We did that, but we came up with some other options of things to do while in that area. We decided to camp at Bellevue State Park since it's about 20 minutes from the caves, and also about 20 minutes from Dubuque, IA. where we wanted to see the National Mississippi River and Museum and Aquarium. Also, since we're on a "Iowa State Parks" kick at the moment, the Mines Of Spain State Park is on the South side of Dubuque, so that was handy!
So, for part 1 of our trip, we find ourselves setting up camp for the next three nights, doing a bit of hiking and exploring the layout of the two different "units" of Bellevue State Park.
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| Rob and Caleb on tent duty with Dear ol' Dad helping guide and keep things moving. The boys, left to their own devices, would drift and soon they would be doing Fortnight dances and picking on each other... |
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| The man in command. I'm trying to train the boys how to set up the tent without my involvement or very little thereof. |
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| Look at my beautifully articulated instruction for whatever the hell it is that i'm trying to get across to the lad. |
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| similar... |
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| Never too busy to bust out a dance! |
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| Calebber is already demonstrating the invasion of bugs... they would persist thru the next 3 days... |
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| With the tent mostly up, Mom grabbed Rob to start blowing up the air mattresses that we had recently bought. I was a little nervous about a 3 night camping trip on a new mattress and not knowing how my back would respond to them. Another thing that worried me is that these are Serta mattresses that have electric pumps built in. As you may notice in the pic, there's not a lot of electricity around. Mom bought a cigarette lighter gadget that has two plug-ins on it and 4 usb ports. That thing was fantastic as it not only blew up the mattresses, but also provided us with valued charging time for our highly precious smart phones that trumped the camp fire for most (not me!). |
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| Notice, we've got camp mostly assembled and there's two people in the chairs with their phones... I digress. |
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| A wide shot of our temporary home for the next 3.5 days. It was always in the shade after about 9:30am but it really didn't matter... it was friggin' H.O.T!!!! |
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| This is a lookout at the Dyas Unit (which is where we're camping). That's the Mississippi River out there and the bluff off in the distance is the "other" Bellevue State Park "unit" called the Nelson Unit. |
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| Another shot of the same from a different angle. |
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| This is at the Nelson Unit. |
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| Bellevue Iowa down there just below the steep dropoff. |
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| The Mobile Chaos Unit in all of their sweaty glory! |
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| This is Bluff Lake Catfish Farm which we learned about from a Facebook post a friend of ours put out there. If you're coming in on Caves Rd. you literally have to drive thru Maquoketa Caves St Park and another family farm to get to this place. It's at the end of a dead-end road and the fish (we were there on all-you-can-eat Haddock night) with fries and homemade coleslaw. Oh, and homemade tartar sauce that was outstanding!! |
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| No kidding... this place opens at 4pm and we got there at 4:11 only to have a 40 minute wait!! Luckily, the scenery around the place is quite lovely with a spot to feed the fish and turtles. |
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| Hard to see them in the pic, but those black dots to the right side of the path are some momma ducks with their babies. |
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| Also hard to see in the photo is the Schmitz Mobile Chaos Unit, minus Dear ol' Dad, in the chairs just past the flower pot. |
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| The pond on the back-side of the resturant. |
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| Another shot of the same pond. |
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| I mentioned the turtles... here's one! |
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| The geese put on a show for us by getting in the water in a perfect line and swimming in a line as well. |
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| There's a natural waterfall (just about dead center of the pic) too. Just to the right of this pic, there's about 50 - 60 people outside waiting for their chance at all-you-can-eat fish. And for good reason. |
So that was the beginning of our weekend. After we left here, we went back to Maquoketa Caves for some hiking and much to our surprise, almost everybody had left and we only met a few people here and there... it was wonderful, as you'll see in the next post!
Thanks for reading.
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