The New Victorian Motel, Sioux City, Iowa

A pleasant hotel with good service, quiet and clean rooms, and bountiful options for breakfasts offers travelers an enjoyable experience in a good location. Check this place out if you are in town and need a reasonably priced hotel option.

Mid-America Aviation Museum, Sioux City, Iowa

This museum gets an incomplete grade because it was not open. Let’s hope that as covid fades that the museum can have more regular hours and be open more than two days a week for four hours each day.

Chicken Coop Bar & Grill, West Des Moines, Iowa

This particular bar and grill offers generally tasty bar food options including a lot of wings and tenders and related food. The televisions are definitely welcome, with a diverse offering of sports (and other programming) to watch. The dry sweet rub wasn’t quite as dry as I expected for my boneless wings and they did not have sugar to sweeten the tea, though, which was a bit odd.

Olive’s By Massad’s, Mankato, Iowa

This small restaurant is inside the Hilton Garden Inn in downtown Mankato, and is a real gem that appears to be regularly enjoyed by locals as well as visitors who are staying at the hotel. Dinner options are tasty–my mother had the Massad Salad with Marinated Chicken and I enjoyed a tasty French Cut Chicken with pesto, mashed potato puree, and a corn and pea sautee, as well as a New York Cheesecake with raspberry coulis for dessert. Servings were tasty if not massive and service was attentive and friendly–this is a lovely example of fine dining with a great deal of friendliness including fellow patrons and staff.