It is getting time to plan your trip to GAMARAI tour for 2023. This year we are going northwest. We will start from Grimes, IA on the northwest corner of the Des Moines area on September 18.

You folks coming in from far and wide will be at the AmericInn in Grimes Sunday night.

Our first stop is in Coon Rapids where we will
visit an engine builder. He starts with rough castings and makes everything. After lunch in Manning, we stop at a really old German Hausbarn and see how the Germans shared their living space with their animals. Then we take a trip back in time to prohibition times to see how some local entrepreneurs survived the depression and
see how it is done today. We then see a really big bull and have a picnic at the hotel in Audubon where we spend the first night.

Tuesday morning, we see a working Dutch windmill and a Dutch American Museum. Yes, from Germany to the Netherlands in two nearby Iowa towns. We then start our trip up the Iowa rocky mountains, or maybe it is sandy foothills. We take the back roads up the Loess Hills to Pisgah. Some of you might remember the Old Home Fill Her Up and Keep On Truck’n Café. Yes, there is such a place and we drive right by it. Pisgah is also the home of the Iowa State Forest Museum. From there we go to Onawa for lunch then farther up the Loess Hills to Sioux City where we visit the Mid America Museum of Aviation and Transportation. Our hotel is in Sergeant
Bluff with dinner on your own.

Wednesday is tour Sioux City day with a number of highlights you might enjoy. We will end up in North Sioux City for the night with dinner on your own. This will feature visits to the Sergeant Floyd Monument, Lewis & Clark Interpretive Center, possible visits to a candy factory and a popcorn palace and much more. Our hotel that night is in North Sioux City, South Dakota.

Thursday brings us to the Sioux City Railroad Museum and then on to Le Mars, Iowa. There we will visit the famous Well’s Blue Bunny Ice Cream Parlor, a two story ice cream stand that is second to none. Then we travel on through Cherokee to Storm Lake. Our hotel is right on the lake, and for supper we will visit a nearby park that also sits on the lake, where we will have a pizza party in the shelter house. If it is nice weather, we will probably sit outside but if not, the shelter house is air-conditioned.

Friday is our trip home. But before you all run off, we invite you to stop in Jefferson on our way home. They have a charming old city square there and we plan our last visit. It is to RVP 1875. This guy makes furniture using tools only available in 1875. Any of you woodworkers will enjoy the hand cut dove tails. There are a number of finished projects in the showroom plus he shows you how he makes things with his hand tools. This stop will not take very much time and it is fascinating to watch him work.

We hope you can join us on this year’s GAMARAI 2023.

GAMARAI TOUR DIRECTORS 2023
TOM JAMISON & LARRY KING