I’m not sure how, after at least four major cross-country road trips, I had still managed to miss Iowa, with places to go and people to see in Chicago, Minneapolis, and St Louis, but I had. And so, during our second trip out to L.A. in 2006, we made a little detour and nudged into Iowa through Davenport, Dubuque, and Dyersville, and had a great time.

We spent out first night in Davenport, in a huge suite at the Holiday Inn Express which we had gotten for free with our points, and which Aimee named the nicest room of the whole trip. We explored the Quad Cities (Davenport, plus Moline, Rock Island, and Bettendorf), did a little riverboat gambling, and called it a night. The next day, we headed north along the Mississippi and west to Dyersville, where we visited the “Field of Dreams,” as seen above, home to the location where the film was shot, and to two competing gift shops capitalizing on the steady stream of movie and baseball buffs who visit.

Back in Dubuque, we had a tasty lunch and a ride on the world’s shortest, steepest railway, the Fenelon Place Elevator. I got a haircut at a great old barber shop, and we were on our way, back east to Wisconsin.