Too Many Places to Go and Too Much to See

Here's the message that's written on this real photo postcard (to read the original handwriting more easily, see the rotated version of the card):

"We tended the Iowa Picnic here last Saturday. Saw lots of folks from Iowa that I knew. 10,000 people there. I can't tell when we will leave here. Too many places to go & too much to see to get away very soon. We expect to visit an old friend of mine that lives at Santa Ana, 30 miles south. We may move out here some time. Love to all. Goodbye, Leni & Mame"

At first glance, it seems like Leni, Mame, and about 10,000 others attended what must have been a huge "Iowa Picnic," which presumably took place somewhere in Iowa. But what about their plans to visit a friend located thirty miles away in Santa Ana? Isn't Santa Ana a city in California?

Fortunately, the results of a Google search for Iowa Picnic and California provided the answer. I found a posting about Iowa Picnics - Long Beach and Elsewhere that gives a brief history of the get-togethers that were held beginning in 1900. So many Iowans moved to California that the picnics attracted thousands of transplanted Midwesterners--as many as 100,000 attended during some years in the 1940s!

So it sounds like Leni and Mame were enjoying their stay in California as they visited friends and met fellow Iowans at the picnic. Although there's no date on the card, I suspect they were traveling sometime in the late 1900s or early 1910s.

For additional views of the handwritten message and photo, see a rotated version and a cropped version of the card: