Herbert Hoover National Historic Site

We had a pretty uneventful stay in Des Moines last night. This morning we hit the road and headed east to West Branch, Iowa and the home of Herbert Hoover.We started our visit to the Herbert Hoover National Historic Site with a stop at the visitor center, then we headed out past some blooming pasque flower

to the actual birth cottage of our 31st president.

The home is very small,

and after a short, 3 minute visit,

we were in his back yard and ready to use his privy.

Not only has the National Park Service helped to preserve the president's home, they've also preserved some of the other buildings in his West Branch neighborhood.

We visited the blacksmith shop, a reconstruction of the shop that Herbert's father Jesse ran.

We then headed over to the one-room schoolhouse,

where young Herbert attended 3 years learning.

After that we walked the rest of the closed off street, past some really interesting homes that have been preserved by the park service.

We wandered into downtown and found a pizza place, Herb and Lou's, to eat lunch as it rained outside.

After lunch we headed back outside to a very light drizzle. We checked out the Quaker meetinghouse,

a statue of the Egyptian goddess of life, Isis,

that had been donated to Herbert Hoover by the people of Belgium as a thank you for his humanitarian efforts during World War I. Next, we headed past the site of another Hoover home, the Maples,

and then past the presidential library to Herbert and Lou Hoovers' grave site.

We paid our respects and headed off into the prairie in a light rain for a short walk.