Le Claire Iowa

Buffalo Bill Cody was born in Le Claire, Iowa. Who knew? Apparently the townspeople, but they didn’t recognize the importance for a long while. The railroad people came and bought the house Bill grew up in for &150 and shipped the house to Cody Wyoming. There is a fantastic museum in Cody. There is a small quaint museum on the Mississippi in this small town.

In order to have a collection worthy of your time they have a one room schoolhouse attached and the last wooden dredge that worked the Mississippi for you to tour. Included are displays of civil war memorabilia, early John Deere implements and a typewriter that was NOT a qwerty layout. Next to the dredge was a display of pearl buttons that were made from shells harvested from the Mississippi. Very fun to see.

Next to the museum is a flat bottom river boat. We took the 1 1/2 hr tour up river and back. We were by lock 14. We saw eagles and cranes as well as barge traffic on our ride. The boat had many rocking chairs which were comfortable.

From there we headed down the road ending in Kalamazoo MI.

One room schoolhouse attached, calliope on the boat(very loud), eagles in the tree, tug and barges, smoky something shrub.