After a storm passed through Amber, Iowa in 2015, someone noticed that two hula hoops were suspended in a tree on County Home Road. No one is sure how they got there, but over time, dozens, hundreds maybe, were added. This tree, nicknamed “Her Majesty”, was adorned with so many colorful hula hoops that it became a tourist attraction. People came from far and wide to see the Hula Hoop Tree.
Unfortunately, the tree was on the side of a highway, with no parking facilities. People would often come to a dead stop on the road to take pictures. Poorly supervised children would run across the road. People would attempt to add hula hoops to the collection, and those hoops would often overshoot the tree and land in the road, or, worse yet, in the cattle field of the farmer nextdoor. His barbed wire fence was often trampled by people attempting to retrieve their errant hoops.
Needless to say, Her Majesty was an accident waiting to happen. Because of this, very recently, the Hula Hoop Tree was cut down. The community has been left with very mixed emotions about it.
I wish I had seen Her Majesty before her demise, but it makes me happy to know that for 5 years, such a thing existed in this world. If you have a Facebook account, check out this gorgeous slideshow comprised of stunning and colorful photographs of the tree by Nikki Engelhardt.
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