(41) Cerro Gordo County 5.24.2024 – 5.26.2024

Cerro Gordo- so much legacy in one county: Frank Lloyd Wright, Meredith Wilson, Bill Baird, Buddy Holly.

We devoted an entire weekend to exploring these legacies! Although we devoted most of our time to Mason City and Clear Lake, we made sure to stop by a few of the smaller towns on our drive in, just to experience a little more of the county

Thornton

 

Swaledale (no pictures)

and 

Rockwell

 

When we got into Mason City, we stopped at Birdsall’s Ice Cream to celebrate the last day of school. We left straight from a noon dismissal on the last day- what better way to celebrate than traditional ice cream shoppe ice cream!

We then took a walk across the Meredith Wilson “The Music Man” Foot Bridge where we also got to see a momma deer with her babies!

 

And stopped in the MacNider Art Museum. We enjoyed looking at the various works of art but were most excited to see the puppets of Bill Baird that were used in the Sound of Music.

 

 We stopped outside the library and couldn’t resist taking a picture in front of the neat entryway.

 

We then did a driving tour of the Rock Crest-Rock Glen Historic District to see the world’s largest concentrated Prairie School Architecture Form homes, right here in Mason City, Iowa! They’re all built around Willow Creek so that the fronts of the house are facing the creek and the backs of the house are facing the streets.

We stopped at the East Park, which is a wooden park built in the Prairie School Architecture style and is also next to the 1912 Steam Locomotive. The Steam Locomotive was closed at this time so we knew we’d have to come back.

 

We then made our way to the town square where they were hosting the North Iowa Band Festival. We did a little bit of shopping around the square and were able to watch some of the Mason City High School Orchestra and Mason City High School Jazz Band.

 

After enjoying some music in the open air, we headed over to Clear Lake for dinner at the Gyro Place and then made our way back to the hotel to swim and get some sleep for the next day’s explorations.

 

Saturday started off at Three on the Tree Coffee, and then we promptly found a good spot to view the North Iowa Band Festival Parade. This parade definitely did not disappoint in terms of candy and size, but we did think there would be more marching bands since it is a marching band competition.

 

 

We stopped at the Pretzel Maker to pick up “lunch” and took it back to the East Park to play and view the 1912 Steam Locomotive. We got to climb up into the locomotive and even got to ring the bell on the steam engine. It’s wild just how big these steam engines were!

 

What’s nice about Mason City is most of the main sites are within walking distance so we were able to walk to the Music Man Square and Meredith Wilson Boyhood Home. The Music Man Square is neat because it is a reproduction of the main street of River City, IA from the Music Man. The reproduction is mostly just storefronts so that you can’t actually go into the different stores, but it does have an actual soda fountain in the museum. The Meredith Wilson Boyhood Home tour was enjoyable, and we learned quite a bit about Meredith Wilson! We would highly recommend this tour.

Rather than getting sodas at the Music Man Square, we decided to head to the Brick and Tile Building to get ice cream at the Old Creamery- and it did not disappoint!

We knew Sunday was going to be rainy so we decided to head over to Clear Lake to enjoy some time at the lake! We didn’t have our swimwear for the beach but still enjoyed looking for rocks and shells along the beach and walking on the docks. We were surprised at how many people were at the beach and in the water since it still wasn’t very hot out and the water was quite cold!

 

 

We were hoping to go on a Lady of the Lake tour, but it wasn’t open for public tours yet. We did get to see it take off for a wedding reception though.

 

We also enjoyed perusing the main street area of Clear Lake and had pizza at GeJo’s by the Lake and soda fountain drinks at Charlie’s Soda Fountain.

Before heading back to the hotel for the night, we took a nice stroll through the Central Gardens of North Iowa—a 3 acre plot of land created for the community to enjoy.

 

We woke up to the rain as expected on Sunday but did not let that stop us from exploring more of Cerro Gordo County. We started the day off right by picking up donuts from the South Shore Donut Co. and taking them to the original Cabin Coffee Co in Clear Lake.

After fueling up for the day, we stopped by the Surf Ballroom and Museum just to check it out from outside. There is currently a lot of construction being done around it as they are building a new Surf Ballroom Music Enrichment and Immersive Center.

Despite the rain, we made our way to the famous crash site of Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and the Big Bopper.

 

We headed back to Mason City and did a little exploration on our own of the Historic Park Inn Hotel and Bank.

 

as well as the Brick and Tile building which is also built to resemble the Prairie School Architecture form.

 

We definitely didn’t want to miss the Rancho Deluxe “bicycle garden”—an eclectic trash-to-treasure garden!

 

Back to Clear Lake—we went to the Lakeside Landing Kitchen + Bar where we enjoyed lunch outside by the lake and couldn’t resist another stop at Charlie’s Soda Fountain.

We made a quick stop at the Lime Creek Nature Center. Although we only had about 20 minutes there, it was definitely worth the stop as it is a well-done nature center with lots of interesting exhibits.

 

We ended our time in Cerro Gordo County at the Stockman House- a house designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. Unfortunately, we could not take any pictures inside, but it was a wonderful tour, and we thoroughly enjoyed getting to see the amazing architecture of the house. This is an absolute must-see for Cerro Gordo County!

 

Rate: 5

Other Things to See/Do:

• Lime Creek Nature Trail at the Lime Creek Nature Center
• Lady of the Lake tour, Clear Lake
• Kinney Pioneer Museum, Clear Lake
• Tyden Farm No. 6 guided tour, Dougherty
• McIntosh Woods State Park, Ventura
• Clear Lake Arts Center, Clear Lake
• Clear Lake Historical Society, Clear Lake
• Iowa Trolley Park, Clear Lake
• Clear Lake Fire Museum (only open in the summer), Clear Lake
• Kite Festival (in February), Clear Lake