Yellow Bird Art and a Trip to Lansing Iowa

I love river towns. So many of them have been kept well preserved. Lansing Iowa is no exception. It is a charming town that may leave you feeling a bit nostalgic. My husband and I took a day trip to Lansing early last week. For more than a year I have wanted to visit Yellow Bird Art, a quilt shop located in this historic Mississippi River town. It was worth the wait. This shop has a wide variety of fabrics. They are known for their large selection of Oriental prints and art fabrics. My attention was caught by the batiks and Kaffe Fassett lines. Yellow Bird has a large selection of books and wonderful shop samples for inspiration. This is definitely a place I will visit again and again. I can't resist old metal bridges. I'm always saddened to see them replaced by more modern versions. These shots were taken from the lookouts on Mt. Hosmer, a bluff on the north side of Lansing. The first shot faces north. You can see Minnesota on the far left side of the picture and LaCrosse, Wisconsin on the right.
Facing south you can see the bluffs of Wisconsin. This entire area is part of the Upper Mississippi River National Wildlife Refuge. The Refuge was established in 1924 and consists of 194,000 acres of river bottom lands which extended from Wabasha, Minnesota to Rock Island, Illinois. This Refuge was created to preserve habitats of migratory birds, native wildlife and fish. It is an amazing site to see.