“Secret Iowa” Presents A lot of Enjoyable Spots to Go to, Including within the QC Space

Iowa will get unfairly maligned as “flyover country.” But the Hawkeye State additionally has been immortalized as “heaven” within the 1989 basic movie Field of Dreams, which was shot in Dyersville.

Megan Bannister is firmly within the latter camp, because the bubbly Chicago native turned keen Iowan has traversed our divine cornfields and assembled 84 quirky, enjoyable locations to cease in her 192-page paperback e-book Secret Iowa: A Guide to the Weird, Wonderful, & Obscure.

This fascinating, full-color e-book presents every place over a two-page unfold, with beneficiant photographs, together with nuts and bolts of what makes every fascinating. For most long-time Iowans, most of those points of interest – together with Isabel Bloom in Davenport, the Buffalo Bill Museum in LeClaire, and the World’s Largest Truck Stop in Walcott – are hardly secret. But Bannister tried to incorporate little-known data for all of them.

Now 34, she grew up within the Chicago suburb of La Grange and went to Drake University in Des Moines to review journalism. She has lived in Iowa’s capital metropolis ever since. She met her husband Josh (an IT contract supervisor) after school; he is initially from Urbandale. Bannister has labored in advertising for the Des Moines Art Center for 5 years, as an company copywriter for about 4 years, and has been a full-time freelance author for 3 years.

Bannister began her Olio in Iowa weblog (OlioInIowa.com) in 2012, initially as a approach to get out and discover her new hometown. “But along the way, the blog has become a home for all of my roadside adventures and a way to share the stories that make me love road-tripping,” she wrote, noting “olio” means a miscellaneous combination.

“Since then I’ve driven coast to coast discovering unique small towns, roadside attractions and ‘world’s largest’ things along the way,” Bannister says, “No matter the destination, I firmly believe that getting there is half the fun.

“I truly believe that boredom is in the eye of the beholder,” she wrote for the Secret Iowa introduction. “Whenever someone questions why I’m ‘bothering to visit’ their small town, or complains that there’s nothing to do where they live, I’m reminded that finding something ‘interesting’ is all a matter of perspective. Most often, we’re bored because we’re not being curious enough.”

Her first e-book, Iowa Supper Clubs, was launched via Arcadia Publishing in August 2020, and her second, Secret Iowa: A Guide to the Weird, Wonderful, & Obscure, was revealed by Reedy Press in September 2023, amongst a sequence of Secret books by Reedy for quite a lot of cities and states.

“I first discovered my love for roadside oddities when I was 22,” Bannister wrote. “It was early spring and a group of my friends had decided to embark upon the 23-hour drive from Des Moines to San Francisco. We were less than two hours into our trek when I forced a detour in the suburb of Boys Town, Nebraska, to see the World’s Largest Ball of Stamps. Weighing in at 600 pounds, that quirky mess of stamps instantly stole my heart. It was my first world’s largest thing, and it certainly wouldn’t be my last.

“I’m a planner for sure,” Bannister mentioned. “But I love discovering things that I didn’t plan on. That’s why I really love to drive versus flying; you can find something, pull over, see what I find along the way.”

For Secret Iowa, she contains 9 “World’s Largest” issues, together with the world’s largest Cheeto, at Emerald’s Fine Food & Libations in Algona (about two hours north of Des Moines). It weighs 0.6 ounces and is across the dimension of a silver greenback.

“I’ve always loved the world’s largest things,” Bannister mentioned. “They’re always silly and goofy.”

One of her present tasks is providing a printed passport for individuals to go to all 21 “World’s Largest” issues in Iowa, an inventory that is out there on her Web website. In addition to the World’s Largest Popcorn Ball (Sac City), World’s Largest Strawberry (Strawberry Point), World’s Largest Swedish Coffee Cup and Coffee Pot (Stanton), World’s Largest Wooden Nickel (Iowa City) and World’s Largest Concrete Garden Gnome (Ames), there may be the World’s Largest Truck Stop (off I-80 in Walcott), the World’s Largest Roller Dam (connecting Davenport and Rock Island), and World’s Largest Watermelon (Muscatine).

Though not in Secret Iowa, the most important curler dam on the planet is Lock and Dam 15, which spans the Mississippi River between Davenport and Rock Island – measuring 1,203 toes lengthy and consisting of 11 curler gates.

Bannister contains the World’s Largest Truck Stop in her e-book primarily due to the free trucking museum subsequent door. The truck cease (which welcomes an estimated 5,000 guests every single day) was established in 1964, earlier than I-80 was accomplished and Bill Moon (a former truck cease supervisor there) helped them select the positioning and purchased the truck cease. “He was really passionate about trucking, preserving that history, and wanted there to be a museum,” Bannister mentioned, noting it opened in 2008, 15 years after his dying. “It’s a really cool museum. They throw birthday parties for the trucks,” she mentioned.

For Secret Iowa, Bannister took the overwhelming majority of photographs herself, with a number of from a photographer pal. For the Buffalo Bill Museum (199 Front St., LeClaire IA), she affords the professional tip you could additionally go to the Buffalo Bill Cody Homestead, 13 miles northwest of LeClaire, to see his boyhood residence.

Many of the Iowa sights Bannister already knew about, and others she realized about from pals or relations. The begin of the e-book options the one Frank Lloyd Wright-designed resort remaining on the planet – the Historic Park Inn Hotel, in Mason City, which opened in 1910.

For the well-known “Field of Dreams” in Dyersville situated about 25 miles west of Dubuque, the e-book affords tidbits in regards to the (then newly-constructed) baseball discipline and filming. To make the sphere look its finest, the manufacturing staff used crushed purple brick to make the infield pop, and to seize crowds drawn to the magical discipline, the encircling county wrangled greater than 2,500 vehicles and drivers to line the agricultural roads and make the ultimate scene of headlights trailing into the night time.

“We’re used to having movies with CGI, and the end shot of all the cars winding through were all real cars,” Bannister mentioned, including that one in every of her pals who was in school bought to be within the line of all these vehicles.

Bannister’s household is from Connecticut, so many holidays as a toddler had been out East, they usually spent numerous time in southwest Michigan rising up. One of her favourite Iowa websites is the Salt and Pepper Shaker assortment in tiny Traer, northwest of Cedar Rapids.

“If you have time, it’s such a cool collection,” Bannister mentioned. “I always really love to talk about that one, I have a soft spot for weird collections.” A specific Des Moines spot is Riverview Park, which first opened in 1915 as an amusement park impressed by Coney Island. It went via many iterations, and after Adventureland opened within the ’70s, it closed. The park sat vacant for many years, and owned by the town, it lastly was renovated and reopened in 2021.

Bannister mentioned it was troublesome to limit the e-book to 84 issues of curiosity. “Every time I do a book event, somebody asks, ‘Hey have you heard about this thing?’ I could probably have an entire list of 84 other things.”

The merchandise on the e-book’s Isabel Bloom section explains the acclaimed artist’s historical past and legacy, noting she studied with Grant Wood in summer season 1932 (at age 24) within the Stone City Art Colony, the place she additionally met fellow artist and future husband John Bloom. The tip for the Isabel Bloom manufacturing studio (736 Federal St., Davenport IA) is that whereas excursions are free, reservations are required, usually held on Tuesday and Thursday mornings.

Bannister’s upcoming occasions embrace a e-book signing October 6 on the Marion Public Library, and a digital e-book occasion October 23 from midday to 1 p.m. on the Iowa State Historical Museum. You can participate on-line within the free occasion (with advance registration required) at History.iowa.gov/occasions/iowa-history-101-secret-iowa-guide-weird-wonderful-and-obscure. For extra data on Bannister, go to OlioInIowa.com/about.