Move Out: Fill & Download for Free

One of the cities you would want to visit would be Des Moines, the state’s capitol. It has a lovely art museum and is the largest city in the state. The Adventureland theme park is nearby in Altoona and there are hotels/motels nearby or on the grounds.You might also enjoy visiting the Quad Cities, my home, with a population of roughly 350,000. If it is summertime, you could take the boat that floats between the Illinois and Iowa sides for a leisurely activity. Davenport has the Figge Art Museum, the RME (River Museum Experience) and the Taxslayer Civic Center across the river in Moline always has live shows featuring various artists. (Check ahead). There is also a new consortium of showcases, the Rust Belt and new hotels are going up all over town, including in an area known as “the Bend” in East Moline (Illinois). And let’s not forget that the World’s Largest Truck Stop is perched just on the west edge of the Quad Cities in Walcott, Iowa, at 755 West Iowa 80. (Facebook’s founder, Mark Zuckerberg, visited there.)Cedar Rapids in northeast Iowa is a lively town, and one of the three largest. It has some lovely restaurants right downtown, including the White Star in the downtown area and the Black Sheep. I spent a week in the large hotel downtown that is connected to the Five Seasons Center, (which also features live shows), and each of these restaurants is within walking distance and has great food and ambience. The entire downtown was largely re-done after the catastrophic flood of 2008. If in town, you might enjoy finding the Czech Village area, although it was badly damaged by that flood and many of the original shops moved.Dubuque has some interesting attractions and “Field of Dreams” was filmed near there (Dyersville). There is going to be a baseball game on the home diamond of “Field of Dreams” in the future featuring major league teams, and that will be a draw. There is also a Frank Lloyd Wright home, one built for a teacher, that is not far from Dubuque. [Dubuque is about 60 miles east of my old hometown, Independence, on Highway 20.]If you happen to go through Independence, you could stop at the Old Mill on the Wapsi Pinicon River, a registered historic site, drive past the grounds of the largest Mental Health Institute in the state (spooky), and check out the new museum that is being put together on the grounds of what was once the local hospital on the east edge of town. Near Independence there are numerous Amish families and you might see the local Amish farmers coming to town in their horse and buggies in nice weather on their way to the sale barn.The Mennonite establishment outside of Iowa City, Iowa, Little Amana, is worth a visit, with its woolen mills, wines, etc. The home style meals are good and there is an outlet mall in Williamsburg nearby. Driving in to downtown Iowa City will allow you to see Kinnick Stadium, the University of Iowa Hospital complex, and you can visit the downtown area of the University of Iowa and its ped(estrian) mall. There is also a large Coralville Mall on the outskirts of town in Coralville, Iowa, to the west of Iowa City, and many hotels and motels located there to accommodate the football and basketball crowd who flood to Iowa City for game days.There are other attractions in the state: Pella and its tulips; LeClaire (IA) with its Buffalo Bill Museum (near the Quad Cities); a clock museum that used to be operative near Spillville (no idea if it is still in operation, but look it up), and many good restaurants in all of these towns.If you want a lake, you might drive to Lake Okoboji, a tourist area that regularly features vacationing Des Moines residents. We used to summer there every year for 20 years—-until a big flood drove us to Green Lake, Wisconsin, and Crescent Beach sold its rental properties to buyers who wanted to build summer homes on the lake front. With Arnold’s Park and other attractions, it is still a happening place in the summertime.And, let’s face it, winter is NOT the time of year you want to be visiting Iowa. It was -30 in my old hometown just last week, with the wind chill, an ice storm had coated everything, and it was snowing.