“The gentle reader will never, never know what a consummate ass he can become until he goes abroad. I speak now, of course, in the supposition that the gentle reader has not been abroad, and therefore is not already a consummate ass. If the case be otherwise, I beg his pardon and extend to him the cordial hand of fellowship and call him brother.”   -Mark Twain

This past Sunday my mother and her sisters were down in Missouri, visiting extended family. I had read, someplace, that it was now peak season to see the leaves in Northeast Iowa. I had been up there before, on a similar trip, when I was married. A few years later we got divorced. I hoped for better results this time.

Now when I travel to see the leaves in Northeast Iowa, it generally places me in proximity to a couple groups of people I disdain. The first are those who drive around in cars with bikes attached to them. These people must be terribly poor at making up their minds.  Perhaps they are first cousins to those I see in the grocery store wearing exercise clothes.

They are not to be confused with those driving around with canoes on top of their cars. While they can be annoying too, I chalk this latter group up to those the Almighty has either blessed with an abundance of prudence or cursed with a particularly acute fear of water. The best I can muster for those in cars with bikes is either that they haven’t gotten around to fixing the fuel gauge or their spare.

The second group falls under the mantle of the term “bird watchers.” I’ve nothing against actual bird watchers, mind you, but I would be surprised if we apply the term accurately to any more than one out of ten. This leaves the other nine armed with all the tools of the trade required to be a peeping Tom, and us having disarmed our suspicions, at least until now.

Particularly troubling is that I’ve yet to meet anyone that can tell difference. Since we can’t tell which is which, it seems the only natural thing to do is to let the Big Guy sort it out. This same thinking has given rise to Crusades and Indian Wars, and it is my hope I should live long enough to see the Gates of Hell unleash its fury once more on anyone dressed outdoorsy like with binoculars around their neck or a camera with a lens big enough to need its own case.

You may object, and that is your right, but tread softly, gentle reader. You tread on my dreams.

Now a fine gateway to any such trip in Northeast Iowa is to see the mill on the Wapsipinicon in Independence. It sits smack dab in the middle of town, stands several stories high, and lies up against the bridge on the main thoroughfare.  This is where we started, but given that I had a better mill in mind, I passed on a picture.

Downstream, towards the town of Quasqueton, is Frank Lloyd Wright’s Cedar Rock. It is a beautiful home sitting in the trees on the bank of the river. Dad and I had each seen it a couple of times and decided against another.  I mention it, though, because there I first became familiar with the legend of how the Wapsipinicon got its name.

The legend tells of Wapsi, a young Indian brave, stumbling upon and falling in love with the daughter of another tribe’s chief. Her name—you guessed it—was Pinicon, and the star-crossed lovers soon made plans to elope. (The next tribe west had a Justice of the Peace, whom looked remarkably like Elvis.) Their respective tribes, realizing they were gone, soon gave chase.

Coming to the banks of the river, the lovers clasped hands, kissed, leapt, and subsequently drowned because neither had a car sporting a canoe on top of it.   I truth, I don’t think they were lovers at all. I think they got caught bird watching.

We made our way through Strawberry Point, and headed up to the town of Elkader, which sits nestled on the banks of the Turkey River. Outside of town was the mill I was most anxious to see, and after a few miles of gravel we finally found it. Parked by it was the customary Subaru with two canoes on top.

We turned our sights as far northeast as we could go and traveled to the armpit of Iowa, New Albion. This is not to be confused with Albion, which we had already driven through coming past Marshalltown. In my opinion, when comparing the two, that to term this one “new” was stretching it. They sported a slogan of some sort or other.  Seeing that it did not mention “armpit,” I paid no attention to it. Its omission, combined with their use of the adjective “new,” told me all I needed to know about them. Old Albion was full of liars.

South of Albion lies Lansing. Lansing sports a bridge across the Mississippi. Dad and I stopped along the road, pondering what exactly it was that kept the bridge from falling into the Mississippi. We had been studying it for several minutes when I noticed that behind us, looking out over the river, was a bar. In one window I could see an elderly local, quietly drinking his beer and looking at the same bridge we were.

I figured if he’d been looking at it his whole life and hadn’t come up with anything yet, we were not bound to fare any better, and so we continued on to Effigy Mounds National Monument.

It’s about a mile walk to get from the visitor’s center, up the steep bluff, and to the first substantial mound. Dad didn’t figure he could make it, but encouraged me to go ahead. Part way up, I wasn’t sure I was going to make it either, but I did my best not to make a scene about it and quietly restrained my huffing and puffing whenever I happened upon someone else going up or down.  That is until I passed a guy in a winter coat with gloves on.  It was 52 degrees, and I figured I, huffing and puffing, could look like no more of an ass than he did.

The first thing of interest I came to was this:

There had been several signs noting the various plants and trees along the way and what the Native Americans had used them for. Now they were noting the ones the Native Americans had no use of. There are going to be a lot of signs, I thought. Seeing the name of the plant, I wondered if it wasn’t a clue as to the natives’ lack of interest. I could offer a guess on what the fruit of the bladdernut might taste like. In fact I could offer two particularly good ones.

On the way to the top, I’d meet kids running ahead on their way down. I would smile and later offer their parents a “hello,” “look like you’ve got your hands full,” or “I had them clocked at 55, and they were still gaining.” Occasionally I would meet other families a little more anxious, warily clutching their children’s hands. To them I said, “It’s all right; I’ve no binoculars. I’m not a bird watcher.”

If you are not familiar with the mounds, they were built by the Native Americans. The National Monument to them is just outside of Marquette and right above the Mississippi. Some of the mounds have animal shapes, and the first one you come to is that of a little bear, maybe 45 feet long.

I call it a bear because the sign said it was a bear.  I am convinced were they to mow the grass a different way they could just easily claim it was anything from a tortoise to a kangaroo. Still, they said it was a bear, and I didn’t see how believing them was going to cost my anything; so I did.

Right behind Little Bear Mound, even with his feet, you’ll note the appearance of a second mound. This one has no name, but given its location I thought of a couple.  Both were based on whatever I suspected the bear had consumed as his last meal. My best guess is that Bob the Brave was buried in that little mound, and the bear that ate him was in the first. That’s because I don’t believe these mounds are as shrouded in mystery as our more learned scholars.  It’s my belief their purpose was quite simple.

“Suzy, don’t you remember what I told you about bears? You don’t want to wind up like Bob the Brave do you? Do I need to take you up on the bluff again?”

As I continued along the trail, I soon found I wasn’t the only one offering interpretations. On my way to the scenic overlook, I passed the first interpretive sign. It told about the native builders and referenced the image above the words by saying: “This is an artist’s depiction of what they may have looked like.”

As I walked on, I thought to myself how we use the term “artist” as though it gives the depiction greater objectivity. In reality what they did was go to an individual whom was well known to be predisposed with an over-active imagination and said, “Draw us a picture.” Any thought to the contrary was quickly dispelled when I reached the next sign, pictured below.

The particular sign is an artist’s depiction of a tribal burial. What caught my immediate attention, of course, were the bare breasted women dumping dirt over the deceased.  I also noted a hint of a smile on his face. There are many things I think the Native Americans were ahead of us on, and after viewing the above artist’s depiction, I added their concept of proper burials to the list.  In fact, I placed it near the top.

When I returned to the car, I was going to tell Dad what all I had seen, but wound up keeping it to myself.  He’d never believe it, I thought.

Since Prairie Du Chien was just across the river, we ran over to stake claim on a couple of six packs of Spotted Cow beer, one for me and one for my mother. I was looking for the first place that might sell beer, when we passed a liquor store that had a sign out front claiming over 500 different wines. The store was called Stark’s Sport Shop, and when I went in I was greeted by the 500 kinds of wine, a liquor sectioned that dwarfed the wine section, a cooler from which I selected my beer, rows of lures, fishing poles, ammo, guns, sausage, pickled eggs, and cheese curds. There was a line of ten people waiting for one of two cash registers, and as quickly as one sale rang up, someone else took their place.

“You guys always this busy?” I asked.

“You think this is something, you should have been in here yesterday.”

I didn’t know if I would be able to leave such a den of manhood, but I pulled myself together and wept my way back to the car. Had they sold lazy boys and big screens, I probably would have filled out an application.

We crossed back over and continued down through McGregor, which is the closest thing Iowa might have to Deadwood. We stopped at Pike’s Peak State Park, named for Zebulon Pike, the same early explorer Colorado Pike’s Peak is named after. In 1805 he identified the site as an excellent spot for a fort.  They built it in Prairie Du Chien instead. It’s hard to compete against a place selling guns, liquor, fishing supplies, and pickled eggs.

A couple of years later he headed for Colorado on horseback. I have it on good account that he had a jackass strapped across the back of it. It’s a shame. I could have understood a dugout canoe.

Pike’s Peak looks out onto where the Wisconsin River enters the Mississippi. It was there that Louis Joliet and Father James Marquette became the first white men to set their eyes on the Mississippi.

Our final stop was Balltown, where we ate at Brietbach’s Country Dining, Iowa’s oldest restaurant and bar. How it maintains this designation is unknown to me. The original owners were not named Brietbach, and the original building burnt to the ground in 2007. Ten months later it did so again. It seems they change their restaurant as frequently as the oak changes its leaves.

The thought that the designation of ‘oldest’ needed neither permanent establishment nor name, let my thoughts naturally wander to ancient Adam. He was separated from me by more names than even the Bible could inventory. Each one of those names was on a building which sprang up and was gone, only to have a new one take its place. If I was eating in Iowa’s oldest bar, I was doing so as the oldest man alive.