We arrived back in Iowa today after nearly 4 weeks of travel. The strong winds that wore us out driving through Missouri subsided and we were able to stay away from the major highways as we made our way through the Iowa countryside.

American Gothic

After studying in France, Grant Wood came home to paint Iowa scenes and his most famous, American Gothic, depicts a house in Eldon, Iowa, as a backdrop. Our backroads journey home took us right by Eldon, so we finally visited this really cool site after living in Iowa for almost four decades.

The visitors center has a gift shop and a museum. I thought the Little Free Art House was a cute take on the Little Free Libraries. Pigments of the Imagination has a great explanation of Wood’s use of color in painting. And the collection of pop culture recreations of American Gothic was funny – loved Barbie & Ken and Bugs Bunny & Daffy Duck.

American Gothic selfies in costume are encouraged. The gift shop has a system where one driver’s license is collected and numbered tags are used to then “check out” the costume. The license is returned upon hanging up the costume. This really helps keep the costumes organized on crowded days. We did our best to reproduce the painting. It’s harder than you think to set that ten second timer then try to get into place.

Homecoming

The rest of our trip was uneventful, and it felt good to be home. The cats stayed in the van for a bit, just as if we had arrived at a new campsite. Then I brought them into “the big house”, as we call it. Catnip was first in the house then Primrose, after they had settled down in the van. This method definitely works the best and the cat order seems to matter as there is less slinking and stress for all!