Back in the summer of 2019, when Perrin was still tiny, we started a fun, informal mural hunt in downtown Iowa City. There were several murals at that time, but honestly, there are so many more now! So we put the remaining murals on our summer bucket list and earlier this week, we visited the last one! 

When we first started our hunt, there were absolutely no sources online for the Iowa City murals. It was incredibly frustrating, especially with really young kids (ages 1 and 4 at that time) who quickly tired from walking alley after alley all over downtown searching. Since then, there are a couple of sources (here and here), but none that are comprehensive. Willowwind School recently created a mural scavenger hunt list that actually provided the best source list of them all. I used a combination of all of these to create our own list of 4 zones and over 30 murals. 

Similarly to the summer of 2020 when we visited all the public Herky statues, I’m planning on making a book for each of the kids  with the photos we’ve taken at each of the murals. They love looking through their Herky books and my only regret is that in one of those photos, we had just grabbed fast food meals for lunch and so, in the photo, Perrin was holding the toy. She asks me every time she sees that photo where that little plastic toy is. Girllll, it was in the trash exactly 1 day after that photo.  

Scroll to the bottom for a printable mural guide!