Pearls Before Cows

 

I found a county campground right between Davenport and Muscatine Iowa where I could actually stay for several days. I felt very fortunate because it is so hard to get into these county, state, national campgrounds, especially on a weekend, which this was. There are four, count them four lakes with many trails around them. The only problem was that last summer they had drained all of the lakes to do lakeshore restoration. All I saw were big muddy holes. They were going to start filling the lakes on Monday, the day I was leaving. Timing is everything.

I had planned on going to the Figge Art Museum in Davenport for a little more upscale culture. Then I saw, just down the road in Muscatine, the National Pearl Button Museum. How could I pass that up?

Muscatine was the Pearl Button Capital of the World back in the day. In 1905, Muscatine produced 1.5 billion buttons annually. This boom lasted only 75 years before the plastic button took over. The fact that the fresh water mussels had been pretty much decimated also was a factor. In the late 1800's, there were 300 mussel species native to North America. More than half of these species are now threatened or endangered.

Several different species of river mussels
Those chains are dragged along the bottom of the river and the mussels grab on to them.
One of several ways to harvest mussels

A Pearl Button salesman's jacket

After visiting this museum, I now know how to pull mussels out of the river, make them open their shells, punch holes in the shells and finish/polish the buttons. Too bad this is not a skill that I will get a lot of use out of.

I'm not so sure I want to stay too long in Muscatine

I joined an organization called Harvest Hosts. They contract with individual businesses to let Rvers stay on their property. Think wineries, breweries and farms. In exchange, we are supposed to buy a small amount of merchandise from these hosts.

I stayed a night at Hansen's Dairy in Hudson, Iowa. They are a single source dairy in that they raise the cows and have a creamery right on site. Every afternoon, they take you on a tour showing you the inner workings of a dairy farm. This was no small potatoes operation either. They have 300 cows of which 150 are being milked (twice a day at 4:00 am and pm) and the other 150 are babies or pregnant. I got to milk a cow, feed a calf, make butter by hand and, wait for it......feed and pet kangaroos. Evidently one of the owners went to Australia, fell in love with Kangaroos and decided the farm needed them.

This sign was along the side of a one million gallon manure pit

The old man of the mob

I'm feeding Roo-dolph here - all the kangaroos had names starting with Roo
I think he is threeyears old

This is one year old Roo-dy

This is Aztec, the calf I got to feed.  She is less than a month old. 
 Don't let that sweet face fool you - she was a hellion when it came to her bottle

The milking station, they milk 16 cows at a time

Gazing off into the distance

On my last leg home, as I was merging onto I35, all of a sudden there was a ding, ding, ding and my truck told me  'Engine Power Reduced'. The truck wasn't kidding, I couldn't go above 30 mph. I pull over to the side of the road and look in my manual. They tell me the engine is overheating, which was not the case. I checked my phone for Chevrolet dealers and luckily there was one just two miles down the road. I limped along the shoulder at about 10 mph and got to the dealer. I'm very proud of myself because as we all know, car dealers fill their lots with tons and tons of cars. My 36' camper and I threaded our way through all those cars and got to the service area. They ran some codes and it turns out that my turbo had locked open. I was about two hours away from home. They told me that I could make it, if I got the message again, pull over to the shoulder, turn off the truck and let it reset itself. Then I could drive on. It was a stressful two hours but I made it back to the Motherland without incident. Just another very expensive thing that will need to be fixed.