Iowa, Illinois to Indiana - 3 I's

It was still cold when we arrived in Panora, Iowa. The timeshare was located at Lake Panorama and is about an hour or so west of Des Moines. We got there on Sunday afternoon, checked in and unloaded (Bob). I arranged and unpacked. The condo was two bedrooms and there was plenty of floor space and a washer and dryer which I made use of right away. We enjoyed a delicious breaded tenderloin sandwich at their restaurant for dinner. We only spent four full days here as we needed to get to the Chicago area on Friday.

Three days were spent in the condo completing Christmas presents which of course I can’t put the picture up until after Christmas. I also sewed a couple more patches on Bob’s vest for him and made us a quilted cover for our spa pan and supplies.

We spent one day sightseeing in the area. There are five small towns that have put together a drive of about 25 miles with 20 items to see along the way. It is called the White Pole Road
and the telephone poles are painted white for about 6 feet up from the bottom. We saw some buildings that are on the National Historic Register, one of which was a beautiful Catholic Church that is under repair because of the damage caused by arson in 1995. We saw an interesting oval brick community building and a train depot.

We saw a bank that was robbed by Bonnie and Clyde (it is now a police station), the place where the Barrow gang was arrested (except for Bonnie & Clyde) and also the site of the first moving train robbery by Jesse James. We decided that this area was quite infamous.
There was a chocolate factory in the basement of a house. The highlight was the Freedom Rock which was first painted in 1999 by a 19 year old artist. He continues to paint it each year before Memorial Day and it takes from 3-4 weeks to do the painting.
We left Iowa for suburban Chicago on Friday stopping at the Herbert Hoover National Historice Site in West Branch, Iowa. We spent the weekend with Coleen’s college friend Cindy and her family. It was a great weekend, busy but with time to catch up. We even went to an indoor soccer game (Amber was playing). We watched the snow fall on Sunday evening (after Holly did some practice pitching) and the girls were hoping for a day off school but that didn’t happen. We drove to Warren, Indiana on Monday to spend the holiday with Coleen’s dad. It of course is still cold and there were spots of snow to see as we traveled.
Dad is keeping us busy. We went to game night on Monday night, to choir and chimes on Tuesday, played pool and had lunch. Tuesday night we went to Huntington North’s first home girl’s basketball game. Yesterday we did some computer work, oiled the bikes and then spent 2 hours at the model home taking some measurements and notes so that we can begin to plan for our house. Many of you know that we are planning to move into a house at Heritage Pointe in Warren in the spring of 2010. We will meet with the builders this coming March so we wanted to start getting our thoughts, ideas, desires, needs and some wants down on paper. We will be here in Indiana until after Thanksgiving. I probably will not post again until then but as I post this the snow has been flying and the ground is beginning to turn white.
We want to wish our friends all over the world a Happy Thanksgiving. It is a special time to give thanks for all God has provided.