The Amana Colonies, what are they we wondered. It turns out it is a group of seven settlements some Germans founded in the 1800’s. Mom says back in the 1970’s, she remembers a lot of people vacationing there and talking about it. She even went there at least once, but doesn’t remember much about it. Being curious, we had to check it out. They are actually a National Historical Landmark.
Our trials started at 8 am and ran all day, so the best time for us to go was early morning. Another benefit of going early is that nothing is open, so no people were out and about. We went on Saturday morning, it was a beautiful warm but sunny day.
The General Store was our favorite find on the main street. It was built in 1868, making it really, really old, but cute. We think it is even cuter with two hounds on the bench out front!
Here is a close up of us with the pretty flower decorations.
They sell a lot of fun stuff that my mom likes to look at. We find it rather boring, but thankfully for us, the store was closed. Mom had to window shop. We didn’t take any other photos with buildings because everything was tall, and we are short, so it didn’t bode well for our kind of photos. They also had big COVID signs posted on doors and windows and we didn’t want those in our photos.
On the drive into town the first day, we stopped at Lily Lake. Here at home we see lily pads, but not as many as this lake has!
We took a photo of the story of the lake so we could read about it and find out why it has so many lilies.
After a short walk around the Amana Colonies, we headed back to the trial grounds to start our sports day. Being a hot, mini GBGV, I decided to help advertise the hot, mini donuts they had for sale. It worked, too, because Mom bought a bag! Have you ever heard of or been to the Amana Colonies?