Wonderful start to your trip report. 

So glad that you liked the pies at Coffee Cup Caf� as much as you did.  As many times as I have been to Pella, I have never seen that canal.  Thanks for that info!

Very much looking forward to more.

Before I get into the Iowa portion of the trip, I hadn’t been in Philadelphia’s airport in a while and noticed major changes, including some good new food stands.

But enough of Pennsylvania. We flew into Des Moines and it was late enough for us to decide to remain near our hotel that first night. There weren’t a lot of great options, but there was one quirky and fairly well-known (locally) place that we decided to try out. It’s called Fong’s Pizza. It’s in what for years was the oldest Chinese restaurant in Des Moines. At some point after the Chinese restaurant went out of business, it was taken over by people who kept the classic d�cor, but changed the menu to something very unusual: Chinese pizza; meaning pizza crust topped with Chinese food. We went for General Tso’s Chicken pizza and egg rolls and crab Rangoon for appetizers. I have fairly high standards for Chinese food after having lived in Philadelphia’s Chinatown for eight years and wasn’t nuts about any of the food I had at Fong’s, but given the options within walking distance of the hotel, it was a decent experience for the uniqueness of the place. I knew I was just biding my time until the trip really got under way the following morning.

The next morning, I was extremely eager to get to our first planned stop of the trip, which was a little ways east of Des Moines. Circumstances seemed to be conspiring against me:

This train went on for a while.

Then we caught our first glimpse of the previously-mentioned cornfields.

We finally made it to our first destination that morning: Sully, home of the Coffee Cup Caf�, which I was strongly urged to visit before leaving on this trip. I took the advice and was very glad I did. 

We arrived between the breakfast and lunch rushes and the moderate crowd that was there initially cleared out for the most part not long after we ordered our breakfast. My wife had a breakfast sandwich and I went with a basic breakfast plate of eggs, freshly made sausage patties and hash browns. It reminded me of the breakfasts I’ve had at the Summit Diner in Western PA, where they also make their own sausage patties. 

Our final day of the trip, before heading home early the following day, began in Omaha and ended back in Des Moines, with a stop in between. I gave the stop away in the initial post of this report.

But we started the day in northern Omaha at Harold’s Koffee House, which Buffetbuster recommended and I had read a lot of good things about on-line. I planned to have a final piece of pie at Harold’s. They are known for both pie and small donuts, which you see, along with muffins, when you first walk in.

My wife ordered a strawberry-rhubarb muffin, which turned out to have strawberry cream in it.

I was disappointed with the limited pie selection of fresh strawberry, coconut and lemon-meringue, but had decided to probably get the lemon-meringue. However, I made the mistake of ordering a couple pancakes, along with bacon. The pancakes were fine (I might give the edge to the one I had at the Pharmacy in Winterset though), but they were absolutely massive, possibly the biggest standard pancakes I’ve ever had. I had to push them over so that they were sticking a couple inches off the plate on one side so that there would be a space where syrup could fall off the pancakes on the other.

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I made it about three-quarters of the way through them and couldn’t take another bite. The pie wasn’t going to happen, which was softened a little by the fact that they didn’t have any flavors that I was really in the mood for that morning.

We walked a couple blocks down the road and looked at a few businesses and a couple historical markers. It turned out we were in the area where the Mormons had their winter camp while making their way out West. 

I think there was a center around there that focuses on the topic, but we had plans to go to the Durham Museum at the long-closed-to-operational-trains Union Station and decided to proceed with them.

I had read that description of the museum before going there, but it had a much heavier focus on the station itself and old railroad cars than I’d expected; not that I had any problem with that. The huge main room of the station was beautiful and had a very attractive operational soda fountain-lunch counter.

Boy you wife is a great trooper: To follow you to all those steakhouses when she doesn't even eat that way. Wow, how many wives would do that!!!
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You're right. I love her to death.� We kind of have a deal where she goes to all of the capitols and picks a lot of the activities, and I pick the food, while trying to make sure there are always things for her to eat. This trip was tougher on her than most. I don't ever see myself doing another steakhouse tour. This was a once-in-a-lifetime thing.� In fact, we may push back next year's planned trip to Memphis and Arkansas a year to go to an area more suited to her taste and less food-oriented next year. We've talked about visiting her friends near San Francisco, then moving on to Sacramento and Carson City.
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I will say that relish tray in the first photo was right up her alley.�[;)]
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Sounds like she d love Oregon, you not so much. I m still heartbroken about not getting back to Bohemian Cafe one more time before it closed. 🙁
And Cherry Mash is better than the Twin Bing, at least in my humble opinion.
🙂

Our destination at this point was Lincoln, the next stop on our long capitals tour. I caught a glimpse of the Nebraska football stadium from the car.

Doesn’t look like a football stadium from the outside.
And based on Nebraska’s record so far there’s not much football going on inside, either.[;)]

One of the things I value when we go to a steakhouse is comfortable seating.  From your great pics, it looks like Nebraska might be a ‘destination’ for that accommodation. 

https://www.johnnyscafe.com Johnny’s Caf� in Omaha looked to be most excellent in that regard; the seats there remind me of those I always enjoyed at the late, great JR’s Stockyard Inn in Tyson’s corner, VA:

[8D][8D][8D][8D][8D]

Jim, We loved JR’s…we would go about once a month when he moved back to FFX for a year or so in 2009. Our daughter loved it also, as she was used to “new” style concepts.

Boy you wife is a great trooper: To follow you to all those steakhouses when she doesn’t even eat that way. Wow, how many wives would do that!!!

You’re right. I love her to death.  We kind of have a deal where she goes to all of the capitols and picks a lot of the activities, and I pick the food, while trying to make sure there are always things for her to eat. This trip was tougher on her than most. I don’t ever see myself doing another steakhouse tour. This was a once-in-a-lifetime thing.  In fact, we may push back next year’s planned trip to Memphis and Arkansas a year to go to an area more suited to her taste and less food-oriented next year. We’ve talked about visiting her friends near San Francisco, then moving on to Sacramento and Carson City.

I will say that relish tray in the first photo was right up her alley. [;)]

  You guys are a great team!!!! Very lucky!!

The following day, Thursday, was a big one for me. I’d finally get to do something I’ve been wanting to do for probably close to 20 years: eat a loosemeat sandwich. 

We were staying close to Bob’s Drive-In in Le Mars and intended to go there for an early lunch. But Bob opened at 11 and we decided we’d like to hit the road heading south/southwest a little earlier than that. So I looked up the Miles Inn and it turned out they opened at 10. We checked out of our hotel and headed for Sioux City.

While the main food theme of this trip was supper-club style steakhouses, Iowa had gradually moved up on my list of places I most wanted to visit for the food over the years, and the single biggest reason for that was probably to try a loosemeat sandwich. Having said that, based on things I’ve read from a couple people, I was at least slightly skeptical that I’d like the sandwich when I tried it. It turned out I needn’t have worried. I enjoyed the Charlie Boy I had with the works (onions, pickles, ketchup, mustard) and would probably have one a couple times a month if I lived there. I’d say I like loosemeat sandwiches, or at least this one, more than BPTs, but less than a good hamburger. 

Screwed this one up. But I’m getting better. I used to do this a lot:

This is how it arrives:

The woman who took our order and served my sandwich to me was incredibly friendly. She asked where we’re from and I told her about roadfood.com. She said she knew about the roadfood guide book from some past customers who had it with them when they were there, but she was unaware of this web site. She seemed excited about checking it out. I was also glad I went to the Miles Inn because it really felt like a roadfood joint. I am not sure I’d have been about to say that about Bob’s. It looked like a fast food restaurant.

After we left the Miles Inn, we headed into Nebraska:

Which also had a lot of cornfields (at least the eastern part):

We were heading south on U.S. 77 to our eventual destination when we came across Oakland, the Swedish Capital of Nebraska.

It was a fairly nice looking and very small downtown and we got out to stretch and maybe find something to drink.  We wound up walking into Nelson’s Food Pride. I didn’t photograph it, but it’s a nice little market that has been around for a little over a century and is still owned by the original family. I enjoy walking around markets in other regions and checked out their meat section while in the store. They had a large brisket flat in stock.

We got something to drink and also a regional candy bar that wasn’t that grea,29,876473.001001001001001001001001001001001001001001001001001002001001001001001001002001002,27,33289,100.19.88.196
876628,876473,876625,2018-09-26 20:41:30.303000000,Re: Wood Paneling and Relish Trays: My Trip to Iowa and Eastern Nebraska”

Mrs. Maestro could’ve gotten that ‘do at Hair Trendz if you’d planned ahead.

My wife had some kind of chicken with saut�ed mushrooms in addition to her baked potato.

Exactly the proper way to describe a non-steak entr�e ordered at a steakhouse![;)] Looks like you made an excellent choice.

It was starting to get a little dark when we left, and this was also taken from behind the car window as my wife was driving out, but this is the view when pulling out of Archie’s parking lot:

One of LeMars’ tallest buildings?

Your description of Main Street unfortunately applies to far too many small towns, both in the Midwest and elsewhere.[:(]