Great Adventure Pre-Adventure

A few years ago on some gloomy and horrible day, Chad showed me his Viewfinder collection. He had slides for places like San Francisco and Las Vegas and then there were slides for a super weird place called the Grotto of the Redemption. The Grotto is a fantastic religious monument built entirely of petrified wood, precious stones, coral, and sea shells.

In the late 1800s, a young priest named Father Dobberstein made a deal with the Virgin Mary that if she would help him recover from pneumonia then he'd build her a shrine. Apparently the Virgin Mary accepted the deal and soon Father Dobberstein set out building his shrine -- a cathedral-like space completely encrusted with geodes, crystals, and gilded stars. Over the next fifty years or so, he made several additions to his shrine, eventually ending up with a multi-storied maze of rock and gems that illustrate the stations of the cross.

All of this resides in West Bend, Iowa and I insisted that before I left the midwest, I needed to see it. Chad was only too happy to oblige as long as we stopped in his Iowa hometown on the way. Our first stop was Northwood where Chad completed kindergarten. His old apartment building was deserted and for good reason. We climbed the back stairs despite the sign warning us to keep out and once at the top noticed the roof and second story had completely collapsed!

Chad's memories of Northwood centered on the community pool where he and his sister spent their summer days. The weather was windy and uncooperative on Saturday so we reluctantly left town without taking a dip and headed off towards Mason City. Mason City is the home of Meredith Wilson, Bil Baird, and the Willow Inn -- a last resort that we ended up calling home for the evening. Despite the fly infestation, sagging mattress, and green-tinted TV, we made it through the night physically, if not psychologically unscathed.

After a rather unusual breakfast at Taco Tico and an early afternoon swim at the Northwood pool, we set off for the quiet country roads that lead to the Grotto. The cynic in me expected the Grotto to rival the Corn Palace for most overblown roadside attraction, but it didn't meet those expectations at all. After all these Father Dobberstein-less years, the Grotto has fallen into disrepair. Crystals have been plucked from their places of prominence leaving the outer walls a bit brown and dusty, less magical than they must have been. The campgrounds, once bumper to bumper with the motorhomes and tents of pilgrims, stood empty. A few more generations of indifference could ruin this place, but until then it stands as an unpretentious and wonderous monument in the middle of an unpretentious and wonderous landscape.


My camera does no justice to the Grotto. The enclosed shrines were still gorgeous, several stories tall, bewilderingly odd, and sparkling. My favorite is the first shrine Father Dobberstein built in honor of Mary, which you see here as the center porthole.