So, what neat project would you take up at the age of 90? Leonard J. Maasdam  (1904-2003) decided to take all the wagon wheels he collected throughout his lifetime to create a very big wheel tree! During the day he welded. At night his children repaired the welds. He wasn’t very good at welding. It was erected in 1994 in the middle of a cornfield.

Then we visited the Herbert Hoover National Historical Site in West Branch IA. After visiting his library and reading about him we’ve decided that history has given him a bum rap…as a person. While his Presidency may be regarded as a failure due to the Great Depression in the United States, his personal life was one of amazing success.

His Quaker parents both died while he was young and he traveled to live with relatives in Oregon. He found himself in California where he graduated from Stanford University as a geologist in 1895. His future wife, Lou Henry, also graduated as a geologist from Stanford.

His education took him from scouting mines in California to working for others in Australia and China. By the age of 40 he was a self-made millionaire. He dedicated the rest of his life to public service. He was the first president born West of the Mississippi.

After World War I there was a famine in Europe and Hoover did all he could to help people. Belgium honored Hoover with a statue of Isis, the Egyptian Goddess of Life, for his work in their country. This statue now stands at this site.

We drove by the World’s Largest Travel Center today. It was so unbelievably crowded that we decided to keep on going but we got pictures!

Anybody that has seen “American Pickers” on television will know about the Antique Archeology Shop in IA. The place is not as big as we thought it would be (there must be a larger warehouse somewhere) and the items on hand were….junk. However, to some it is gold. The prices were absolutely astronomical.

The last visit was to the Stainless Steel Tree. It was build as a fund raiser for this tree and each donor has a leaf with his name on it. So, why hasn’t lightening struck it yet?