IT'S A SMALL WORLD AFTER ALL, PART 2

Kellogg IA (Low 52 Sunny then becoming cloudy and rainy High 75)

We had quite a day yesterday and added yet another "it's a small world after all". We went to Pella Iowa to visit Bob's friend Mike from college and his family and to do some sightseeing. Pella is an amazing small town, so much in fact that we took so many pictures we ran down the batteries on three devices, 1 camera and 2 phones. We will catalog all the photos and blog on the major areas later so stay tuned. The following photos were found on the internet.

We started off the day meeting Mike for lunch at Subway. Had a nice chat with him but then he had to go back to work. We told him we did not like 4 letter words spoken around us :-)

Our first stop was the Jaarsma Bakery for a Dutch Letter, an "S" shaped puff pastry about eight inches tall, with moist almond paste filing, baked and sprinkled with sugar. It was our first Dutch Letter and it will not be our last, it was incredible. The locals say that Jaarsma Bakery is the best in town.



We then walked around the square and saw a lot of tulips (more on this later). Here is a teaser:



We then went to the Vermeer Mill and Historical Village (more on this later). Here is a teaser:



This is where the "it's a small world, part 2" happened. We went on a guided tour of the Mill and there were 4 of us in our group. The tour guide asked where we were from and the other couple mentioned Perry Iowa which is where Bob is from. Turns out the gal worked with Bob's sister for a number of years and Bob and his sister coached their daughter in softball, truly a small world.

Next on the whirlwind tour, since it closed before the Historical Village, was the Scholte House Museum and Gardens (more on that later), they call it Pella's best kept secret.

We then went back to the Historical Village (more on that later), mainly to see the boyhood home of Wyatt Earp.



We never knew that Wyatt Earp spent most of his boyhood years in Pella Iowa. This is the house he grew up in moved to the Historical Village and restored to the 1850s. By now we were getting pretty worn out and luckily the places were all closing. This was our first big sightseeing outing and we overdid it, we parked the truck at Subway and walked to all these places. Didn't seem to bad when we started out but got worse as the afternoon progressed. We didn't get much walking done in the winter with all the snow and ice so we need to pace ourselves a little better.

We had some time to kill so we got back to the truck and drank some water and checked our email up to the time we left to meet Mike's family at their place. We sat and chatted with them for awhile and talked about the bad weather and the recently concluded Tulip Time. Mike's daughter Jessica said it was so weird, they had 4 seasons in 4 days; summer in the 80s, a rainy fall day as the snowstorm approached the next day, a winter blanket of 6 inches of snow on the tulips the next, and a rainy spring day the next. 

By then it was past time for supper so we headed to the Panda Garden for what turned out to be a very good Chinese buffet. One thing we do need to mention is the peanut chicken, but not like the Thai variety that we have had. The sauce looked like runny peanut butter and the peanut was crunchy on the chicken. It was unique and a very good dish. Jo usually doesn't go for egg rolls in a buffet because they can sometimes get soggy but she tried one and it was one of the best egg rolls, sit down or buffet, that we have had. All the food was good and we ate way too much.

It was quite a day and we look forward to blogging about all the places in the future.

Till next time,

Bob and Jo