So now we were down to just the three of us, and Maile drove Jan and me to the MacBride Raptor Center which is operated by the U of I. They’ve got quite a collection of birds which they care for, most of which were brought to them following injury, some of which were chicks who have imprinted on humans and cannot be released into the wild.
MacBride Raptor Center- Barred Owl, Kestrel, Great Horned Owl, and...well, you know.
It’s on the grounds of a beautiful recreation area with facilities for hiking, camping and water sports. And the region’s very rich in fossils which are regularly uncovered by the flowing and flooding water.
Lake MacBride and some of its ancient aquafauna.
That afternoon we were off to the town of West Branch about 30 minutes to the east, home of the Hoover Presidential Library and Birthplace–we came away quite impressed with Hoover and his life, whom we had known little about other than that he had the extremely bad luck to be inaugurated a few months before the stock market crash of 1929.
Herbert Hoover's two-room birthplace.
About an hour before closing a tornado alert was announced, and they herded all of us visitors into in an inner corridor of the museum, windowless and chairless, for half an hour. It was the same storm that generated the tornado that devastated Joplin MO, but nothing touched down near us.
We got back to Maile’s place and enjoyed our last evening and sunset together.
Iowa City Sunset from Maile's living room