Iowa welcomes our friends to the North, South, East and West!

The Iowa Tourism Office has officially kicked off its spring marketing campaign. We’re not only reaching out to Iowans, but also to our neighbors in Chicago, Kansas City and Minneapolis.

The multi-faceted marketing campaign has been designed to encourage Midwesterners to visit traveliowa.com to plan their family vacation.

This year's campaign includes:

• Four, 15-second TV spots
• Digital banner ads on lifestyle and travel-related websites
• Full-color print ads in popular parents and lifestyle magazines
• Travel messages in the Mall of America in Minnesota; Stratford Square and Woodfield Malls outside of Chicago; and Oak Park Mall in Kansas City.
• Giveaways on the Tourism Office's Facebook page
• Vacation conversations on Facebook, Twitter and the Travel Iowa blog

Our goal is to showcase Iowa as an attractive, affordable, easy-to-get-to family destination. So  be sure to check out http://www.traveliowa.com/ or any of our social media channels for great vacation ideas.

Have great Iowa vacation photos? We'd love to see them! Tag and share your photos on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest or Flickr. Tag Travel Iowa or use the #iowasnapshots hashtag.


What Iowa destination are you looking forward to visiting this summer?

Unsinkable Stories: 100 Years Later

Photo courtesy of Brucemore

On April 11, 1912, the RMS Titanic set out on her maiden voyage carrying more than 2,000 passengers. She sunk just four days later. Two members of Brucemore's Douglas family and former Cedar Rapids' residents Walter and Mahala Douglas were among at least 36 passengers aboard the Titanic with connections to Iowa. Personal accounts, documents from the Douglas family archives, and excerpts from local newspapers are currently on display in the Unsinkable Stories: 100 Year Later exhibit at the Brucemore Visitor Center in Cedar Rapids.

Mahala Douglas
(Photo courtesy of Brucemore)

“Many exhibits examine the national and international impact of the tragedy,” said April Kamp-Whittaker, Director of Learning and Museum Projects. “Few focus on the human experience. Unsinkable Stories provides a regional and individual perspective, connecting Iowans to the personal accounts of the historical event and international tragedy.”

The exhibition is open during Visitor Center hours, Monday through Saturday, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. and Sunday, 12 p.m. to 4 p.m. Admission is free.

Brucemore, Iowa’s only National Trust Historic Site, is located on a 26-acre park-like estate in the heart of Cedar Rapids. The Queen Anne style mansion was built between 1884 and 1886.

Information supplied by Tara Richards, Brucemore

Seals and Sea Lions Make a Splash at Blank Park Zoo

It’s no secret, to those who know me, that I love the Blank Park Zoo in Des Moines. The intimate exhibits allow visitors to get an up close look at animals, help you learn about where they are from in the world, and are placed snuggly together so my children can bound from one to the next and stay in my sight.

We recently got a glimpse of Blank Park Zoo’s all new Seal and Sea Lion Pool. This is a fantastic exhibit! The new pool allows for visitors to see the seals and sea lions swimming in the crystal clear water from above and provides under water viewing which my kids couldn’t get enough of, and honestly neither could I.

It’s larger than it was before and offers a wide variety of places to enjoy the exhibit. Twice a day the Zoo has training demonstrations where they work with the seals and sea lions to do a variety of tasks while they “work” for their food. Although entertaining for visitors, this actually provides great assistance to veterinarians. Through training, these marine mammals can present a flipper for examination, open wide for a dental check and even hop on a scale.

Last summer the Zoo opened an Australian Adventure and work has already begun rebuilding and expanding their African experience. In the meantime, visitors can also enjoy a special Ice Age exhibit showcasing animals of a different era.

I’m looking forward to all the new things to come, but have to admit we love to hang out at the lion exhibit. What’s your favorite animal to see at the Zoo?

Colleen Murphy, Iowa Tourism Office

Goose bumps and chills in Villisca

I left the murder scene haunted. The days following my visit, images of the bedrooms, the covered mirrors, the attic and the gravesites kept surfacing in my mind. My perception of the mass murder vaulted from an Iowa legend to the grotesque reality of eight innocent victims that were bashed and slaughtered by an axe during the night, and according to some, left behind paranormal activity.

The scene is the quiet little town of Villisca in the southwest corner of Iowa. The story has been featured on at least two television shows Ghost Adventures (Travel Channel) and Ghost Lab (Discovery Channel). It was because of these shows that my daughter, home on college spring break, wanted to experience The Villisca Ax Murder House first hand. I was game for a daytime visit – only daytime. That is how our adventure began.

But a bit of history first. Nearly one hundred years ago, June 10, 1912, the Josiah & Sarah Moore family, along with two neighbor girls were killed by an ax murderer during the night. The evening prior, while the family and neighbor children attended church activities, young Katherine Moore invited her friends Ina and Lena to spend the night. The next morning Mary Peckham a neighbor, noticed that the curtains were drawn and there was no activity at the house. She found the house locked so she contacted Josiah Moore’s brother. He was able to enter the home and discovered the massacre. Word spread quickly through the town and, before officials could secure the crime scene, dozens of town folks had walked through the house contaminating any clues to solve the crime. The mystery is still unsolved, though many speculations remain.

During the guided tour we drove past the victim’s church, where they had spent the evening prior to the murders, then to the cemetery and visited the grave sites. Our docent, Kristi Peamer, led us to the Stillinger’s first, where Ina (8) and Lena (11) were put to rest. Their mother Edith, pregnant at the time of their murders, was so overcome by grief she lost her pregnancy, a baby boy, a few weeks later; he is buried beside his sisters. Just a few steps away, the Moore family was buried. Laying there were Josiah (43) and Sarah Moore (39), and their four children, Katherine (10), Herman (11), Boyd (7) and Paul (5).

Back at the house, our tour guide, John Houser, was waiting and ready to share stories about the murder and subsequent paranormal activity. Emotionally, I was doing okay, still fairly skeptical when he starting sharing stories in the third person, stories about other people’s experiences in the house. But when he started sharing his own experiences in the house, the voices he has heard and seeing doors that had been slammed shut , John’s first hand stories gave me the goose bumps and triggered the chills down my spine.


Pausing on his stories, John encouraged us to explore the house on our own. Walking through the rooms was a time warp back to 1912. The mirrors were covered and the kerosene lamp chimneys were missing, just how they were found after the murders. While the bodies were long gone, the blood stains scoured clean and gouges from the axe handle hitting the ceiling were covered, I felt like I was back in time, like a family member could walk in at anytime, almost. Thankfully, the other tourists dressed in modern attire kept me tethered to 2012. I don’t think you’ll see me wandering through the house all by myself even in broad daylight.

The curators placed framed documentation about the victims in each room, which causes one to stop and reflect. This is real, very real. Eight people died here, may they rest in peace.


If you believe in the paranormal or not, a visit to The Villisca Axe Murder House is one you will remember and will probably haunt you for days to come. It did me.
 
LuAnn Reinders, Iowa Tourism Office