Annual bike ride builds community

When two Des Moines Register newspaper employees challenged each other to a bicycle ride across the state of Iowa in 1973, they thought the trip would offer a fresh way to write about the state. Just six weeks before the ride, they enlisted a small core of riders, chose a route and published it in the newspaper to encourage readers to join the ride.

Nearly 40 years later, RAGBRAI (Register’s Annual Great Bike Ride Across Iowa) is the oldest, largest and longest touring bicycle ride in the world. Pronounced “rag-bry,” the ride covers between 450 and 500 miles, attracts 10,000 registered cyclists and thousands more supporters and unregistered riders each July.

Bicyclists dip their back tires in the ceremonial starting line of the Missouri River, along the western border of Iowa, at the beginning of the ride each year. At the end of the seventh day, they dip their front tires in the Mississippi River along the eastern border to signify the completion of the ride.

Iowa treehouse climbs to new heights

The thick foliage of the towering maple tree nearly disguises the winding labyrinth of pathways and staircases that make up the 12-story structure. Mick Jurgensen, the designer and builder, doesn’t have any architectural training, but that hasn’t stopped him from constructing a treehouse that exceeds any child’s dream.

The Big Treehouse is nestled in a 60-foot maple tree in the backyard of Jurgensen’s grandmother’s house in the Shady Oaks Campgrounds, three miles east of Marshalltown, Iowa. His grandmother, Mary Gift, calls it her grandson’s hobby, but Jurgensen said he never imagined that the towering, 55-foot treehouse would evolve into what it is today — a structure taller than a semi-trailer is long.

“I didn’t want to start a treehouse,” Jurgensen said. “I wanted to put a deck on the back of the house, and Grandpa said no … so I hooked it on the tree.”

He started building the treehouse in 1983 at the age of 21, but had no intentions of continuing the project for so long.

“It was kind of fun to build,” Jurgensen said. “It just kept going.”

Presidential museum offers multi-sensory approach

In an exhibit of the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Museum, there are five mannequins sitting around a table in a conference room, each one looking toward an Abraham Lincoln mannequin standing at the head of the table. As visitors settle in, a seventh figure, previously believed to be a mannequin, cocks his head toward visitors and says “Welcome to the museum”.

Even though Abraham Lincoln was assassinated more than 100 years ago, his memory lives on. He rests his hat at the Abraham Lincoln presidential Library and Museum in Springfield, Ill.

In late 2003, the collection of items in the Presidential Library became open to the public. Approximately two years later, in April of 2005, the Presidential Museum opened its doors and displayed the 60,000 artifacts that were directly related to Lincoln and those close to him. Approximately 12 million items- including the key and door knob from Lincoln’s home, exist at the museum in total. Compared to other museums, museum visitor Scott Paluska said the Presidential Museum “had a lot more stuff.”

Market showcases the ethnic range of Kansas City

A city that spreads across two states, Kansas City encompasses a diverse community of residents, uniting immigrants with midwestern farm families. Kansas City’s City Market —a shopping area and event venue located in the River Market district — is a microcosm of the city, where residents, tourists and vendors mingle among restaurants, groceries, gift shops and the farmers market.

City Market wears many masks. On a summer Friday night, it might act as a space for an outdoor concert only to transform into the farmers market by Saturday morning. Restaurants with hometown tastes and flavors from around the world entice visitors throughout the week. Gift shops and small businesses offer a stage for an after-lunch stroll. No matter the scene taking place in the City Market, the skyline of Kansas City acts as a backdrop behind the heads of visitors.

“The City Market is so many things to so many different people — we do not have one true demographic because the market is open to anyone and everyone,” said Stephanie Spatz-Ornburn, former director of marketing and events. “The most common denominator is a love and a passion for food. That’s probably the single thing that most everyone shares down here.”

Butterfly House offers up-close encounters

Visitor Priscilla Prask watches as her grandchildren Sophie, 5, and Thomas, 2, stare in wonder at the butterflies floating in the air a few feet above their heads as they walk through the conservatory. They meander past a red lacewing butterfly as it glides to a hibiscus flower, while a black butterfly lands on a dish set out with banana slices to feed on its sweet nutrients. Prask and her grandchildren are visiting the Sophia M. Sachs Butterfly House, a butterfly zoo where visitors are enveloped by the world of butterflies and insects.

Prask had never been to the Butterfly House, but came with her grandchildren on a day off work. She raved at how much the Butterfly House captures the hearts of the kids.

“It’s so amazing how they fly right around you when you’re walking, I’m not used to that,” Prask said. “It’s beautiful.”

Museum creates a continuum of artistic movements

Footsteps echo on hardwood floors as observers study canvases hung on the walls, accented by wooden and bronze sculptures interspersed throughout the collection. In this single exhibit, comprised of several rooms, each wall has been painted a different solid color to make the artwork stand out. Works by Georgia O'Keeffe and Thomas Hart Benton are among about 600 pieces of art in the rooms of the American collection. This is just one of the many exhibits the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art has to offer.
"We have an extensive collection," said Toni Wood, assistant manager of marketing and communications. "We call it encyclopedic because we have a large collection, but we don't have the largest. What distinguishes what we have in galleries now, what we have up, is the best … We don't go for quantity here, we go for quality."
The Nelson opened in Kansas City in 1933. Until 1983, the building was split into two museums — the William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and the Atkins Museum of Fine Arts.

This common objective attracts visitors from all over the world to the heart of the Hawkeye State, many of them followers of the Transcendental Meditation (TM) movement and believers of the tranquil lifestyle. They eat organically-grown foods, live in housing built according to natural principles and make sustainability a priority in the 2,200 acres of land bordering Fairfield, Iowa, that they call home. Twice a day, they make the pilgrimage to two shimmering gold-domed complexes to cross their legs in the lotus position, close their eyes and meditate, to improve not only their own health but to better the society surrounding them.

The TM organization cites numerous studies that it says proves its method works and distinguishes the program from other common forms of meditation or yoga. Jeffrey Cohen, director of the Invincible America Assembly at accredited Maharishi University of Management (MUM), said TMers demonstrated their method in Washington, and even as far away as Lebanon. Cohen said that in Lebanon, statistics showed a “direct correlation” between the size of the groups meditating and the amount of crime and violence in the area.

“In Washington, D.C., large groups of TM mediaters convened to show that [their technique] would lower the crime rate in D.C.,” Cohen said. “And in fact, statistical analysis showed that it lowered violent crime by… a very significant amount. And again, it was reviewed by experts and sociologists.”

As many do, the course of the Missouri River has changed throughout time. The Hawley family’s course changed as well when stories about steamboat hunting from a business client inspired David Hawley, now Arabia excavator and museum manager, to hunt for the buried treasure of the Arabia. While Hawley fixed his client’s furnace on a service call, the client told him stories about searching for steamboats. Hawley left the call ready to start his own adventure.

“I checked out boat books at the library and I’ve been looking for ‘em ever since,” Hawley said. “The Arabia was one of many that sank on the river.”

After researching and test-drilling to find the exact site, Hawley located the Steamboat Arabia. It was buried under fertile northeastern Kansas farmland that bordered the Missouri River.

“At the time my brother and I had kind of a young family, little kids growing up and doing all the things that young families do, and taking on a big steamboat project like that was a lot to take on,” Hawley said. “But it was exciting, it was fun. ... It was all-consuming, and we loved that too.”

Once hidden by nature, Fantastic Caverns, as it is known today, is now the highlight of Springfield, Mo.: a half-mile long cave, buried 130 feet underground. Missouri is home to approximately 6,300 caves, but Fantastic Caverns has distinguished itself as one of only four drive-through caves in the world and the only one in North America.

When John Knox first discovered Fantastic Caverns in 1862, Missourians were violently divided by the Civil War. Due to the possibility that the cave housed valuable saltpeter, a mineral used to make gunpowder, Knox worried that it would be commandeered by soldiers, either of the North or South.

Determined to keep the cave secret, Knox waited until 1867 to place an advertisement in a Springfield newspaper calling for explorers to investigate his cave. Twelve female members of a Springfield athletics club responded to his appeal. The friends, armed with makeshift lanterns and dressed in petticoats, were the first people to enter the cave. As they walked deep into the darkness, it was not an animal or a human that caused them to turn back but a dangerous sink hole. Tourists today can witness for themselves how far the explorers went inside the cave because their names, the date, and the claim ‘First Explorers’ is inscribed on the wall.

Inside the walls of the Missouri State Penitentiary in Jefferson City, the possibility of paranormal existence seems promising. In fact, several visitors have reported seeing a woman wearing grey in the women’s prison area on different occasions. Mark Schreiber, a former deputy warden at the penitentiary, said he has not had any personal encounters with other beings but does not discount the possibility.

“If any place should be haunted, this would be the place,” Schreiber said. “Certainly with the thousands of lives that were impacted and the hundreds of people who died here, both for violent and nonviolent reasons, then this would certainly be a place where you would expect for that kind of activity to exist.”

The Missouri State Penitentiary was built in 1836 in an effort to establish the city as the capitol of Missouri. It was the oldest continuously operating prison west of the Mississippi River when it closed in 2004, replaced by thewmodern Missouri State Correctional Facility. The former prison holds an abundance of memories and stories created during its approximately 170 years of operation, which tourists have been able to experience since its May 2009 opening.

“The two main reasons [people visit the penitentiary] are the historical value and the kind of mystery behind it,” said Sarah Stroesser, communications manager for the Jefferson City Convention and Visitors Bureau. “[People are] kind of intrigued by what goes on in there, what it looks like inside a prison.”

Tourist Eva Yeager had never seen anything like the Missouri State Penitentiary before the tour.

“I was just curious to see,” Yeager said. “You always see movies and TV, but to actually get to see the places people were held and get the real stories behind them — I wanted to know more about the existence of it.”