September 11, 2014: Eight years after starting its partnership with CAL, Dows started sending students to Clarion-Goldfield, one of the few times a school switched sharing arrangements before eventual consolidation.
(TLDR: I added a bunch of photos to the IA 72 page, including a bunch from July 2011 that I edited in August 2012.)
I have been to Dows four times for Iowa Highway Ends.
The first time, 2003, was on the way to a North Tama football game at Sheffield. It was after class on the Friday of Labor Day weekend, but hitting both Randall and Dows to get photos for IA 383 and IA 72 added a couple blocks to my growing website and I discovered a unique case of a highway whose east end faced west.
The second, in 2011, was a minor detour after a hotel stay in Lake Mills (with themed rooms) and a day that was mostly occupied with the Surf Ballroom and Music Man Square.
I swung by for the school in 2014 after the news that the Dows school district would merge with Clarion-Goldfield and its century-old building would close. That trip was to tackle a batch of tiny towns primarily in the north half of Humboldt County.
And then, in one of my few trips last year, I looked up what I could use better or updated photos of in north-central Iowa and traveled the old route of IA 72 from US 69 to I-35 one more time. (Still think Wright County’s motto can be “I can see for miles and miles and miles…”)
I think I’ve covered just about every angle, but who knows. If there are other places I’ve been to that many times specifically for trips, I might post about those too.
UPDATE 5/24: Clarified caption. Also, Marathon is a four-timer.