Homage to the Duke

On across Iowa!

I decided to pay homage to the Duke! John Wayne was born in Winterset, Iowa a little southeast of DesMoines. His birth house is available for tours and view of items from his life. I decided the drive by would be enough.

Surrounding Winterset is a number of well preserved and restored covered bridges. I think they are from the turn of the century. A real attraction for these bridges is the movie "The Bridges of Madison County". This is based on a fictional book of the same name. The story is of a woman, Francesca, who came to the US as a war bride from Italy, and meets a National Geographic photographer that is on assignment to document the covered bridges.


The land around Winterset is rolling farmland. One of the movie sets that can be found driving from the Interstate is the one used as Francesca's farm house.

The house is well guarded by a barbed wire fence and large notice of electronic monitoring.

The day then consisted of heading West as the traffic and roads allowed. The weather was great except for a steady north wind at about 15-20 knots. I had to dial in about a 15 degree turn to the steering wheel to keep the car straight.

That proved good for the wind farms that were seen along the highway. Two large ones were seen starting in Adair, Iowa.

Each of these farms had at least a hundred turbines cranking out the electricity.

The next state I80 traverses is Nebraska. It is long and flat. Over 400 miles mostly traveling along the Platte River. The most extraordinary thing I saw was the, literally, millions of Sand Hill Cranes migrating north. I was not able to get any decent shots of the birds other then the long distance from the rest area.

The day ended with the sun setting over the Colorado high plain before the rise of the Front Range. I spent the night at a delightful WalMart in Fort Morgen. There were many other travelers including semi tractor trailers, RV's and others in their cars. The only problem encountered was the temperature fell to 10 degrees F due to the clear sky. I had a pleasant night in my down sleeping bag, but the inside of the car was quite frosted over in the morning and my water bottle was froze solid.

The last stretch into Denver was awesome watching the sun come up behind me lighting up the fog and the mountains.

The drama began as I headed up I70 into the mountains. Just after the first incline and before Golden, Colorado, a Hummer managed to nail a Honda Accord and stop traffic for about 45 minutes. After this was cleared up traffic was backed up just before a short tunnel. After the tunnel away we go. My plan had been to go over Loveland Pass instead of the Eisenhower Tunnel but I thought the warnings and the high wind I could see blowing snow off the tops of the mountains indicated using the tunnel.

Coming out of the tunnel is always exciting as you are now in the middle of the area that is home to Breckenridge, Arapahoe Basin, Copper, Vail, and Eagle's Nest Wilderness. Several 14,000 foot mountains are just to the north of the highway.

That's all for now, I will get some shots of the mountains in the next update. The plan is to head south near Cooper and go on to the Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park, up toward Grand Junction to perhaps ride in the Colorado National Monument.