Tag: iowa

I May Have Missed Two Destinations

Upon digging through my subconscious, I remembered a high school trip to Pella, Iowa, and, several years before that, a trip to one of the Amish settlements in Iowa. I don’t have pictures from either, which is why I didn’t remember them. And to make things worse, I’m not entirely sure where in Iowa the Amish settlement was. I’m almost certain that the actual place we were visiting was a Girl Scout camp in the Rock Island/Moline/Davenport/Bettendorf area.

Actually, looking at the map, I think we were in Iowa City, which means that the Amish community was probably Kalona? And Kalona does have guided tours of the Amish community, which sounds like what we did.

Now, is there a Girl Scout camp in Iowa City? I don’t see one, but we’re talking about, oh, dear God, how long ago was that? 1979? 1978? I dropped out of Girl Scouts before the 1980/1981 school year, so no later than early 1980. A lot of things may have changed in the Iowa City area in 37 years.

The only thing I really remember about the camp was inside of the cabin we slept in. I guess I’m going to spend some time looking at photos of Girl Scout camps in Iowa. If I can ever figure out where in Iowa we were, I’ll be able to tell you which Amish community it was. And if I can’t, I guess I’ll just make a post “Amish Community, somewhere in Iowa” someday.

National Geographic July 2016 Part 3

Smartphone Americana, story and photographs by David Guttenfelder

Guttenfelder spent 20 years living abroad working as a photojournalist. He returned to the United States in 2014 and began to explore the country of his birth as if he were a new immigrant. Rather than using the expensive cameras he used in his years abroad, however, he chose to use his smartphone.  He says that he “want(s his) images to be imperfect and immediate, to capture something both fleeting and timeless about the America that (he is) rediscovering.”

And the pictures he took really are stunning. I think that my personal favorite is the tail end of an RV with mountainous scenery as it drives past a view of the Badlands in South Dakota.