23rd Anniversary

 For our anniversary, Mark and I went to Mason City to a historical hotel. We just went for a night and explored the area. Carina and Wade gave us a gift card for Christmas for a stay. From Wikepedia-The Historic Park Inn Hotel and City National Bank are two adjacent commercial buildings located in downtown Mason City, Iowa, which were designed in the Prairie School style by the renowned architect Frank Lloyd Wright. Completed in 1910, the Park Inn Hotel is the last remaining Frank Lloyd Wright-designed hotel in the world, of the six for which he was the architect of record. The City National Bank is one of only two remaining Frank Lloyd Wright-designed banks in the world. It was the first Frank Lloyd Wright-designed project in the state of Iowa, and today carries both major architectural and historical significance. In 1999, the Park Inn Hotel was named on the Iowa Historic Preservation Alliance's Most Endangered Properties List.[1]In 1907, when law partners James E. Blythe and J. E. E. Markley were looking for an architect to compete in quality with the eight-story bank building that would be built across the corner, they didn't hesitate to give the commission to Frank Lloyd Wright, a young architect who was building a reputation in the Chicago area. For them Wright would build a complex, multi-purpose building that would give them multiple income streams. Their law offices would be on the second floor of the building's narrower central waist and the hotel's east wing, surrounded on the south by a two-story banking room with rental office space above. On the north would be a 42-room hotel, with basement shops beneath the bank and hotel. Wright managed to pack all these functions into an aesthetically well-integrated building that architecturally would be the bridge between Wright's Prairie School period and his Midway Gardens and the Imperial Hotel to follow. Unfortunately for the Historic Park Inn Hotel, a new 250-room hotel with all the latest amenities was constructed in Mason City in 1922, creating stiff competition for the Park Inn Hotel. In addition, the farm crisis led to the closing of the City National Bank, which was merged into another local bank. By 1925, four of the five banks in Mason City had failed. In 1926, the City National Bank building was sold separately and underwent an unsympathetic remodeling into a new commercial use in that year. The upper floors of the Park Inn Hotel were eventually subdivided into rental apartments and over time the unique Prairie School design elements such as stained-glass skylights, fixtures, furniture and woodwork were removed or lost. For the next several decades, the Park Inn experienced a gradual decline that ended with its closure in 1972. The Park Inn Hotel received a complete interior and exterior renovation thanks to numerous grants, as well as coordination at the local level. This included a comprehensive restoration of the brick and terra-cotta façade, replacement of the art glass skylight windows, and a complete interior reconstruction. Wright on the Park, Inc., the organization overseeing the work, purchased the adjacent City Bank Building and reunited the Park Inn Hotel with the City National Bank. The bank building was refitted with an elevator and provides six additional rooms for the hotel; the old bank lobby is now a hotel ballroom. The restoration was completed in September 2011.[

The roping picture was taken on our anniversary.

On our way home we went through Iowa Falls and stopped by the old restaurant, Camp David's. We went on a date there  in our early days of dating. It was such a neat location right on the north bluff of the river. There was even a glass elevator that took you to the bottom edge of the river and had a lookout point on top.  In fact I was planning and preparing to have our class reunion there and a month prior they closed their doors. They held riverboat dinner cruises and all. I looked into it and it is being used as a wedding venue and BnB.