Albert the Bull

Landmark

The white farmhouse behind Grant Wood's 1930 painting still stands in tiny Eldon — visitors can borrow overalls and a pitchfork from the visitor center and pose exactly as the painting's models did.

Outdoors

A 250-foot limestone bluff frames the Upper Mississippi River Wildlife Refuge, Lock and Dam No. 12, and the river town of Bellevue below in one shot -- and in winter, the same open water below the dam draws bald eagles the overlook trail was built to watch.

Outdoors

A 164-acre bluff-top park built during the WPA era specifically to frame the view of Lock and Dam No. 11 below -- the stonework overlooks and pavilions were designed as public infrastructure for watching the river work, not just scenery, and the eagle namesake still holds up in winter.

Landmark

"If you build it, he will come" — the actual cornfield-ringed diamond from the 1989 film, where you can still walk out of the corn onto the infield at dusk.

Landmark

The birthplace cottage, Quaker meetinghouse, and gravesite of Iowa's only U.S. president, set inside a National Historic Site free to enter — a rare NPS check-in on the eastern Iowa corridor.

Landmark

The only five-domed statehouse in America, its central dome sheathed in tissue-thin 23-karat gold leaf — this is Roamward's capital check-in for Iowa, the literal centerpiece of the state progress map.