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| Mom studies the Knotty Pines' menu |
The older I get the more fond I become of my birth state -- Iowa. My husband and I spent the Labor Day holiday with my mother, sister and her family, and I actually enjoyed it.
The countryside around Creston is mostly rolling hills and woods, unsuitable for most crops but perfect pasture. Black Angus cattle dot the hillsides and, fittingly, we went to the Knotty Pine steak house for dinner Saturday. The steak there is unlike any I have ever eaten: complex, flavorful, and inexpensive. Even a funnel cloud dipping down from a storm bank, a regular Iowa phenomena, wasn't enough to get us to leave this repast.
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| Mt. Pisgah |
The weather was unsurpassed, with highs in the 70s each day, and we took advantage of it to drive out to
Mount Pisgah Sunday. At its height in the early 1850s, Mt. Pisgah had 2,000 inhabitants and was where the Mormons stopped after leaving Nauvoo, Illinois. The Mormons left in 1852 to travel to Utah and pretty much all that is left is a monument to the emigrants who died there.
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| Green Valley Lake (CNA photo) |
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| 3 Mile Lake |
While we were out, we took a drive around the man-made 3 Mile Lake, which has replaced dried-up Green Valley Lake as the fishing and camping hot spot in southwest Iowa. Interestingly, both 3 and 12-Mile Lakes were named for their distance from Mt. Pisgah.
To break up the trip, on the way home we decided to search out the "famous" pyramids located in Monroe County. We got some vague directions from a website and really didn't expect to locate the cemetery, but then, as we drove down a gravel road, there they were: three miniature pyramids at the back of a country graveyard.
Ron took a fun picture of me "holding" one of the pyramids.The pyramid story, as provided by the
Iowa Gen Web Project, goes something like this:
"After reading more than 2,000 books, Axel Peterson, past 70 and the publisher since 1913 of a miniature paper called Boomer, began to realize his dream of building three pyramids in the Chisholm (better known as Hickory Grove or Convenator) Cemetery northwest of Avery during 1939.
“One of his books told the story of the ancient pyramids in Egypt and contained diagramed details of their construction. If there were pyramids in Egypt, Axel thought, he could build them here as well.
"Peterson’s neighbors built the pyramids of native sandstone and cement. The largest of the three contains a crypt where Peterson planned for himself and a friend from Minnesota, Heymooler, to be entombed.
“An upside-down iron bed of a dump truck was used for the roof and upper side walls of the crypt. Concrete benches and a table were planned so that Peterson and Heymooler might be encased in cement and seated facing each other. These plans were never realized, however, and Axel was buried in the Cuba Cemetery east of Avery instead.
“Today, the pyramids stand as strange symbols to Axel Peterson’s faith. They attract many sight-seers as well as providing a place for young people to gather.”
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| Men's dorm & the Tower of Invincibility |
We decided to look for
Maharishi University School of Management in Fairfield and were amazed to find a large and flourishing, if somewhat odd, campus. While I explored on my scooter, Ron talked with an aging long-haired man who had worked for the college as a janitor in the past. Ron asked how people find out about this college and the man said that in his case San Francisco just got too expensive. Makes sense somehow.
We're back on the flat plains of central Illinois now, but I kind of miss Iowa.
