Physical State of Matt #20: IOWA
- 50statesofmatt
- Apr 9
- 19 min read
Updated: Apr 11
If you had told me at the beginning of this trip that my week in Iowa would be one of the most action-packed yet, I’d have told you to pull the other leg - but that’s exactly what it was.
I had a four-day, 1,500 mile drive from Martha’s Vineyard to Okoboji. Admittedly, I haven’t been taking the shortest, most direct route on this trip. I had zigged, and now I was zagging back across the country putting thousands of (one might say) needless miles on Pierogi.
But there was a method to the madness - sort of. My original path kept me out of the northern states in the winter and the southern states in the summer. It crossed paths with Jazz Fest, the Kentucky Derby, and the Indy 500. It also got me to Ithaca for my mom’s wedding in June.
My former partner had asked me if I would be willing to house and dog sit in Portland for a week in late August while she was out of town and I had agreed. I figured that, by driving, I could cross off the rest of the northern states on my way there and back and make it to my cousin’s wedding in Pennsylvania late October. It seemed like a sound plan, but you know, life.
My former colleague and friend Steven had offered to host me at his home in Spencer, Iowa right next to Lake Okoboji. I hadn’t seen him in several years, and I was looking forward to catching up.
I said goodbye to my mom and Jeff in Boston in the mid-afternoon and made it to Poughkeepsie on the first night. After high school, when I first had an inkling that I might want to go back to school, I was cooking in restaurants. The CIA (not that one) was my top choice to pursue my studies. It’s the premiere culinary school in the country and based in Poughkeepsie, just a few hours from Ithaca.
Life's Sliding Doors took me down another path and I ended up in LA, which in hindsight I think was for the best. Restaurants are perhaps the only industry with a worse track record for success than movies. Being a working chef is brutally hard work, and I’m not detail oriented enough to have made it to a Michelin Star, “Yes, chef!” type of environment.
When Kitchen Confidential came out shortly after I moved to LA, I wept with recognition. Anyone who only knows Anthony Bourdain from his TV shows should read this book, which put him on the map. His compassionate heart, wrapped in the barbed wire of his sardonic wit, has inspired me since first reading it. He lived life truly on his own terms, and I have done my best to channel my “Bourdainergy” (a word I made up) on this trip.
The second night I made a return visit to Sandusky. There was an Iron Man competition the following morning so the whole area was booked up by ridiculously fit people. I criminally overpaid for the last room in one of the crappiest hotels I’ve stayed in on this trip.
That night I swung by the Paddle Bar to enjoy a couple of Hot Nuts. This suggestively named shot is half amaretto liqueur and half hot coffee - it’s one of their signature drinks. I caught up with friends from two months prior, and made a few new ones. It’s funny, pretty much every person I’ve met in Sandusky I’ve immediately clicked with.
NOTRE DAME
On the third day, I drove through Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois. When I went to USC in Los Angeles, I was indoctrinated into the cult of college sports fandom. USC v Notre Dame is one of the longest running and most iconic rivalries in college football. I’ve been to plenty of games in LA, but never made the trek to South Bend, Indiana for a Notre Dame home game. South Bend was right off the highway, so I made a pit stop to see Touchdown Jesus.
Notre Dame is, of course, a Catholic school. On the outside of Hesburgh library on campus is the 134-foot tall mosaic mural entitled “Word of Life” that was created by Millard Sheets in 1964 out of 5,700 pieces of colored rock. Notre Dame Stadium is right next to the library and this massive mural is visible from the stands. The mural depicts Jesus, surrounded by saints and scholars, his arms raised up kind of like a referee - hence “Touchdown Jesus”.
AMANA
After taking out a second mortgage to pay the highway tolls to get through these three states, I arrived in Iowa. Steven had recommended I stop for the night in Amana. I was nearly there, so I stopped for dinner at the Big Grove Brewery and Taproom in Iowa City.
Over dinner I kept scratching at a particularly stingy and persistent mosquito bite on my leg. I examined it more closely in the light, and it was no mosquito bite - I had a swollen three-inch-wide lump.
I must have had a spider crawling around in the footwell of my car, and it didn’t appreciate me working the pedals. It’s a good thing I didn’t notice it while I was driving or I might have swerved off the highway doing 70. I checked the car thoroughly before I got back in.
I finished the final 40 minutes of my drive as dusk fell. As the glowing embers of sunset faded, a fine mist rose from the ground. I hadn’t expected to find this ethereal beauty in Iowa, but the scene made the breath catch in my throat. I had pulled the car over to admire it until I finally lost the light.
It was dark by the time I pulled into Amana. I booked a well-reviewed and reasonably priced boutique hotel called the Hotel Millwright. When I pulled into the parking lot, an old smoke stack loomed in the darkness, small bats swirling around it, hunting.
Inside, the hotel was a shining example of repurposed space - old brick and wooden beams with modern amenities. It was decorated with an array of old milling equipment and black & white photographs. Splashes of color provided by spools of yarn and swatches of fabric accented the rooms.
The next morning I explored Amana and learned a little bit about its history. A Christian sect in Germany called the Community of True Inspiration fled religious persecution to the US in the 1840’s, initially establishing roots in Buffalo, NY. They moved to Iowa when their community expanded and they needed more land. They named this new community Amana, from Song of Solomon 4:8.
Producing wool and calico, along with farming, was one of the main ways the community supported itself. Today, the Amana Woolen Mill is the only working woolen mill in Iowa, still operating in the same 1855 building it was started in. The area was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1965.
The Amana Society, which owns the mill and the hotel, has done a thoughtful job preserving the area’s history while making it accessible to the hundreds of thousands of visitors it welcomes each year.
RURAL IOWA
If the question on Family Feud was “name something Iowa is known for”, the #1 top answer by a mile would be “corn”. Iowa is sometimes referred to as the Food Capital of the World due to its voluminous agricultural production. Iowa produced over 2.5 Billion (with a B) bushels of corn in 2023, making it number one in the country. It also produced 597 Million bushels of soybeans, coming in at number two.
The clear #2 answer on Family Feud would be Iowa’s first-in-the-nation election caucuses. Presidential primaries are similar to general elections. Registered voters cast secret ballots, the results are tallied, and state delegates are awarded to the successful candidates. Caucuses involve gathering in-person, speeches, and negotiation - and they’re not all conducted using the same rules. Only three states today use caucuses exclusively: Iowa, Idaho, and Wyoming. Six others use a combination of caucuses and primaries.
After anti-Vietnam War protests rocked the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago, the Democratic Party decided to space out their state-wide contests to select their presidential nominee. Iowa has held the first caucuses on the calendar since 1972. Therefore, in presidential election years, the Iowa Caucuses get tons of attention, and are generally considered a bellwether for the national primary races.
Rather than driving the rest of the way to Okoboji by highway, I opted wherever practical to traverse smaller roads so I could see the countryside. Rural Iowa is broken up by mostly gravel roads that run north-south or east-west in a 1-mile by 1-mile grid. If you’ve ever had a window seat on a transcontinental flight, you’ve seen the patchwork effect this creates.
The Ordinance of 1785, created for “ascertaining the mode of locating and disposing of lands in the Western Territory”, laid out this grid, aligned to latitude and longitude. It gave each township a 6-mile by 6-mile chunk of land further divided into 36 1-mile by 1-mile parcels. This grid formed the foundation for the future Iowa road system. The map of the gravel roads in Iowa looks like the mesh of a screen door.
The farmers in the area generally go back and forth between corn and soybeans in two-year cycles. Corn depletes the nitrogen in the soil, and the beans replace it. In late July, it’s easy to tell which is which - corn grows to eight feet tall, soybeans to three. The uniformity of these two crops doesn’t produce a visually diverse landscape, but I found it beautiful.
I was raised until the age of 6 in the New York countryside. I drank well water and ate vegetables grown in the garden. Even Ithaca, after we moved there, is just a small college town surrounded by forests and farms. I have fond memories of playing hide and seek, running through rows of corn twice my height, their long sandpaper leaves slapping my face and arms. It felt safe and secret, but also dangerous because I was trespassing.
If you’ve never done it, do yourself a favor and run through a tall cornfield before you die. Try to get the farmer’s permission first, or don’t.
The fields beside me alternated as I drove - tall, short, tall, short, corn, beans, corn, beans. Wild bergamot and black-eyed Susans edged the road, spatters of purple and yellow on the gray and green canvas. The day was overcast - mild, if a little humid. I stopped frequently to take pictures. What should have been a four hour drive took me all day.
In the middle of the afternoon, dark foreboding clouds rolled over me and the wind picked up. The windmills that were scattered across the fields started spinning faster. The landscape was spectacular and I could have dawdled all day, but I was on a schedule. I was meeting Steven and his partner Brayden for dinner in Okoboji at 7:00.
FLOODS
The dark clouds blew off and about an hour from my destination, the sky was a muted peach. I started seeing more and more fields with standing water. I liked the look of one in particular, little ridges of plowed soil sketching regular fingers at the water’s edge. I pulled over to take some pictures.
After snapping a couple, I noticed several mosquitoes checking me out, so I quickly hopped back in the car. Within moments, dozens of mosquitos were throwing themselves against my window, as if trying to break the glass and get to me. The standing water, picturesque though it may have been, was the perfect breeding ground for these pests. I had blundered into the mosquitopocalypse.
A month prior to my visit, Iowa had suffered record floods, destroying thousands of homes and wiping out countless acres of crops. Entire communities had been flattened and were trying to pick up the pieces. Many areas got 10-20 inches of rain over the course of three days, as much as they would expect to get in a normal year.
Although water levels had subsided in most places to usual levels, people were still reeling. The floods were one of the main topics of conversation that week and I saw evidence of their destruction everywhere I went.
OKOBOJI
West Okoboji Lake, (not to be confused with Lake Okeechobee, the larger and better-known lake in Florida), East Okoboji Lake, and Spirit Lake are part of a chain of 7 lakes called the Iowa Great Lakes. The name Okoboji is generally used to refer to the whole area. The name derives from the Dakota word “Okoboozhy”, which means “reeds or rushes” or “place of rest”.
Conflicts between white settlers in the area and the native Sioux in 1857 led to the Spirit Lake Massacre, the last attack by Native Americans on settlers in Iowa history. Fourteen Sioux, in an escalating conflict of retribution, raided a settlement killing 40 and taking 4 hostage. One of the captives was a young girl, Abbie Gardner, who published her memoir about the experience 28 years later. Her cabin is preserved in Okoboji as a historic site.
Today, Okoboji is a summer destination for families in Iowa and the surrounding states to fish, go boating, and catch some rays. Many families from the Midwest keep summer homes along the lake coast. Coming directly from my week on Martha’s Vineyard, it was an interesting contrast, but they're not dissimilar in many ways.
In January, when the lake freezes over, they have the four-day University of Okoboji Winter Games. These include activities such as broomball, snowga, the keg toss, the human dogsled, and the Boji Kite Festival.
The University of Okoboji isn’t an actual school. It’s a “mythical, yet vibrant, college of fun, spirit, and goodwill.” Created in 1970 by local clothiers and entrepreneurs Herman and Emil Richter, the “college” now sponsors events and contributes to local civic causes.
The brothers were involved in many local sports competitions and printed shirts with a fictional school crest as a lark. The school's motto: "In God We Trust. Everyone Else - Cash". The shirts were a hit and soon they were selling sweatshirts, mugs, and stickers out of their store The Three Sons. The local radio station KUOO refers to itself as “Campus Radio”. There is even a school mascot, the undefeated Fighting Phantoms. Everyone is in on the joke.
Okoboji struck me as the most popular place that no one outside the region had ever heard of. Having lived exclusively on the coasts, that shouldn’t have surprised me. When I told a friend I was in Iowa that week, she replied “I don’t even know where that is”. I explained it’s just below Minnesota, but she didn’t know where that was either.
The “Iowa Nice” stereotype is true, and might possibly be answer #3 in my imaginary round of Family Feud. And it’s genuine niceness. Everyone in Okoboji welcomed me with smiles and open arms. But I could tell, driving around the heartland, that people there don’t appreciate being referred to as the “fly-over states” by most of the country. To be fair, I was as guilty of this as anyone. When Steven came to me at work in LA and said he wanted to move back to Iowa, my first response was “why?”. I think he approached this week as his answer.
I met Steven and Brayden at The Okoboji Store. I got to know Brayden and learned about the area while we enjoyed dinner on the patio overlooking the lake. Afterward, we went to Smiles with Miles for a nightcap and to play Pull-Tab.
Pull-tabs are like scratch-off tickets, but instead of scraping off a silver coating with a coin, you rip perforated strips off of cardboard tickets you buy from a vending machine. Like any form of gambling, it’s a losing proposition, but I couldn’t deny the visceral satisfaction of tearing the tickets. By the end of our round, there were piles of losing pull tabs on the bar in front of us.
THE FARM
Steven and I worked together at the company that built the press screener platform. My relationship with him started because he was one of our favorite clients. His depth of knowledge, patience, and blunt honesty made him an asset. When we started looking for a new person to lead client management, we hired him.
We traveled together on dozens of business trips and formed a strong bond. When, after decades in LA, he decided to move back to Iowa, we figured it out.
Steven's mother grew up in Okoboji, and most of her side of the family is still there. Steven spent his summers on the lake starting at age 4. I think at last count he had five thousand cousins in Iowa, plus or minus. More than half the people I met that week were a branch on Steven’s extended family tree. Brayden is from Cedar Rapids and is the premiere hairdresser in Okoboji. They met after Steven moved back.
They live in a great turn-of-the-century farmhouse that sits on a five-acre square of trees along a gravel road surrounded by miles and miles of corn and beans.
The house has an old charm but has been remodeled on the inside. It’s cozy and sprinkled with little accents of whimsy.
Their roommates are two big, sweet dogs Brody and Barbara Jo (after Steven’s late mother), and two cats, Olaf and Paddy. They warned me that Paddy would probably hide the whole time I was there, but by day 2, he got the courage to come out and say hello.
We closed out the evening, like most of the ones I was there, with cocktails on their porch, soaking up the summer breeze.
The next morning I was awoken by a small yellow crop duster flying back and forth shockingly low above to the house.
Steven and I did some work then broke for lunch, hot beef sandwiches in Spencer.
Spencer had been hit hard by the floods. Backhoes sorted through piles of debris that had been people’s homes just one month earlier. Entire neighborhoods were flattened and, as is usually the case, the poorest ones were hit hardest. Most of the residents didn’t have flood insurance.
Surely FEMA must have stepped in to help, I asked. Steven confirmed they had, but they would only rebuild your house if you agreed to get flood insurance going forward, which was cost-prohibitive. And who wants to buy a home in an area where this just happened? Hundreds of people in Spencer were up shit creek without a paddle - or even a canoe.
That afternoon there was more work, then we watched dark clouds roll in from the front lawn. Radar showed a small but intense storm heading our way. I was excited to get some fierce thunder and lightning, but I had to remind myself that Iowa is in Tornado Alley and I shouldn’t be too excited. In 2024, along with the brutal floods, the state had a record number of tornadoes - 54.
In the end, the storm veered to the northeast and passed us by. Brayden cooked a fantastic meal for us that evening.
ARNOLDS PARK
The following day we went down to Arnold’s Park, a small city along West Okoboji Lake, and the local entertainment hub. It was much quieter than the normal summer hubbub, I was informed. The surviving docks in the Berkley Bedell State Pier (named after a former Congressman), had almost no boats tied up - another result of the floods.
The only crowd was at Pirate Jack’s, a floating bar and local fixture. This was their first day back open since the floods. We stopped for one and I met several of Steven’s friends...and cousins.
I grabbed a Nutty Bar and we walked around Arnold’s Park Amusement Park. Having opened in 1889, it’s the oldest amusement park west of the Mississippi. The park’s centerpiece, Legend, is the 13th oldest wooden roller coaster in the US and took its first riders in 1927.
In 1999 the park was nearly torn down, but the community pulled together, raising over 7 million dollars to save it. Although the park seems quaint and old-fashioned by modern standards, it holds an important place in the community’s history and attracts visitors each summer.
Steven and I stumbled clumsily through the The Tipsy House and rode The Bug House. The little train that takes kids around the park was being repaired. Later that week, I heard a funny tale from the previous year where, after a raucous end-of-summer party, a drunken couple climbed the fence of the park and took that little train for a joyride.
Dinner was Wine Down Wednesday at Maxwell’s, a local favorite, only open in the summer, that has won the best wine selection in Iowa for several years. Joining us was Steven’s cousin Suzie, a lawyer and board member for the Amusement Park, and Mel, a director for the national charity Boys Town. Mel was in town for a fundraiser that Steven was MC’ing on Saturday.
Steven is so beloved at Maxwell’s that the seat at the end of the bar is unofficially reserved for him, and he has an off-menu drink named after him - Steven’s Salad: Hendricks gin, tonic, muddled cucumber, and fresh ground pepper.
The next day, it was back to Arnold’s Park for a meat raffle at Smokin’ Jakes. I thought the idea of a meat raffle was hilarious, but apparently they’re a big thing across the Midwest. A Minnesota family that sat at our table (a piece of plywood over the pool table with a tablecloth), told us they look for meat raffles wherever they travel.
The meat raffle was exactly what it sounded like - folks gathered at the BBQ restaurant/bar and bought raffle tickets through several rounds of prizes. The first winner of each round got to pick a package of meat from a selection provided by local farmers.
Second and third places got drink tickets at Smokin’ Jakes or at their sister bar, The Side Door. Proceeds went to support the Masonic Twilight Lodge No. 329. Steven and I won some drinks and Brayden brought home three sirloins.
We migrated across the street to get our free drinks. A sign behind the bar advertised a drink called Horse Cum (I know, two horrible drink names in one post).
Disgusted, but curious, I ordered one. Thankfully it wasn’t literal. Apparently the bar had run a contest to create a drink and name it, and this was what the winner came up with. I suppose they should have expected this result - like the notorious Boaty McBoatface. The drink was Captain Morgan’s, Mountain Dew, root beer, and a splash of Pepsi - basically a boozy suicide (all the fountain sodas in one cup).
That evening we were invited to an intimate live music show at Pick’s Resort, a collection of six charming cabins overlooking the lake, owned and managed by Diane, another of Steven’s friend’s that we hung out with. Diane's father was a studio engineer who produced tracks for a who's who of country music.
The following night was the marquee event for the week. Okoboji has a summer concert series called Live at the Lake in the colorful outdoor pavilion in Arnolds Park, and that week Cole Swindell was playing. Cole’s a big name in country music, but I’d never heard of him because I don’t listen to country music. Well, I guess that’s not entirely true anymore.
I always appreciated the classics - Johnny Cash, Dolly Parton, Kris Kristofferson, Willie Nelson, but I never cared for pop country. It’s undeniable that country music is the soundtrack for most of the country, and after months of non-stop exposure, some of it has started to grow on me.
Cole Swindell has had several hits, but none bigger than “She Had Me at Heads Carolina”, which is a note-by-note musical homage to Jo Dee Messina’s 1996 hit “Heads Carolina, Tails California” but with different lyrics. His song, and the original, are earworms of the highest order, and they’ve made it into my regular rotation.
Although most of the Live at the Lake shows are free, there are a handful each year with bigger acts where they sell tickets. This was one of those, and the show was sold out. Steven’s friends Mike and Margie generously gave me one of their VIP tickets that granted me access to an exclusive section with a rooftop bar and a separate area right down at the stage.
Cole Swindell put on a hell of a show and I enjoyed myself dancing with all the wonderful people I’d met that week.
As night fell, the laser lights caught bugs circling in the air, creating an eerie green sparkle over the crowd. Cole wasn’t a huge showman and he didn’t have a giant production, but he had a confident ease on stage that had the crowd eating out of his hand.
As the show ended, fireworks lit up the sky, shot from boats on the lake. Not a bad way to spend a summer Friday night.
Mike and Margie invited our group and some others to their gorgeous house on the bluffs above the lake. When I arrived, Mike asked me what type of wine I liked to drink. I told him deep, jammy pinot noirs. He went into their humidor/wine cellar and pulled out a bottle of Belle Glos, cracked the red wax, and opened it just for me.
Mike nailed it. It was one of the best glasses of wine I’d ever had. I savored it in their comfy front sitting room/library and socialized with their other guests.
I’d been planning to leave the next day, but stuck around to attend Mel’s Boys Town Blue Water Bash fundraising event and watch Steven MC. I had a late breakfast at O'Farrell Sisters which had the craziest bloody marys I’ve ever seen. Then that evening, it was off to the event.
Toby Shine, a local entrepreneur, had provided the space for the bash at his business Okoboji Classic Cars. It’s a combination car restoration garage / museum with a truly impressive collection of old cars in pristine condition. He calls it the Ultimate Man Cave.
Boys Town is a national charity headquartered in nearby Omaha, Nebraska. They provide a wide array of services, including housing and medical care, for underprivileged youths. The organization was started by Father Edward Flanagan. Spencer Tracy won an Oscar portraying him in the 1938 film Boys Town.
Boys Town has a site on the lake called Camp Okoboji. It hosts summer vacations for groups of kids within the Boys Town program and gives them the opportunity to play, enjoy the lake, and just be kids. This is the first summer vacation most of them have in their whole lives. Several of them gave heartwarming testimonies at the fundraiser. The floods had damaged Camp Okoboji, so this was a particularly important event for Boys Town.
Steven crushed it with his co-MC, Alma, and the event was a big success, raising a bunch of money. Although it was impractical, given this trip, for me to bid on any of the prize packages they had, I made a small donation at the end of the night.
We closed the night back at Arnold’s Park. The concert at the pavilion, some 80s one-hit-wonder, was just wrapping up. Steven’s cousins, Jean and Chris, welcomed us on their boat Christina and we watched fireworks for the second night in a row.
My week in Iowa was exceptional. Everyone I met was friendly and generous. Yes, it’s true that Steven had talked me up to his friends and family and they rolled out the red carpet for me (he is my best hype man). But that’s also just who the people of Okoboji are.
Iowa may not have the beaches of Florida or the mountains of Colorado, but the state is beautiful - I took some of my best pictures there. Iowans may not have the lights of Times Square or the shopping of Beverly Hills, but they have pride, community, and big hearts. And they know how to have a good time. I get why people there are so fond of the classic exchange from Field of Dreams:
My experience was amazing and I will never again refer to Iowa as a “fly-over state”. I’ve already promised to make it back for the Winter Games.
OTHER PLANS
The following morning I packed up my car. As I thanked and bid farewell to Steven and Brayden, my phone rang. It was my mother. Jeff, who had been recovering from his surgery fantastically well, had suddenly gone into cardiac arrest. Don’t come, she insisted. She’d let me know if I was needed.
I continued on to Lincoln, Nebraska with a knot in my stomach. The following morning, against her wishes, I turned around and drove back to Boston. The 50 States trip would be on hold for the next five months.
Yes, and…
Matt
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