Vibrant

There is a cemetery a few blocks from my house. It's a really old cemetery with graves dating back to the 1700's. It's really quite picturesque, and the other day when I drove by I noticed that the trees there were looking especially vibrant as their leaves changed color. So, naturally, I pulled into the cemetery and started snapping pictures (what? Doesn't everybody do that?). Here is the result:

Echinacea Anyone?

My fascination continues with how easily things grow in the Midwest. The other day I pulled in the driveway and found this Echinacea that had volunteered itself to grow in our backyard.

It's Freezing Cold

I really don't have much to blog about this week. Other than the incredibly cold temperatures here, everything else has been pretty normal. Last week I headed to work in -44 degree windchill. That is officially the coldest I have ever been. The air temperature here reached -29 degrees last week- that doesn't even factor in windchill. Even penguins would be cold. The day that we reached twenty-nine below was the coldest day in recorded history for Davenport. How lucky that Brett and I could be here for that. :-P <---Note the sarcasm.

I hope that everyone reading this is warmer than we are right now. ;-)

We Haven't Blown Away (Yet)

I am having a hard time believing that today is the first official day of winter, because we have been hit hard by the winter weather already. It all began on Thursday with lots of snow, sleet, and of course freezing rain to go on top of and solidify all of the snow we already had on the ground. Yesterday Brett was kind enough to go out and de-ice my car that had been sitting outside since Thursday night. The snow was so solid that this huge chunk came off in one piece off of the roof of the car:

Everything outside is completely covered in ice...

Even this bird house has a giant icicle:

We could even pick up giant chunks of snow in our yard because everything is so frozen:

Today it is very cold and VERY windy. When I woke up this morning the air temperature outside was -7 degrees with -32 degree windchill... I think I am just going to stay inside where it is warm and cook some chili. :)

NOTE: For those of you receiving e-mail blog updates, I added a cool plug-in to the blog so that it looks like it is snowing. If you want to check it out, you can go here.

Fulton/Galena

Brett's Mom came to town this weekend and we had a really great time just hanging out and catching up. For our one "road trip" day we headed up to Galena, which I have previously blogged about and we also stopped in Fulton, IL to tour this cool windmill they have there.

First, the windmill: Originally the people of Fulton wanted to purchase an old windmill from Holland and have it shipped to America, but Holland does not allow their old windmills to leave the country, so that was a no-go. Instead, they decided to have a windmill assembled in Holland, and then shipped to America. The whole thing weighs a whopping 74 tons and does not have a single nail holding it together. They built it the good old-fashioned way using only wooden pegs.

The windmill is one of only a handful of working windmills in the United States. At the Fulton windmill on windy days they grind their own 100% natural completely organic flour, which I think is really cool.

Next we headed up to Galena where we once again tasted some really amazing wine at Galena Cellars (love them!), ate lunch at Johnathan's, and browsed all of the fun little shops along the way.

Canoe Trip!

For the Fourth of July weekend we went on an AWESOME canoe trip with Dean & Michelle.

We all drove up to Sauk City, Wisconsin and camped on a beach on the Wisconsin River the first night. We set up camp, cooked some dinner, and then set off fireworks (which, by the way are totally legal in Wisconsin-in case you were wondering). It was the perfect way to spend the Fourth of July. We were able to see lots of fireworks from our location, plus we had our own!

The next day we canoed down the river for a few hours. We stopped on a beach for lunch and some swimming, and then canoed some more before we found a place to set up camp for the night. We camped overnight again on an island in the middle of the river, and then canoed downstream some more to the pick up point where The Canoe Lady picked us up and took us back to our car.

All in all, we had a really great time. It was a weekend full of firsts for me: first time camping, first time canoing, first time in Wisconsin, first time swimming in a river, first time lighting fireworks...I'm sure there's more. If you would like to check out more pictures from our trip, click here.

EEK!!!!!

So last Friday while I was at work we had Tornado warnings and I, um, didn't handle it as well as I would have expected. I was practically climbing the walls and poor Amanda had to calm me down. There were a couple of Tornado touchdowns that I know by tornado standards were no where near us, but by Amy standards were WAY too close for comfort. Today we are slated for more strong storms, with a slight risk for severe weather... I am keeping my fingers crossed for no tornado warnings this week. If there are you can find me hiding behind Mel for the remainder of the afternoon. :-P

Meet Eskimo Amy

BRRRRRR it's cold! As I passed a bank this morning on my way to work the sign outside it flashed -8º!!!!! That my friends is AIR TEMPERATURE and does not take in to account the wind chill, which in our area is currently anywhere from -25º to -40º. Not only is that the coldest it has been since we moved to Iowa, it is by far the coldest I have ever been in my entire life!!!!!

Ice Storm

The worst of the ice storm came after dark last night, and it was hard for me to get a picture at that time. It was raining, and cameras don't usually like rain, particularly not rain that freezes on contact. But I was able to capture this shot taken at Palmer of the windows completely glazed over with ice:

Every window on campus looked like this. It was kind of eerie to walk through the halls and not be able to see out any of the windows.

Today is October 30th

Today is October 30th, but (for reasons that I do not understand) trick-or-treating is going on tonight. Not tomorrow. No, we wouldn't want to actually hold Halloween festivities on Halloween. Is this just some weird Midwest tradition that I do not understand? I also had someone tell me that trick-or-treating is usually done the Sunday before Halloween. That information is inconsistent with the fact that trick-or-treating is taking place on this fine Tuesday, but it still brings up 2 questions: 1) Why Sunday? It's still a school night (the only logical reason I can come up with for the change) and 2.) Why not just have it on Halloween?!?!?!? If anyone has the answer to this please let me know.

Fall Colors

Antique Tractor Show

This past weekend just for fun we decided to head down to an antique tractor show not far from our house. It was a pretty fun event with lots of farmers and some live country music. At one point the tractor show actually turned in to a tractor parade. Here are some of the sights from the tractor show:







Brett found something he liked. :-)

Too Close for Comfort...

...but we are still here.

It's that time of year again. Time for severe thunderstorms, and even the occasional tornado. Here is our forecast right now from Weather.com: (Click to Enlarge)



Don't be alarmed if you hear on the news about some tornado action here in Eastern Iowa. We did have an F3 tornado touch down in an area close to, but not in Davenport. No need to worry because we are all fine here. The cat is hiding out in the closet because he is afraid of the thunder...but other than that the occupants of the Vowles house are doing well. Here is a picture from our local news station's (KWQC TV6) website of the tornado:

(I should emphasize that this picture was NOT taken by me.)

It was definitely a stressful morning. They initially told us that we would not be in the path of this dangerous storm...but the weather people were wrong again. The tornado sirens went off while we were picking up some groceries at Wal Mart. We quickly left the store and went home. Fortunately, the intense storm only lasted for about 20 minutes and aside from some typical flooding, it passed through Davenport without incident. We are still under a tornado watch until 7 pm tonight, but we have nothing but blue skies and sunshine outside right now, so I think that we are in the clear.

Teeny Tiny Town

On our drive home from Bushnell, IL this weekend we stopped to take a couple of pictures in the teeny tiny town of St. Augustine, IL, population 152. I took pictures of what I have determined to be the worlds smallest police department/fire station combo, and post office:

Bad Luck in Bushnell

We went to Bushnell, IL (about an hour and a half South of Davenport) this weekend because a friend of mine was having a bridal shower. So far, we have not had fantastic luck with our trips to Bushnell. The first time we went last February it was in the middle of a crazy ice storm and it looked like this:




Note the healthy accumulation of ice on the windsheild wipers... we actually had to stop to scrape the ice off the car halfway between Davenport and Bushnell. Obviously not ideal road trip conditions.

This trip the weather was beautiful and we had a really great time. Unfortunately, one of our tires decided to develop a (not so slow) leak last night. It needed to be replaced, but of course in a town of 3,000 people the tire shop isn't open on weekends. The good news is that when you are in a town of 3,000 people everybody knows everybody and our friend Derek was able to call the tire guy who opened up the shop just for us. Too bad our plans were foiled again when he didn't have the size tire we needed. I felt like we were in the middle of those 'car trouble in a small town' horror stories you always see in the movies. Luckily, the next big town over had the size tires we needed. $150 and a couple hours later we were on our merry way once again. I don't have any exciting pictures of our tire adventures to share with you, but we did see a giant tractor driving down the road:


Now that's something you just don't see everyday in Southern California.

Maybe we will have better Bushnell luck next time. : )

Things You Never Knew You Wanted To Know About Davenport

Welcome to Part 1 of my blog mini series: Things You Never Knew You Wanted To Know About Davenport. I plan to use it to share with you interesting facts and history about Davenport and the surrounding Quad Cities area so that you can know more about the place we live.

Today I begin with the Centennial Bridge:

The Centennial Bridge is part of US Route 67 and it runs across the Mississippi River from Davenport, IA to Rock Island, IL. The Centennial Bridge was built in 1940 and was the first ever 4 lane bridge to cross the Mississippi. The bridge has since become a symbol of the QCA (Quad Cities Area). The 5 arches are designed to represent the Quad Cities. I know what you are thinking: Shouldn't there be four arches? Well, technically the Quad Cities are Davenport and Bettendorf on the Iowa side of the river, and Rock Island and Moline on the Illinois side. But sometimes (depending on who you ask) they let East Moline come and play too, hence 5 cities in the Quad Cities. I know. It's bizarre. But what do you expect? It's the Midwest. Sometimes it's like a whole different country. : )

Behold, the Elusive Cardinal

I have been fascinated by cardinals ever since we moved to Iowa. No, not the baseball team, the bird. They are so beautiful and I had never seen one in real life until we moved to the Midwest.

Naturally, I have been trying to capture one on film since last spring. Unfortunately, cardinals do not seem to be big fans of being photographed. There is one that likes to spend his days in the tree outside our bedroom window, but as soon as he sees me approaching the window to take his picture, he flys away. I know what he sounds like, so for months he has been sitting out there taunting me with his calls. In fact, I hear him right now.

Previous attempts to capture this creature on film have turned out more like a bad game of Where's Waldo than the beautiful picture I had envisioned:


































And here it is at last: