🗣️ It’s Friday, and we’re more than halfway through summer. Yikes/yay?

If you haven’t taken advantage of a summer day trip around the state, keep scrolling for some ideas—plus this week’s photo, Positively Iowa, and news you can use.

Iowa State University’s Reiman Gardens has a new baby gnome to go along with their giant one—and you can name it.
A proposed data center could be coming to Clinton, and the company is trying to head off the protests before they start.
WNBA All-Star weekend is here, but US Sen. Chuck Grassley thinks the WNBA isn’t treating Caitlin Clark fairly. (She’ll be playing on Team Spoon.)
Use hair extensions? Make sure you’re not buying a brand found to be causing cancer.
More than 700 people gathered to hear from bestselling authors in Waterloo for the 1619 Freedom School Read-In last weekend.
There’s a new, free app developed by a group of Iowans to help you remember when to screen for cancer.
Today is the anniversary of the last time the minimum wage was raised in the US—in 2009.
There’s a new men’s walking group in Cedar Rapids, and they’re meeting up Sunday.
When was the last time national news covered the race for Iowa agriculture secretary?
Homicides by firearms were down in 2024, but firearm suicides reached a record high—and Black women had the highest rise. Firearm injuries also remain the top cause of death for children.
Your Medicaid information may not only have been wrongly shared with ICE, but also with Palantir.

Amie Rivers

Newsletter Editor, Iowa Starting Line

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8 last-minute Iowa day trips to make before school starts

A group of kids participating in a demonstration at Living History Farms, one of the Iowa day trips included in our list. (Courtesy of Travel Iowa)

It’s that time of the year again—those last handful of precious weeks before school starts. But between school-supply shopping and classroom meet-and-greets, there’s still plenty of time to make the most of summer.

Here are eight family-friendly Iowa day trips to squeeze in before fall.

☀️ Soak up the summer →

🤞 This is Puck, who belongs to reader Billie K.

The crossed paws were always a favorite dog pose of Shenae’s! ❤️

Send me your pet photos!

🦸 Cleaning up the streets (or windows): Every year, a group of workers washing windows at the Blank Children’s Hospital dress up as superheroes, wash the windows outside patients’ rooms, then come inside to chat with them. They’ve been doing it for a decade, and the kids love it.

📚 Half a million books: In partnership with the Dolly Parton Imagination Library, the Cedar Rapids Public Library has now given away its 500,000th book to young children. It began in 2018.

🦭 From LA to Iowa: Walnut, a 4-year-old harbor seal, recently moved from the Los Angeles Zoo to the Blank Park Zoo in Des Moines, and was just made available to the public. (Spot him with the zoo’s other two sea lions, Zoey and Meatball.)