Fun City’s family-friendly water park, arcade, go karts and bowling alley, together with bunkbed rooms in the Pzazz Hotel…or Catfish Bend Casino gaming, spa treatment and a boutique adults-only hotel. These two completely different concepts coexist in the Burlington, Iowa, Pzazz! Complex, though you’d never know when visiting one that the other is only a walkway away. Read more
The World War II era Quonset hut doesn’t look like much from the outside, but step over the threshold at Charlie Parker’s Diner, and you take a giant step back to the rockin’ boppin’ 1950s. Every seat was taken at the glass-block lunch counter on the Saturday we visited and nearly every red vinyl chair around white Formica-and-chrome tables was filled. Off the beaten path in Springfield, Illinois, we didn’t know about it until we joined Alicia Erickson of the Springfield Convention & Visitors Bureau there for lunch. Read more
Come fall, Midwest garden centers bloom with mums, asters and ornamental kale. Farms open to the public for pumpkin picking, hayrides and corn maze navigation. It’s rare to find both combined and with a restaurant on the premises, to boot, which is what you get at Pinter’s Gardens & Pumpkins in Decorah, Iowa. “…with the restaurant and the garden center and the pumpkin patch, the closest would probably be Chicago, that has all what I have,” said Elisa Pinter, who co-owns Pinter’s Gardens & Pumpkins with her husband Shane. Read more
Stalactites hang tight to the ceiling. Stalagmites grow from the ground up as calcite from dripping water builds up. When the formations meet in the middle they become a column. I’ve heard how cave formations build every time I take a cave tour. Yet, I never tire of touring the underground beauty of a cave. Each one is different in its own way, with unique formations, history, and in the case of Fantastic Caverns in Springfield, Missouri, its mode of transportation. Read more
Of the eight states that Route 66 runs through, Kansas has the shortest stretch, only 13 miles. There is still plenty to see here, though, from an old mining town to historic bridges to a renovated home that legend says was the home of “Galena’s Bloody Madam.” Read more
The young couple that moved into the Oliver Comstock House had a notion to name their new baby Hannah. Within days of Hannah’s birth, strange events began occurring. The piano keys were banged on in the middle of the night. The name “Hannah” was written on the wall in pencil. Doors opened and closed on their own. The couple soon discovered that the home’s original owner, Oliver Comstock, was married to a woman named Hannah. The Comstock House is just one of several haunted homes we stopped at during our horse-drawn Marshall Carriage Company ghost tour of Marshall, Michigan, the only such tour in the United States. Read more
