Stone City’s General Store will be your new favorite hangout

I found a new favorite place to have a bite.  A place with good food, a cozy atmosphere and live music.  A place where even my five-year-old has fun and isn’t out of place dancing. It’s a bit off the beaten path, but well worth the drive.

Nestled on the bank of the Wapsi River in Stone City, IA the General Store is a little piece of history.  It’s had many names and provided different services to the community, but the iconic building is as much a landmark in the town as the famous quarry down the street.

Second Annual Pink Ice Hockey Game

This Saturday, the Cedar Rapids Roughriders game against the Omaha Lancers will be played on pink ice as part of a “Pink Game” promotion to promote breast cancer awareness. One dollar from every ticket will go to St. Luke’s Spirit Fund, which provides financial assistance to women diagnosed with breast cancer. The team and game officials will wear pink jerseys that will be auctioned to benefit the Spirit Fund.

The ice will remain pink for Sunday evening’s meeting between the Riders and Green Bay Gamblers.

For more information read the media release.

Corridor Area Pumpkin Patches and Other Kid-friendly Halloween Activities

Looking for something to do this fall with your little pumpkins?  The corridor offers a ton of fun activities from apple orchards, to pumpkin patches, to safe trick-or-treating.  Here’s a list of activities I compiled.  Feel free to comment if you’ve visited any of these, and let me know if I missed any good ones!

Knight’s Farm: Pumpkin Patch
This is the one my family usually goes to every year. It’s located outside Cedar Rapids in Springville. It has a pumpkin patch, kids fun area with inflatable toys, a hayrack, and a mini-corn maze just right for the kiddos. 

It’s Playtime Poppy

The Children’s Theatre of Cedar Rapids Playtime Poppy is ready to start its 2008-2009 Play season. The first play will be “Timeless Tales” which is a rendition of four of Hans Christian Andersen’s stories.  It will include scenes from “The Princess and the Pea”, “The Little Mermaid”, “The Emperor’s New Clothes”, and “The Ugly Duckling”.

This Timeless Tales starts on October 15^th and runs through the 18^th.  The play will be at Jefferson High School in the auditorium (pdf map of the building), located at 1243 20^th St SW in Cedar Rapids.  Here are the show times:

• Wednesday October 15^th is a matinee showing at 1:00pm
• Thursday October 16, 2008 showing at 4:30pm and at 7:00pm
• Friday October 17, 2008 showing at 4:30pm and at 7:00 pm
• Saturday October 18, 2008 showing at 2:00 pm and at 4:30 pm

The rest of the 2008-2009 play season will feature:

• Disney’s 101 Dalmatians – the musical (January 29-31, 2009) at Kennedy High School
• Sleeping Beauty (April 23-25, 2009) at Washington High School

This is truly a low cost entertaining event to bring your children to.  The tickets cost $3.00 and are available for sale 45 minutes before the show starts.  The plays usually last about an hour, and I know I plan on attending, my daughter always loves it.  Maybe I’ll see you there.

posted by: Kristen Everett

New, Interactive Dinosaur Exhibit at Lindale Mall

Although the Science Station is closed due to this summer’s flooding, that doesn’t meant the children of the corridor will miss an awesome traveling dinosaur exhibit.

The Science Station’s first post-flood exhibit opened at the end of September at the Lindale Mall (4444 First Ave. NE) Admission to the exhibit, which runs through Dec. 31, is $5 for children and $6 for adults.

The Be the Dinosaur^TM exhibit lets visitors travel back in time 65+ million years ago to learn everything about the world the dinosaurs lived in – not only about the dinosaurs, but also about the environment, the plants, animals and insects that shared it.  This hands-on, interactive exhibit was designed by world-renowned paleontologists, and brings dinosaurs to life through the magic of interactive digital simulation, the same technology behind “Finding Nemo.”