LEISURELY SATURDAY...

Andrew and I spent a relaxing afternoon Saturday in Amana, Iowa. Amana is one of seven small villages settled by German immigrants in 1855. Now it's a very touristy area with shops and restaurants serving authentic German fare in a family style dining atmosphere. Amana is also the home of Amana appliance maker recently purchased by Maytag.

Our first stop was the Millstream Brewing Company where we sampled a few beers and then sat on their patio and enjoyed a delicious Pale Ale.

After that we headed across the street to see the Amana Woolen Mills and store, where wool blankets and other items are still made on giant looms that you can watch run during business hours.

We then walked a block or so to the Amana Furniture Store and Clock Shop. The quality and craftsmanship are unmatched. We drooled over the enormous grandfather clocks with their glass-smooth finishes and beautiful chimes. I love to stand in the clock shop and hear all the clocks chiming, one after another. It's fun to hear one begin to chime and try to follow the sound and find which one it's coming from before it stops chiming.

After we left the clock and furniture shop we headed a block over to the Colony Inn, my favorite restaurant in the Amana Colonies. I've been going to this restaurant since I was a kid.
The Colony Inn is an old hotel from the 1800's that was converted to a restaurant decades ago and has been serving family style meals ever since. I knew I recognized our waitress and asked her how long she had been working there. She told us she'd been there 18 years. I then asked her about a certain waitress who had been employed there since I was a child. She had red hair and a thick German accent. I figured she had retired some time ago since she was old as far back as I could remember. I'm not sure how long she had been waitressing there, but I know it had to be close to 40 years because I remember looking for her each time my parents took me there. She intrigued me with her accent, her firey-red hair and the attitude to go along with it. Laurie, our waitress told us that her name was Marie and she had just passed away a couple of years ago after living in a care center in one of the Amana Colonies. In fact Laurie's daughter had become very close to Marie in her final years, visiting her often. Laurie told us that Marie had lost her husband just a few months prior to her passing and if you are buried in the Amana Colonies, you are buried in chronological order of when you die, not in a grave site of your own choosing. As it turned out, Marie was the very next person, after her own husband, to die and be buried in Amana. So she was, ironically, buried right next to her husband. How appropriate.

After lunch we walked the main street and stopped in to several shops that looked interesting, including a couple of wineries. The problem with Iowa wineries is that the wines made locally are mostly sweet because this climate is more suitable to berries and fruits. We really prefer the red grape wines to sweeter dessert-type wines.

On the way home we saw this full rainbow. I happened to have the camera in the car, so I snapped a few pictures of it.

Saturday evening, our friend Patty met us at our house and we went out for a great steak dinner at one of those grill-it-yourself steak places. I think it's fun to stand by the grill cooking your giant slab of beef with a 24oz beer in your hand. We got our waitress to snap this pic of us.

It was a great Saturday doing the things we love to do...mostly eat, shop and drink beer and wine. How could it get any better?