The leaves have all fallen and the weather has turned cold, so it is time for us to take our trip south for this season. As we did last year, we invite everyone to share in our journey. This year we are heading to the South East. We love to hear from you and welcome any and all ideas for our travels, based on your own experiences.
Our first stop, the Amana Colonies, is in the heart of beautiful rural Iowa. I'm serious! It has a beauty unique to the heartland of America with its soft rolling fields of cut corn stocks shinning in the noon sun, freshly plowed fields of rich black soil and other fields dormant for the winter moving from green to amber. There are still a few leaves on the oaks trees mixed in with the smokey grey branches of trees now dormant on the hillsides of eastern Iowa. The temps are just a bit milder than back home so the birds are gathering for their move to warmer weather, like us.
The Amana Colonies were first established back in 1850's. Like their neighbors the Amish just 50 miles away, they were escaping religious persecution in their homeland of Germany after breaking from their respective Church's (the Amanas from the Lutheran Church) to Iowa. Iowa provided isolation with sparsely populated areas, economic opportunities and fertile soil. But the Amana and Amish are two distinct and different groups with no ethnic relationship. Nothing says this more than the Dead Head parking sign we found just off the main drag. OK I'm sure this is not the usual Amana signs but there are no horse-drawn buggies here. The seven villages sit one hour apart (as the ox cart travels) and each contains a church, farm, multi-family residences and communal kitchens. The communal lifestyle continued until 1932. Today, these building contain art galleries, artisan workshops, restaurants, antique shops and B & B's.
Touristy, sure but villages harken back to the buildings we experienced in Europe with timber framing and stone construction that will stand the test of time. And if you are into mass quantities of home cooked family style food, this is heaven. Worth a visit.
The next few days will take us along the Mississippi river into Missouri, through St Louis and into Tennessee to Nashville where we hope to connect with our new friends, Jack and Cassie who we met last year on our trip to the South West. Stay tuned, we hope to have some wonderful experiences to share.
No comments:
Post a Comment