Meandering Magees: Is this heaven? No, it's Iowa

First off – Happy Father’s Day to all the Dads!

After Kansas City, we had a choice to make. We have scratched off everything on our “must see or do” list, and we still had about a week and a half before we needed to be home. We decided to put off going back to “real life” another week and started looking at the map for a place to just relax for a few days. No agenda, no leaving the motorhome first thing in the morning and returning to it after dark. In other words, just to camp, and not any sightseeing.

While I was looking for campgrounds, my gaze fixed on a small red dot in Iowa – the Field of Dreams. Yes, this is technically a tourist thing, but yet so different, as you will see below. Once I talked Mike into going to this farm in Iowa, I began the search for campgrounds. Surprisingly, there are very few in the area, even though the Field is within 30 miles of Dubuque. I thought camping right next to the Mississippi River would be cool, but couldn’t find one that was “big-rig friendly”. So, encouraged by Josh that a small town of Galena, Illinois, just across the river from Dubuque was a neat place, I focused on that area. Again, I was amazed at the lack of campgrounds. There was one, so I booked us for 4 nights over Father’s Day weekend.

We left Kansas City on Thursday, driving through Missouri, into Iowa and across the Mississippi. We had crossed this mighty river heading west back on April 4 in Louisiana, and now did the same, traveling east from Iowa into Illinois. The site the campground gave us didn’t work. There was a berm behind it and we couldn’t back up far enough to get our front off the roadway without our tailpipe hitting the berm.

We were tired after 8 hours on the road and unlike the campground in South Dakota that didn’t work so we found another one 10 miles down the road, we knew there were no others nearby. I went to the office and they gave us several other sites to look at. One of them was perfect. We are actually camping, sitting out under our awning during the day and having campfires at night. There are two drawbacks to the site. One is we don’t have a sewer hook-up, so I am doing something I haven’t done in 25 years when we had our pop-up camper – I wash the dishes in a pan and throw the water outside. We are saving our gray water storage space for showers.

The other drawback for Mike is we cannot get local channels with our antenna (ABC, CBS, etc.) and the U.S. Open Golf Championship is on NBC this weekend. Watching the tournament while sitting outside our RV is his idea of a perfect Father’s Day.

On Friday we went looking for a car wash and happened upon the home of Ulysses S. Grant. And we weren’t even trying to find another presidential thing! The home was given to Grant and his wife Julia in 1865 after the Civil War ended. The last time Grant stayed in the house was 1880.

On Saturday Josh came to spend the weekend with us. We had not seen him since the end of March, so the hugging went on for a while.

“If you build it, he will come. . . “ And that we did. The three of us drove back through Dubuque to the town of Dyersville, Iowa, where the Field of Dreams sits out in the countryside. The Field of Dreams is the name of a movie filmed in 1988, starring Kevin Costner and James Earl Jones. If you haven’t seen the movie, run, don’t walk, and rent it. It is especially appropriate for Father’s Day viewing, where, in the phrase, “Hey Dad, do you want to play catch?” lies all the love a son has for his father.

Don and Becky Lansing leased their family farm out to Universal Studios for the film’s location. This farm is authentic. Don and his sisters were born in the farmhouse and it had been in their family for over 100 years. Part of their real cornfield was mowed under and a ball diamond was built (the central theme to the movie). Immediately after the movie’s release, people started coming to Iowa to find the farm, hoping to see the ball diamond. The Lansing’s realized their farm was now part of movie lore and chose to keep the ball field. Over 65,000 people make their way down the windy dirt road every year to spend time here. There are no hotels, no restaurants, and no one offering to take your picture for a small fee. It is a ball diamond with a small set of bleachers (to do the wave) surrounded by cornfields and the farmhouse. Period. The simplicity of it warms your heart. We saw fathers throwing balls to their young sons trying to get a hit. We saw grown men playing catch. We saw a little girl, with her pink glove, playing catch with her Dad. Everyone brought balls and gloves and bats except us. So we settled for walking in the cornfield, (Mike and Josh), running the bases (me) and just sitting in the bleachers watching families have fun. There is no charge for any of these pleasures. There is one small (and I mean small) souvenir shack, some picnic tables and several porta-pottys. That’s it. Playing catch is uniquely American - and between fathers and sons and daughters, this simple act becomes a bonding experience. I was so glad Josh came to see this with Mike.

The absolute best time to visit the Field of Dreams would be late August, when the corn is high and you could disappear into it like the players in the movie do.

Looking back, I see a thread developed totally beyond any planning on my part. It started in California when we spent the day in Hollywood. The Hollywood Walk of Fame covers 15 city blocks, with stars every 3 feet. I knew I wanted a picture of one of the stars on the sidewalk, but which one? By sheer chance, I snapped a photo of Kevin Costner’s star. Then in Deadwood, South Dakota, we went into a place called The Midnight Star, which was owned by Costner and contained lots of his movie memorabilia. And while driving through Spearfish Canyon, we were right where he filmed “Dances With Wolves”. Now we end our trip at The Field of Dreams – one of his classic movies.

“Is this heaven?” “No, it’s Iowa.”

After buying a baseball and the movie at the souvenir stand, we needed to find a place with a TV to watch golf. We had not been to downtown Galena yet, so decided to check it out. “Neat little town” was an understatement on Josh’s part. (he had never been to Galena, just heard about it in his travels for work). If anyone wants to get married at the charming Stillman Inn, please invite me. The grounds looked terrific. Charming is the word I would use for the entire downtown area of Galena. A high percentage of the buildings are listed on the National Historic Register. This is one of those towns were you could just wander around, as every shop is unique. We have been in several of these kinds of town over the last 3 months, and Mike never wanted to walk and browse. But on Saturday, we found a restaurant with a TV, and Mike had Josh to keep him company, so I got to browse! It’s a good thing I didn’t get to do this more often. I’m a sucker for adorable clothing for our grandkids!

This brings us to today – Sunday. Again, Happy Father’s Day.

Monday we will take one last step closer to home as we drive back to Michigan (a full day’s drive) to a favorite campground about an hour from our house. There we will wash the RV (we don’t wash it at home because Ionia has really hard water) ONE LAST TIME, at least on this adventure, and pull into our driveway on Wednesday.

I plan on wrapping this story up in one last post, if it is possible to put into any words beyond what I’ve already written!