Advertisement
Published: June 28th 2016
Edit Blog Post
Field of Dreams
George takes to the cornfield to find the rest of the team. Marcia and I are on the road to Montana trying to see as much of the country as we can. The interstate from Marcia's mom's place in West Lafayette, Ind. took us north through miles and miles of wind farms, energy of the future! Immediately we changed our plans when we realized how close we were going to Donovan, Illinois and Snowcrest farm where Marcia grew up. We visited the high school (much smaller than she remembers) and the place where she spent the first 18 years of her life (also returning during the summers of college). The family there was for over 30 years and we enjoyed a visit with the folks that now own it.
From there we headed to Iowa, destination Dyersville. More on that later. But first, in the spirit of getting off the road, we wandered through the Illinois backcountry. Some might say we were lost, we just thought we were checking out farm houses. We did recover, and once we got to Ottawa, Ill. decided it was time for lunch. We found a place called Sunfields or something and figured it was not a chain so it was good enough for us. Our delightful
Windmills
The future of energy dotted across the great mid west. waitress, Robin, filled us in on the revitalization of Ottawa and encouraged us to visit. Why--well, the downtown is revitalized and there are lots of nice shops and flowers everywhere. When she came back I asked her how this had all happened and she credited "Mayor Bob." Really, what did he do? I asked. Well, he started planting flowers, "you know he is a member of that LGBT community and he loves flowers." She went on to tell of the leadership of Mayor Bob, in office for the past twenty years. I love America.
We hit Iowa at Rock Island and were immediately stunned by the landscape. You expect flat cornfields but this is the Driftless Region, the glaciers did not reach here, and you wander through soft rolling hills that are a deep green with corn and forests. Once again I was surprised by the beauty of a landscape that I did not expect.
On to Dyersville, where the film "Field of Dreams" was filmed (http://www.fodmoviesite.com/). The field is still there and, yes, I brought along my Tigers uniform from Tigers Fantasy Camp and did the obligatory fade into the cornfield. Spoke to the owner, thanked him
Snowcrest Farm
Marcia proves you can go home again. for keeping it open, and he just smiled and said, 'no, thank you for coming.' By the way, there is NO entry fee. Just drive up and wander around on the field--gotta love this country.
Tonight we are at the Blackhawk Hotel (http://theblackhawkhotel.com/black-hawk-hotel) in beautiful downtown Cedar Falls, Iowa. Somebody was smart here, the main street weaves through the town, at least a dozen great restaurants (we ate at Montage--www.montage-cf.com), shops, bars, with grown ups everywhere! We had a great conversation with the waitress, a student at Northern Iowa located here. She was too busy working to follow the election closely, she had not even been able to go to a basketball or football game due to work and school! No matter, we counted 4 Bernie signs/Bumper Stickers, 3 Trump, and 2 Hillary over 640 miles--looks like most of the country is not paying a lot of attention either.
Tomorrow we are off to head north and west, Minnesota and South Dakota next on the drive.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.124s; Tpl: 0.012s; cc: 9; qc: 24; dbt: 0.0916s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
Susan
non-member comment
Where in Montana?
Where are you heading in Montana? You might look up Tim and his fiance/girlfriend Lauren. They live in Dillon, if you haven't spent time with Tim, he is a really nice "guy." I was about to say kid, but...well.... you know.