picnic and vowed to try Bill's Pizza the next time we made it to Independence.
We spent the majority of the afternoon getting acquainted with the Independence pool. I'm not sure if we were just tired of our hometown pool by this point in summer, or if we enjoyed being complete strangers in the middle of all the locals, but we had thee most fun day swimming together. The pool was great - lots of bells and whistles, but a nice big four foot area where both kids could swim together. And mom swam, too! I went down the slides and even had the entire pool to myself during (drum roll please) POOL CHECKS! I had forgotten about these glorious little ten minute opportunities for adults to swim uninterrupted while the kids sit by the side and watch! Cruz and Mila were so confused!
We ended our day away with a pit stop in Jesup for some hometown ice cream! And oh my word, the ice cream at Dairy Kone is nearly worth a twenty minute drive to Jesup! I had my first banana split in probably ten years and I savored every single bite of it!
The kids were completely zonked out on the way home, and my mind happily trailed to future summers of carrying on our new small town tradition. Cruz is seven, so that's about 11 more years of summer adventuring with him. That's 11 more towns to explore in this great state of ours. And if I continue to promise food and ice cream, hopefully he'll join me for the ride.
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