Our last morning in Iowa City, Maile drives us to to visit the Amana Colonies before we head off toward Chicago. There are unpleasant construction delays on the roads, and George checks his Android phone’s GPS (a new toy) and announces “There’s a way around this…”. So Maile turns off onto a smaller paved road, which becomes a gravel road after a couple of miles. No problem. Then we pass a farmhouse and a sign says, “Grade B Road, Not Maintained, Pass at Your Own Risk”. We’re thinking, “How bad can a dirt road be?” Well, 45 minutes later with the help of a lot of shrubbery pulled out of the woods and a great deal of sweating and elbow grease, we manage to push, pull and drag Maile’s Lexus out of where it had gotten stuck in axle-deep mud, and Maile heroically drives us through the last half-mile of nasty, slippery muck. It’s a measure of how stressed out we all are that George never even thinks to take a photo during the whole process. If you ever see a sign that says “Grade B Road”, turn around and get out of there as fast as you can.
Maile's beautiful Lexus after the "Grade B Road".
But our visit to Amana was great, we watched their automated looms weaving beautiful things (we bought one cotton blanket for Minnesota), and admired their gorgeous chairs, tables, cabinet work, clocks, and good food and drink. And we drove back to Maile’s place the long way.
Maile hosed the mud off of us before we got back on the road for Evergreen Park, and we’ve heard from her since that her Lexus suffered no permanent damage.
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