On the morning of Day 8, I awoke at a Holiday Inn Express. As I’ve mentioned on previous trips, I can always rely on Holiday Inn Express to provide the exact same breakfast, at every one of their locations, and it’s always unappetizing. That, combined with the time it takes me to complete the daily Vyalev pump re-load, meant that I had no breakfast.

My plan for Day 8 was to just keep driving north on the Great River Road. I was hoping I would make it all the way to Effigy Mounds National Monument, but I didn’t really expect to get that far. Especially since I wanted to start the day of driving northish by going back a little to the south, to the “Mines of Spain”. You may be asking yourself, “They were mining for Spaniards?” Well, no, DAMMIT! Y’see, a few decades before the French sold Louisiana to the USA, the area (including what is now Iowa) was claimed by Spain. And it was Spain what granted miners the privilege of mining for lead in this area. I didn’t go to the lead mines themselves, but I did hike to a large quarry nearby. Experience it yourself, right here:

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Next, I hiked down to the tomb of Julien Dubuque, an early lead miner from Quebec, for whom the nearby city is named. ‘Tis a short hike, with scenic views and historic markers along the way…

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Next, I made my way back across the city of Dubuque, pronounced “duh-BYOOK”. It seems Iowa has no shortage of ways to spell “duh”. This is the oldest city in Iowa and for about twenty years (1860 – 1880) was one of the 10 biggest cities in the USA! For these reasons and more, I was very tempted to just walk around photographing the city all day. But I forged on past Dubuque, to more quaint riverside towns and bubonic, er, bucolic farmland. Some examples of the latter:

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I stopped for a leisurely lunch at Breitbach’s Country Dining, the oldest restaurant in the state of Iowa. I don’t remember the details of what I ordered, but I remember it being good. I then resumed my northward journey and continued driving until I saw this:

OK, clearly I’m lost now! Pikes Peak? I’m somehow 950 miles west of where I thought I was! Well, no, it turns out this part of the Mississippi River was surveyed by Brigadier General Zebulon Pike a couple of years before he surveyed what was to become Colorado. And once he saw the big boy out west, he was no longer content with having an Iowa ant hill named after him.

I looked over the park map and decided to take a short (0.6 miles roundtrip) hike to one of the many places I’ve encountered called Bridal Veil Falls. This hike turned out to be a bit longer than 0.6 miles, because a loop that I thought I had seen on the map was actually a dead end, requiring a little backtracking. And it was MUCH more strenuous than I had expected; it’s almost entirely stairs. So, was the waterfall worth all that effort? You tell me:

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By now, the sun was threatening to set, and I was physically exhausted from the stairway / trail, so back to the hotel I went.

Day 9:

I drove back to the Des Moines area, where I proceeded to hang out with an infant who kept calling me a loser.

To be continued…