Anniversary weekend

Nat and I celebrated our fourth anniversary Thursday night with a nice dinner at Claxon's in Altoona and an antique tour of western Iowa on Saturday.

We set off early Saturday morning, with our first stop being Casey. It just so happened to be Casey Fun Days but they weren't quite as fun as billed, so we hit a couple of shops, saw a fainting goat someone was leading around town by a rope (yes, it's wearing a neckerchief), and had a very friendly shop owner give us a history lesson on the Freedom Rock near Greenfield. The same man that paints the rock every year with a military team has murals in a cafe in Casey and a large one just outside the cafe. According to a press release I received Monday, Ray Sorensen, the painter of the Freedom Rock, will soon be giving the Iowa Lottery use of some of his art for lotto tickets. You know you've arrived when your art is on a lotto ticket.

From Casey we headed straight to Walnut, Iowa's Antique City.

We found our biggest buy - a red pie safe we have in our kitchen (pictured) at the first stop we made, Kelly Reed Antiques, but didn't pull the trigger until the end of the day. We scoured each shop for nothing in particular, stopping at Aunt B's Cafe for lunch and Roberts Bakery Treats & Treasurers for ice cream and pie.

We didn't end up buying much - Nat grabbed an old scale and I bought a vintage Sports Illustrated with Mark 'The Bird' Fidrych posing with Big Bird from 1977.

With our backseat filled by this pie safe we debated whether we should continue our weekend or head home to unload. We proceeded west, as the early settlers did, to Council Bluffs, where we were headed to the Bob Kerrey Pedestrian Bridge that connects CB with Omaha. (See separate post for photos, etc.)

We crossed the Muddy Missouri on the impressive bridge and found a restaurant — The Old Mattress Factory — where we had dinner of pizza (Nat) and fish 'n chips (me) before heading to Menlo to stay the night with mom and dad.

Great time!