Weird day trips from Des Moines

The strangest Des Moines finds are often a short drive out. These 21 day trips — de Kelder Speakeasy, Kate Shelley High Bridge, Boone County Historical Society (former Masonic Temple) and more — are each hand-vetted and sourced: ghost towns, hot-spring soaks, roadside oddities, and odd small-town museums worth the gas. A weird day trip is its own kind of date.

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de Kelder Speakeasy de Kelder ("the basement" in Dutch) is a genuine Roaring Twenties-style speakeasy tucked beneath a downtown P… Pella
Kate Shelley High Bridge The Kate Shelley High Bridge is a soaring 185-foot-tall, 2,685-foot-long double-track railroad viaduct comple… Boone
Boone County Historical Society (former Masonic Temple) The 1907 Champlin Memorial Masonic Temple — now the Boone History Center — is a legitimately operating county… Boone
Communal Kitchen Museum The Ruedy Küche (1863) is the only fully intact communal kitchen surviving from the Amanas' collective era, p… Amana Colonies
Granny Sprague Cemetery Officially renamed the Niles-Sprague Pioneer Cemetery, this is reputedly "Iowa's Smallest Cemetery" — a singl… Amana Colonies
National Sprint Car Hall of Fame & Museum This non-profit museum sits right beside the legendary Knoxville Raceway and puts 30-35 winged open-wheel spr… Knoxville
Louis Sullivan 'Jewel Box' Bank (Merchants' National Bank) Built in 1914, this National Historic Landmark is one of Louis Sullivan's celebrated "jewel box" banks — a pl… Grinnell
Jasper County Historical Museum Newton's Jasper County Historical Museum is a legitimately peculiar shrine to the appliance that built the to… Newton
Joy the Movie Theater Pig (Capitol II Theatre) The Capitol II Theatre is a family-owned, two-screen movie house where Joy, a Guinness World Record-holding m… Newton
Big Aluminum Bugs A local farmer welded giant cast-aluminum insects — including a towering praying mantis — from recycled hog f… Newton
Henry Moore's Mini-Americana Barn Museum Housed in an 1876 horse barn in South Amana, the Henry Moore Barn Museum holds over 200 hand-crafted miniatur… South Amana
Harmon Tunnel at Pammel State Park The Harmon Tunnel is Iowa's only auto tunnel — a 150-foot passage hand-dug through a solid limestone ridge in… Winterset
Clark Tower Clark Tower is a genuine 25-foot limestone castle-tower built in 1926, reached by a one-way, one-lane gravel… Winterset
Cellar 626 Tucked behind the beer cooler at Cyclone Liquors on Lincoln Way, Cellar 626 has no sign, no street presence,… Ames
Matchstick Marvels Museum Somewhere in a town of ~1,000 people on the Iowa prairie, a retired art teacher named Patrick Acton has been… Gladbrook (70 miles NE of Des Moines)
In Spyrit Metaphysical (& Des Moines Paranormal) A metaphysical supply shop co-owned and staffed by the founders of Des Moines Paranormal, an active spirit-re… Ames
Shrine of the Grotto of the Redemption The world's largest man-made grotto: a full city block of nine hand-built caverns that one obsessed priest sp… West Bend
The Haunted Bookshop Iowa's largest used bookshop, 40,000+ rare and out-of-print titles crammed floor-to-ceiling into an atmospher… Iowa City
National Hobo Museum A one-of-a-kind single-subject museum devoted to hobo culture and the open road, housed in a former 1920s mov… Britt
Fjord Færgemand (Dambo Troll) A 25-foot wooden troll standing in a boat with an oar carved from a downed tree, built from reclaimed materia… Elk Horn
Paradox Antiques, Art, & Oddities An eccentric Victorian-era curiosity shop where collector Matthew Parsons deliberately juxtaposes light and d… Boone