(33) Audobon County 5.28.2023

We’ve decided to call Audobon county, the “county of landmarks” We started the day off by viewing the “Tree in the Road.” Considering it’s just a tree in the middle of the road, it is surprisingly neat to see as you’re driving up to it! It’s just kind of beautiful in its own way!

 

Our next landmark was the “Plow in the tree.” Story goes, a man left to join the Civil War, and he had propped his plow on this tree, but then never came back and the tree grew up around it. We’re not sure what’s going to happen when the tree grows completely around it because as you can, there’s only a tiny bit left sticking out at this time.

 

We went through Exira next, where the first Audobon County Courthouse was located. They had turned it into a the Audobon County Historical Museum, but now it appears they have moved it to an old church in Exira. We had tried to call to see about getting in to tour the museum but did not receive a call back so alas, we missed it! 

We made our way to Hamlin, where we knew we wouldn’t be able to tour the Nathaniel Hamlin Park and Museums. We had really been hoping to tour this park and museum, but again we were not able to get a hold of anyone. We did get to see the elk that are raised there and even fed them which was a lot of fun! We would really like to come back to tour the complex because it looked really neat and well maintained with lots of different buildings including a school house, meeting hall, barn, the cattlemen’s mural, a blacksmith shop, and of course Nathaniel Hamlin’s house.

 

Next up was another landmark, “Albert the Bull” in Audobon, because we definitely couldn’t pass up seeing this infamous bull 😊

We then walked around the main street area to view all of the bird mosaics along the sidewalks, along with the John James Audobon stain glass clock tower.

 We also got to see the Audobon County Courthouse, built in the 1940’s as part of the New Deal build- very different than most of the courthouses we've seen so far!

Next landmark on our visit was the Little Mermaid and Fairy Tale Statue Park in Kemballton in honor of Hans Christian Andersen and the area’s Danish heritage. There were littler statues all around the fountain showing the many different books he has written- it was really neat!

We scoured the county for a good restaurant, bakery, coffee shop—really anything food oriented and only kept coming up short! The conclusion is, do not come to Audobon on a Sunday. Everything was closed except El Adobe, which ended up being very delicious, but not really what we were originally hoping to enjoy 😊

 

Return Rating: 2

Other things to see/do:

• T-Bone Festival, Audobon
• Nathaniel Hamlin Park and Museums, Hamlin
• 4^th of July celebration, Audobon
• J. J. Audobon Cultural Center in the Carnegie Library, Audobon
• School Museum, Audobon
• Post Office mural, Audobon
• Rose Garden, Gray
• Danish Immanuel Lutheran Church, built in the late 1800’s, Kimballton
• Audobon County Historical Museum, Exira