Week Three, Villages of Central Lee County continued . .

On January 22, we ended our third week of walking and are making good progress towards the small city of Donnellson. Progress in week three took us up to and moving past the junction of Highway 218 and 61. We took the west fork onto Hwy 218 to the northwest.  If you were trying to keep up with the pacer, we should end up the week at 20 miles from our start point.  But again, that's just for pacing, most of us are just behind it, and some are just beyond it.

Rhonda is just about to reach the highway fork to start up Hwy 218, here at 8.8 miles from the start.  She will be moving up the road into the villages of central Lee County in the next week.

The middle pack of us are walking through that area now.  This stretch of road takes us through the villages of New Boston and Charleston, Iowa, as seen on Terry's walking map below. 
According to the 1914, History of Lee County, these tiny villages were stations along the Keokuk and Mt. Pleasant branches of the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy Railroad lines. New Boston, in the photo on the left, has a lovely Mennonite church along the highway.
This is what sticks in my head from car trips through the area as a kid. The pretty little white church.

Terry is at 15.3 miles in the third week and just passing to the other side of New Boston, with a beautiful sunny view of the country side heading northwest.

Halfway in between the villages of New Boston and Charleston, we passed the Central Lee School.  This is the county high school for Donnellson, Montrose, Argyle and the county farm kids.  It's a large school for the area and has a large stadium and track for sports. They are the Hawks and Lady Hawks and are a 2A school.  http://www.central-lee.k12.ia.us/high/

 

Charleston, the next village, I remember, because of the water tower.  It's part of the Rathbun Rural Water Association, which always made me laugh.  The town is less than 20 miles from the Mississippi River to the east, but it still pipes water from Lake Rathbun 60+ miles and four counties to the west. Go figure.

 
Even though this tiny village is really mostly a collection of houses today,  it did at one time thrive. According to the 1914 History of Lee County:  "Charleston, a town in Charleston Township, was laid out by George Berry on September 23, 1848 . . . . The original plat was 48 small and 3 large lots, with Hackberry, Main, and Elm Streets crossed by numbered streets east and west. Population in 1914 was 65, with 3 churches, public school, post office, express and telegraph offices, telephone connections, a hotel, a general store, and depot." (as quoted from Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charleston,_Iowa)  The Wikipedia article states that the remaining restaurant in town burned rather spectacularly in 2009.  I haven't driven into SE Iowa recently enough to know if anything has replaced it. Maybe a road trip this summer will tell us for sure.

Melinda, as seen above, is at 18 miles this week. The satellite photo dates to fall 2009--which must have been a good year for the corn. She is just coming up onto the interchange where the new Highway 218 bipasses the old road into Donnellson.

So here is my view (Janet) going under the interchange at 19 miles from start.

The pacer this week would have placed us just beyond this interchange at 20 miles from our start in Keokuk's riverfront park.

The overachievers this week are Mike and Lucy who have blown past the pacer time and moved ahead, again.  Hooray for trail blazers!  They keep my mapping skills moving forward!  

Lucy is at 30.5 miles at the end of week 3, with a view of SE Iowa on a fall cloudy day. The view here shows the turn off to St. Paul, another small village.

 Mike is at 44 miles this week and has actually moved into Henry County and into the eastern neighborhoods of Mount Pleasant.  Again, I am routing him up the old road into town, not the new Highway Bypass. He is now in a pretty residential area.   In the next week, we will hopefully close the gap with him and be closer to entering Mt. Pleasant ourselves.  In the meantime, there are lots of things to do in Mt. Pleasant, so I am sure he can entertain himself while waiting on us.