Amana Colonies, Iowa - July 4th, 2021
It may seem a little strange to most people to celebrate the 4th of July with a taste of German culture, but we both are descendants of German immigrants so it seemed perfect to us. The Amana Colonies not only reminded us of our heritage, but also brought back memories of when we lived in Germany for a couple of years about thirty years ago.
On Sunday, we headed from Green Valley State Park to the Amana Colonies. Originally we were going to try to get a camp site at Lake Iowa County Park, for two nights starting July 3rd. However, Green Valley State Park required a three night minimum. This shortened our stay near Amana Colonies to one night. Lake Iowa County Park campground is not reservable. It is first come/first serve. After seeing how full Green Valley State Park was, we were getting a little nervous that we wouldn’t be able to find an open site on July 4th. A couple of days earlier, we got online to look for a back up plan. The Amana RV Park & Event Center, located about a mile from Amana, had openings that we could reserve, so we did. It was not the type of camping we like, just an open field with hook ups, but it put us at ease and it was located near what we wanted to see.
We got off the interstate just west of Newton and took US 6 over to Amana. Now that’s more like the roads we like to travel, going through and seeing small, cute towns with not much traffic and getting a better feel for the area. When we pulled into our camp site at the campground, there was a red-tailed hawk sitting on a post near our sight.
After checking into the campground, we drove into the town of Amana. The Amana Colonies consist of seven villages. The Amana Colonies were established in 1855 by a religious group called the Inspirationists who had fled Germany to avoid persecution. They lived in a communal system from 1842 (starting in Buffalo, New York) up until 1932. Through the “Great Change”, they abandoned the communal system and formed the Amana Society corporation to own most of the common property. The Amana Appliances company was created in 1934 and is now owned by Whirlpool.
You can visit the seven villages today, Amana, East Amana, Middle Amana, High Amana, West Amana, South Amana, and Homestead. Most of the shops and museums are in Amana, but there are a few located in the other villages as well. Some of the shops have retained their German heritage, like the Millstream Brau Haus, the Amana Meat Shop & Smokehouse (still owned by the Amana Society), and the Amana Colonies Bakery & Café. Other shops contain antiques, local wines, arts and crafts. We are not big fans of antiques which is too bad because there was an antique show going on at the event center back at the campground.
The villages are located not far from each other. A 17 mile loop connects them all. You could spend the day riding a bicycle to each of them. We thought about biking it, but it was a hot day and we would be riding on the narrow shoulder of the road even though there was not a lot of auto traffic. We drove our van around instead.
We only had half a day to visit the colonies and we managed to support the local economy with our wallets. First we ate lunch at the Millstream Brau Haus. There was about a twenty minute wait for a table inside, but we could serve ourselves and sit at a table outside on the deck right away. We chose the latter option. We just had to walk inside and place our order at the bar when we were ready and they would call our name when our food was ready. We both ordered Amana brats with sauerkraut. Left Buddy (LB) had the German home fries while Right Buddy (RB) had sweet potato fries. Yes, she knows sweet potato fries are not German, but she has a hard time passing those up. For beverages, RB wanted to try the Black Cherry soda, but LB messed up the order and got her root beer instead. It was still very good. LB had one of the wheat beers, called Nordic Pils. The German home fries were interesting. They were cubes of fried potatoes with a rich, sweet and sour sauce that reminded us of warm German potato salad with bacon and vinegar.
After lunch, we strolled around Amana, enjoying the old architecture of the homes and shops along with the wonderful flower gardens. We don’t consider us big shoppers, so we did not wander into most of the shops. However, we wanted to pick something up to take to our friends who we were visiting in a few days, so we stopped at Prosit Wines to taste the wines from Cedar Ridge Winery. We left with two bottles of wine.
Then we headed over to the Amana Meat Shop & Smokehouse. When the colonies were first established, each village had their own meat shop and smokehouse. The building has a distinctive tower that we assume is used for smoking the meats. Luckily we have a small refrigerator in our van; otherwise, RB would have bought more meat and cheese. Concerned about space, RB only bought Swiss cheese with caraway, smoked gouda, Amana smoked brats, and two bars of Rittersport chocolate. We couldn’t pass up the chocolate. We lived in Waldenbuch, Germany for two years, where the Rittersport chocolate factory is located. Rittersport’s dark chocolate is still RB’s favorite chocolate. We went straight back to our van to get everything into the fridge before the chocolate melted in the heat of the day.
RB thought the caraway Swiss would make good reuben sandwiches, but now she needed a good rye bread so we headed over to the Amana Colonies Bakery. The bakery did not disappoint. There were so many varieties of rye bread, RB had a hard time choosing which one. In addition, we bought a couple of cherry strudel pastries. Apple would be more traditional German, but cherry sounded better. Cherry reminds us of the wonderful cherry pies RB’s mother used to make.
It was hot outside. We chose to save the cherry strudels for later and have ice cream instead to hep us cool down a little. Right next to the bakery is the Amana Colonies Popcorn and Ice Cream Company, perfect! LB got excited when he saw the shake cups and mixers behind the counter. Then he was a little disappointed to find out they are in the process of adding shakes to the menu, but are still working on the recipes. He opted for a waffle cone instead. The ice cream was pretty tasty. They had a deep, dark chocolate ice cream that RB loved.
Now that our bellies were too full to walk comfortably in the heat, we headed back to the van to drive to the other villages. It didn’t take us long to drive through the other colonies. Partly due to the heat and partly due to most of the handful of shops and museums in the other villages being closed, we did not get out of the van.
To refresh ourselves, we headed back to the campground. RB took a shower and LB laid down under the air conditioner in the van. After feeling revitalized, we headed back into Amana for dinner. We noticed earlier that the other restaurant in town, the Ronneburg, closed at 6 pm. We don’t know if it always closes that early or if it was special holiday hours for the 4th of July. Instead, we went back to the Millstream Brau Haus. This time RB had the reuben with applesauce and LB had the schnitzel sandwich with applesauce. Our sandwiches were OK, but we liked the brats we had earlier better. RB tried again to have black cherry soda, but this time they were sold out of it. Our waitress assured us that they were out of it at lunch time as well, to get LB off the hook for messing up the lunchtime order. Instead, RB tried the cream soda. It was very refreshing and not overly sweet. LB tried a different beer, the Schild Brau Amber, which he thoroughly enjoyed.
Now we were totally stuffed. We stopped at the campground office to ask if there were fireworks in the area. We were pleasantly surprised that the town fireworks were launched next to Lily Lake and we had front row seats right from our camp site. It doesn’t get much better than that! Back at our camp site, we lounged around and waited for the fireworks to start. For a small town, we were pretty impressed with the display of fireworks, thoroughly enjoyable in our opinion. Even though Amana RV Park was not our first choice, it probably worked out better for the time we had.
It was a different way to spend the 4th of July holiday. We may have not been surrounded by friends and family, but we felt grateful to learn about a sub-culture of our great country. How do you normally celebrate Independence Day?
Check out our related video: Amana Colonies, Iowa
(RB)