Shortly after receiving the nod to be the GOP’s 2008 vice presidential candidate in St. Paul, Sarah Palin traveled to Cedar Rapids, Iowa, to campaign. In her book “Going Rogue,” she described the town as a “slice of Americana” — with patriotic bunting and a “quaint town square with mom-and-pop stores” — which doesn’t match up with reality: Cedar Rapids was still digging out after devastating floods months earlier. A new development in the story: Apparently Palin confused Cedar Rapids, a city with a metro population of 250,000, with Cedarburg, a 10,000-resident town in Wisconsin that she also visited at that time.

Sarah Palin and John McCain in Cedarburg Wisconsin in 2008. Photo: News Graphic

Sarah Palin and John McCain in Cedarburg Wisconsin in 2008. Photo: News Graphic

As Lynda Waddington reports at the Iowa Independent, Cedarburg was Palin’s first stop after the 2008 Republican National Convention. And while Cedar Rapids doesn’t have a square quite like the one in Palin’s book, Cedarburg does: mom-and-pop shops, bunting and all. “Yes, that definitely sounds like Cedarburg,” said Lisa Curtis, a reporter for the local News Graphic. And a photo from the paper’s account seems to back that up.

There’s another part of the story that hasn’t been solved, though. Waddington writes:

After Palin sets the scene in her book, she relates an account of meeting two teens with Down syndrome along the rope line following the event. Although The Iowa Independent attempted to track down the two teens — a girl named Sarah and an unnamed boy — to corroborate Palin’s account of the Cedar Rapids visit, none of the locals contacted remembered seeing the exchange and no local journalists or photojournalists seem to have documented it.

Curtis in Wisconsin is also checking into the report, but, at least so far, has not been able to locate the teens or anyone who witnessed the exchange.