Iowa Gallivant JayJay Goodvin on Wayne County

News Talk 1540 KXEL where Iowa comes to talk.

The short work week is almost over.

We've reached Friday and to help us through Friday, some thoughts about getting out on the road.

The Iowa Gallivant JJ Goodvin joins us on this Friday morning.

Of course, JJ writes about traveling around the state of the Iowa Gallivant.com.

JJ, good morning.

Good morning, everybody.

And yes, we got quite a trip to Southern Iowa coming up here.

Yeah, we talked about the possibility of looking at Wayne County when we connected a couple of weeks ago.

Wayne County is in far southern Iowa, right on the Missouri state line.

What should we know for folks that haven't been there?

Well, we left a very interesting teaser last time where you can have what I think is one of the best brisket sandwiches I've ever had in my life that I enjoyed it.

directly on the Iowa and Missouri line at S&P Smokehouse.

It's in South Lionville, Missouri, which is, guess what, south of Lionville, Iowa.

So the gravel road that separates the two states is right by their front door.

So obviously the two communities are pretty much one community.

And it's technically Mercer County, Missouri.

I did a video.

where I was just weaving in and out of Iowa and Missouri, and I might have been the only one in the state at that time, or maybe throughout the country, going in and out of two states at one time and joining a brisket sandwich at that moment.

I don't know, you tell me.

And also, that place probably had the best baked beans I've ever had in my life.

So, get down to Wayne County and just dip your toes into Missouri just for a little bit and go check out S&P Smokehouse.

It does bring to mind some thoughts about the borders between states.

You know, obviously the border between Iowa and Wisconsin or Iowa and Illinois is the Mississippi River.

You're not going to miss that.

It's not going to look like anything else you're likely to encounter that day.

But the Iowa border with Missouri, especially here in Wayne County, sounds like it's not terribly remarkable.

You could cross it and not know if you weren't paying attention.

I thought I was still in Iowa when I got to the restaurant.

They're like, nope, you're in Missouri.

I'm like, what?

I was just, I just saw the Wayne County sign and they're like, yeah, that's, and you'll see the road.

When you see the little gravel road, it looks like a back alley, you know, one of those back alley roads, but it's definitely the state line.

Are there some other spots, JJ, that stand out when you think about Wayne County and especially its proximity to our neighbors to the south?

Yeah, so our Wayne County tenor loin was at Ludlow Steakhouse.

Obviously, it was a really good tenor loin there in Corden, which is the county seat and the biggest community there.

But they also, Steakhouse is in the name, so they have awesome stakes.

They've been known that.

for that for years.

And also they've relocated, even some of the locals thought they closed down for good.

But no, they're in a different location now.

And yeah, they do a great job at Ludlow's.

So that is a place I haven't been to yet is a place in Seymour.

So there's a steakhouse in Seymour and a steakhouse in Ludlow's.

Both of those places, if you ask anybody in Southern Iowa in that area, where's a good place to get a steak?

The locals, on both sides of the border, will tell you those two places.

So there's a lot of cattle in that area of northern Missouri and southern Iowa.

So it seems like the stakes really, like when you get a stake down there, it just really hit.

I don't know what it is about southern Iowa and it's a steakhouse scene, but they really do a great job.

And there's also a cordon.

When you're traveling, there's something about small town.

Pizza in small town Mexican food El Vago there in Corden great Tex-Mex Restaurant I had the chorie pollo there where you put chicken and chorizo Which is chorizo is a Mexican sausage together and they dump a bunch of queso on it and you can't go wrong with that and Enjoyed it on their patio and outlaw pizza again in Corden small town pizza is Iowa needs to be recognized as a pizza

destination region like like Memphis would be for barbecue.

You know, we've got the goods on pizza and a lot of out-of-staters tell me that too.

Like they'll just go to some random little town like I do or like we do I should say.

Not really expecting like a lot when they order a pizza and it comes out and it's one of the most memorable pizza pies I've ever had in my life and I hear that so often not only from locals here in Iowa but from out-of-staters.

We have something going on here and we need to develop that marketing ploy because I think we have a great pizza region.

We're talking with JJ Goodwin.

He is the Iowa Gallivant and writes about the state at theiowagallivant.com, traveling all over Iowa from corner to corner.

We're focused in on southern Iowa and the Wayne County area on this Friday morning.

Let me just make a side trip, though, diverting to what you were just talking about, JJ, and pizza in Iowa.

I think that's got to be difficult because there's not really a unifying Iowa style of pizza.

And so that would make it really sort of a challenge to get people's attention.

Yeah, that's absolutely right.

And that would be the challenge right there.

However, it's just I would say our palates kind of know like what's good pizza between good pizza and what's not like I had a friend from Louisiana and just pizza.

He said I mean Louisiana Trust me is one of the top food destinations when it comes to states in the entire world I'm not saying just in America and he said just pizza just wasn't a big deal down there and he's like you Iowans ours

You're kind of snobby.

I loved it.

I'm like, we are pizza snobs.

All right.

I love it.

And another thing too about Wayne County is.

I had some of the best, maybe the best handballs I've ever had in my life at the local sale barn in Humston.

It was one of those daily specials and it's one of the sale barns that's open even when there's not any auctions going on.

When there, I should say, when the sale, the sale barn cafe is open when there's not any auctions going on, which is really rare.

And there's only a few of the places I've been to.

There's one in Lamona.

That's like that too.

So that stick to your ribs.

Cooking down there is really so you got your outlaw pizza.

You've got your your Mexican food at El Vago You got your stick to your ribs Iowa style meals with your handballs at the Humston sale barn and you got your steaks and Seymour and cordon You're pretty much set and just get on highway to all the way in Fort Madison and just take that All the way you'll get you'll hit Wayne County and eventually as you go west you're gonna get into Nebraska That's a great drive highway to going east to west or west to east

is a beautiful and enlightening drive.

Talking with JJ Goodvin, the Iowa Gallivant.

One last word on food, JJ, before we get into some of the other things that folks can find in Wayne County.

And this isn't again specific to Wayne County, but I think we should deputize you and your connections with all of the meat lockers in Iowa to come up with a

defining topping that can go on Iowa pizza all over the place.

And that can be the thing that sets Iowa apart.

So JJ, you are deputized to come up with a plan for that.

I am on it.

And I would say just about everybody's specialty in Iowa, when it comes to pizza, like when it comes to toppings, always has a beef something on there.

I mean, there's going to be sausage and peppers and onions.

But you go to other states, it's not always something beefy on there.

Whereas in Iowa, it's almost a mixture of like sausage, pepperoni, beef or something like that.

So that would say, I would say maybe that's the separation.

That could be the separation.

Wow, we are onto some.

Well, don't rush it.

Put some thought into it.

Talk to the meat lockers and come back.

And we've gone off on a bunch of tangents.

We've been short changing Wayne County pretty badly this morning during this segment.

So let's get back to Wayne County, JJ.

And let's hear a little bit more about what you want to tell us about the destinations and things to see there.

Speaking of short changing, that was perfect.

Exactly what I was going to go into.

In Millerton, little tiny community of Millerton, they still have one of their old, old cafes.

Building still up.

It's now a tattoo parlor.

But they have like the original signage that they redo every now and then.

It still says five cent beer and burgers on there.

So it made me wonder like, what was the price during happy hour?

So can you imagine that?

So I'm sure when that was originally painted on there, five cents went a little bit further or was a little bit more expensive than we all think nowadays.

But I get a kick out of that when you drive into Millerton.

And you can also go to Wayne County and visit New York and say you don't have to.

to go to the east coast.

So there's literally no buildings of New York left.

It's basically the most ghost town of ghost towns you can possibly think of.

It's been, you know, there's maybe a little bit of

timber where it used to be, but definitely a lot of corn and soybeans.

But yeah, New York is definitely one of those ghost towns that's there.

And getting back to the Humston, what I like about traveling is all these little museums we see, and there is a depot museum in Humston.

It's for free.

Just walk right in, and you really get a kick out of those when you see the local history, and there's always something.

I've said this on your show many times.

Every county museum and every

museum like that, there's always at least that one thing when you go in there and you're like, what is that doing here?

So I encourage everybody to go to, first of all, your local museum and then go to these places like in Huntson at the Depot Museum and just keep exploring like that because they're so important.

What's the landscape like in Wayne County, JJ?

For a lot of folks in the Cedar Valley in the corridor, it's a ways away.

There may not be a reason to go there that folks have naturally, but hopefully they'll find their way there based on a discussion like this.

But what will they see geographically when they get there?

It will be hilly, as is most of Southern Iowa, and once you go east to west for short.

And even going north to south as you get there from the Cedar Valley, it will be hilly.

And like I said, that highway too, it's windy, it's hilly.

You'll see a lot of Amish country down there in Wayne County and throughout other places.

And it's not that the farmland is obviously there, but I would say there's more pastures than you would see normally in say like Northern.

Iowa so yeah but you know you have bob white state park there uh there in Wayne County so we have a presence there when it comes to uh a good places to camp and to go look for scenery and sunsets and sunrises and things like that and uh you know the uh medicine creek wildlife uh area that's a beautiful place you know to go fishing and things like that so it's not very populated down there so there's a lot of legroom in Wayne County

Well, JJ, let me just give you the catch-all opportunity to talk about anything that we've missed that you want to share about Corridan and Wayne County and that portion of Southern Iowa.

Yeah, once again, if you want to farm the table, kind of the ingredients in your food for a meal.

Hattie, Nick's in Corridan there.

Great place for breakfast.

So they use a lot of local ingredients.

So that's another thing that people

search out when they're traveling is what what they can have that's local and how do you next does a great job.

All right, well the time has come.

We will choose our next destination now for JJ to tell us about when he rejoins us in a couple of weeks.

We'll do this by flipping a quarter over the Iowa Mappin.

seeing where it lands.

And we've got a quarter today that dates back to 1998, a traditional George Washington Eagle quarter here.

So let's flip this into the air and see where we're going next when JJ rejoins the program in just a couple of weeks.

And it's off to West Central Iowa, North and West of Des Moines.

Home of the Jefferson Bell Tower, Green County is where we're headed next.

Oh, yes, I am going to tell you where you can witness the best sunset from a patio, I believe, in the entire state of Iowa.

And you can enjoy copious amounts of chips and queso while you do

it.

And we will look forward to hearing more about that and more about Green County when we talk with J.J.

Goodman, the Iowa Gala Vant in just a few weeks.

during this program here on the station where Iowa comes to talk News Talk 1540 KXCL.