December 4, 2020

Good first day. Left St. Cloud around 9:00am. Easy drive to Iowa. Stopped at the Buddy Holly crash site. There was a cold wind across the Iowa field but it was just a couple hundred yards from the gravel road. There were a few other people visiting the same time as us. From there is was just a short drive to Mason City. We grabbed a quick lunch at the Quarry and then to The Historic Park Hotel for our tour. We were the only ones on the tour. A little shopping at the gift shop and then we checked in. We took the rest of the afternoon to walk around Mason City looking at sculpture, murals and arcatechture. After our walk, we stopped at Laredo’s for a drink and a snack. We were the only customers. Back to the hotel for a few minutes to put our feet up. We went down to the hotel lounge, but it was not open. We were a little early for our reservations at the 1910 Grille, but it wasn’t very busy and we got a table. We started with some cocktails and then some great food. Karla got the chateaubriand and I got the duck breast. Also some really tasty brussels sprouts and asparagus. We got the lava cake and took it back to our room. We sat on the bed in our room, ate the lava cake, drank a really good stout from the local Fat Hill Brewery and watched Minnesota United beat Kansas City United.