Between the Fair and the Fall Fest: An Adair Weekend Without Leaving the County

The Adair County Fair wrapped in Greenfield a few weeks ago, and the Adair County Fall Fest is not until October 4. That gives residents of Adair, Iowa a stretch of Saturdays that don't come with a printed schedule, and if you have lived here long enough you already know what that means. The parking lot at Chuckwagon is easier. The line at Dew Drop Inn moves. Ol' Smiley has the sky mostly to himself.

This is a guide to that in-between stretch, written for people who already live off Exit 76 and don't need directions to Hillcrest Street. The point isn't to sell Adair to anyone. It's to notice what's here when the fairgrounds go quiet.

The five-block food question

Adair's dining map is small enough to hold in your head, and the late-summer weeks are a good time to work through it in order rather than defaulting to the same booth on 5th Street.

Start with the burger argument. Chuckwagon's tenderloin and burger were voted best hamburger in Iowa in 2016, and the shorthand on the review pages has stayed loyal ever since. Yelp regulars describe the fries as endless and the beef as local, which is the kind of detail that either means something to you or doesn't, depending on how many times you've eaten there. If it has been a while, order the bourbon burger and pay attention to the bun.

A block away, Dew Drop Inn Dairy Sweet sits at 109½ 5th Street, and it is worth remembering the half-address if you're sending a grandkid in on their own. It's cash only, so plan the wallet accordingly. The rest of the walkable rotation is short and specific:

• Fuego Mexican Restaurant at 301 Audubon Street, with online ordering if you don't feel like sitting down
• Zipp's Pizzaria, the local pick that shows up on the town's Foursquare page under a straightforward "best pizza around" endorsement
• Casey's carry-out pizza at 110 5th Street, which is the answer when someone in the house has already voted for pizza and no one wants to argue about it
• Subway at Exit 76, useful mainly as a known quantity when the Chuckwagon parking lot is somehow full

That's the whole in-town map. Six stops, five blocks, one afternoon if you're committed.

Ol' Smiley on a Tuesday evening

Every resident has a private feeling about the water tower. The bulbous yellow tank of "Ol' Smiley" was erected in 1979, and the old town slogan was "Adair: It'll make you smile!" It remains the only town in America with a smile-face water tower and a monument to Jesse James. Whether that combination strikes you as charming or slightly deranged usually depends on how long you've lived here.

The tower has a paper trail, and it's a good one. Former mayor Odella Roof, in a 1991 Des Moines Register interview, put the original painting date at 1977 or 1978. Des Moines Register columnist Chuck Offenberger, who wrote the "Iowa Boy" column, spent years listing Ol' Smiley on his personal roster of things Iowa could do without. By 1991, Adair's new mayor Brenda Wedemeyer was quoted asking Chuck whether his therapist thought this water tower problem of his was anything serious.

That exchange is the actual story of Ol' Smiley, and it's the kind of thing that only lands if you already drive past the tower most days. A columnist in Des Moines picking on a small town's water tower for the better part of a decade, and a small-town mayor returning fire in print. The paint job has outlasted the argument.

If you have not looked at the tower on foot in a while, walk over on a Tuesday evening. The souvenir bank shaped like the tower is back in production, and the Casey's directly off Exit 76 was slated to carry them. Worth checking the shelf.

A mile and a half west of town

The other half of Adair's civic story is older and quieter. Adair was the site of the first robbery of a moving train in the West: on the evening of July 21, 1873, a mile and a half west of town, the Jesse James gang staged a holdup expecting a $75,000 gold shipment, but the shipment was delayed and the take was only about $3,000.

The historical site sits out along the tracks, and it's an odd, useful place to end a walk. Most residents drive past the marker on their way somewhere else for years before actually stopping. The in-between weeks of late summer are the version of the calendar where stopping is easy. Nothing else is competing for the hour.

If you have out-of-town family visiting between now and Labor Day, the Jesse James site and Ol' Smiley are a fifteen-minute loop that leaves the rest of the afternoon open. Chuckwagon closes the loop naturally.

Twenty minutes up to Greenfield

The stretch between the county fair and the Fall Fest is also when the neighboring towns are worth the short drive. Greenfield is roughly twenty minutes east, and the Adair County calendar keeps a few things running through August that don't get much airtime.

The Nodaway Valley Gallery is free and open Monday through Thursday 9 to 4, Friday 11 to 4:30, and Saturday 10 to 3, with entry through Ed & Eva's on Fridays and Saturdays. It's a reasonable pairing with lunch at Moe's RFB or Tiger Drive-In on Kent Street, both of which are on the visitor guide's Greenfield list.

The one to know about, though, is in Orient. Each year, community artists of all ages create more than 80 two-foot-by-two-foot paintings on a shared prairie theme, and the finished works are mounted throughout a 9-acre restored Iowa prairie at the Wallace Farm. Grassy paths wind past the farm pond and orchard on a self-guided tour, admission is free, and the exhibit is open dawn to dusk. It is the kind of thing that reads better in person than on paper. Late-summer light on prairie grass, painted panels stuck at eye level, and no crowd to speak of.

While you are that direction, keep an eye on the fairgrounds. The Greenfield Swap Meet at 900 NE Elm Street in Greenfield runs cars, parts, crafts, and flea variety, with grounds open Friday and Saturday 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. and Sunday from 8 a.m. It's the sort of stop that is either exactly your thing or completely not, and it's easier to tell in person than to describe.

The short list for the next few weekends

If you want a working checklist rather than a plan, here is the honest version of what's on the calendar in the county between now and the pumpkins:

The Fall Fest is the anchor for October. Everything before it is the version of Adair County that residents actually get to enjoy without the parade crowds. That is not a small thing.

What the in-between weeks are actually for

There is a version of small-town writing that treats places like Adair as backdrops for someone else's road trip. The visitor version of the town is Smiley the Friendly Greeter on I-80, once flanked by a Happy Chef Restaurant and a Smiley Face Budget Inn at the off-ramp, ready to "make you smile." That's a fine postcard. It's not the town.

The town is the five blocks around 5th Street where you already know the servers by name, the walk to the base of the tower with a grandkid who has never noticed it before, the marker out west that most people drive past for a decade before stopping, and the twenty-minute run to Greenfield for a gallery that most Iowans have never heard of. The stretch between fair week and Fall Fest is when all of that is at its most usable. No lines. No parking hunt. Just the town, doing what it does when nobody is filming.

If you spend the next three weekends working through this list, you'll have covered more of your own county than most people manage in a year.

At Lake Panorama Realty, we live and work across Guthrie and Adair counties, and the in-between weeks are when we do most of our own driving between showings. If you have questions about a home in Adair, a piece of land nearby, or you just want to compare notes on where the best burger in the county actually lives these days, Let's Get in Touch.