Amana Colonies

On our way from Des Moines to Waterloo we stopped to visit the Amana Colonies for a little bit. This is a place where a communal society called the Community of True Inspiration settled, later deciding that the communal life was unsuccessful and creating the Amana Society which was more of a capitalistic society. There are several little villages with quaint shops, wineries, restaurants, candy shops, and handicrafts of the area. We hadn't visited this area for quite a while. It's always interesting and fun to visit.

One of the shops we visited was a quilt shop with all kinds of hand sewn and machine sewn quilts along with all the supplies you'd ever need to make a quilt of your own. Some of the quilts were $500 - $1,000. Amazing work.

My friends and I used to make quilts with this applique when someone would have a baby. It made a nice gift for the new baby.

This is the artwork one of the ladies, and it is turned into patterns for quilts. This is the old fashioned way. Nowadays, the patterns are usually made with computers.

Here are some pictures of a neat place we visited. It's a museum type of place, but they make all the things too. This is the largest rocker made out of walnut. It's too big for me.

More reasonable size.

Musical contraptions.

This is one of those puzzles where you put the golf ball on the top and it travels down to the bottom. I know there's a special name for these, but I can't remember what they are. I do know they're neat. Bob did it a few times.

This was a winery, cheese shop, and gift shop. We ended up getting some wine, just little bottles.

We visited the museum there and learned about the history of these people.

Typical house there.

One of the bakeries there. We couldn't resist these gooey cookies. I did ask if there was a discount for people named Lucy, but no such luck. I also offered them psychological advice for 5 cents. No one wanted to take me up on that.