Friday, July 1, 2022- Dubuque, Iowa, and the Field of Dreams

"Is this heaven?
No, it's Iowa."
        ....Field of Dreams (1989)

     We are on our way west now.  Before we got to Iowa, though, an interesting opportunity presented itself.  We had been driving for about two hours this morning.  Scott needed a break and Ulysses S. Grant's home was right next to our route.  It was a perfect place for us to stop for a stretch and a stroll.  It is in Galena, Illinois, a very interesting and cute looking town left from the mid-19th Century.  Grant's home there was built just before the Civil War in 1860 and given to him as a gift after his victories in the Civil War and before his less-than-stellar presidency.   The building is relatively modest, considering this was the high point of his life.  It is a brick Italianate building.  We didn't tour the inside of the house just because we didn't want to spend that amount of time there, but we did stroll around the grounds.  In the rear of the house there was a display about the house itself as well as many interesting bits about the US Presidents.  For example, there was one long display case that had animals in it representing all of the Presidential pets.  (Julie would like a little more explanation about the hippo that Calvin Coolidge had.)  In front of the house was a statue of Julia Dent Grant, and further down was a bust of Ely Parker, the Seneca Indian that wrote out the terms of surrender at Appomattox.  (For some reason, General Parker's bust was not identified, but Scott recognized him immediately.)  The house overlooks the Galena River and the town itself, where there are lots of interesting looking buildings and shops.  We only got glimpses of the town as we continued on through, but Julie said she wanted to put Galena on our list of places to revisit someday.

     We crossed into Iowa when we crossed the bridge over the Mississippi River into Dubuque.  It is a new state for all four of us.  We needed some lunch, and Julie drove around Dubuque looking for "someplace cute."  There were many interesting buildings, including a grand court house and an elegant clock tower in the central town square, but not many businesses were open.  In fact, it seemed to us that the town was quite empty, considering it is Friday on a holiday weekend.  Eventually, Julie got a sub at a place called The Pickle Barrel and Emma got some Chinese at a nearby restaurant.  We then found a nice table on the sidewalk and ate outside.  It was not too warm to be outside and the overcast skies kept the sun from beating down.  For desert, the girls got cupcakes from a street vendor nearby.

     On the Smithsonian Channel's program Aerial America, we were introduced to two Dubuque sites that we thought would be fun to visit as we were passing through the town today, and they were both nice ways to spend the early afternoon.  The first was the funicular railway in town.  There is a steep bluff that runs parallel to the Mississippi River.  The downtown area of Dubuque is along the river and there is a nice residential section at the top of the cliff.  In the 1800s, a resident built this railway so that he was able to go home for lunch and still have time for a nap before returning to downtown.  We took the inclined railway up to the overlook above the town.  Abby exclaimed "This is fun!" as it started moving.  From the top, we were able to see all of downtown Dubuque, which isn't very large.  Emma said it is also a very brown city.  After admiring the view, we rode back down. The guy who was getting off before us said that the ride was terrifying, but it really wasn't that bad, even looking down the steep incline that we were descending, and Abby continued to say "This is fun!"

     The other stop we had chose from Aerial America is the nearby monument to Julien Dubuque.  He was the French Canadian who was the first white settler in what is now Iowa.  He had come to mine lead from the "Mines of Spain", so called because the mines are on the west bank of the Mississippi would have been in Spanish territory, not the United States, in those post-Revolutionary War years.  He befriended a local Native American named Pesota from the Mesquakie tribe.  Dubuque's monument is at the top of one of those bluffs along the Mississippi River, near his mines.  The monument itself is shaped like a castle rook from a chess board and includes his last resting place.  It was a pleasant spot to visit-- a very scenic spot in a pretty and quiet little park.  

      We got back into the car and rode about a half-hour to Dyersville to the Field of Dreams Movie Site.  This location includes the house, baseball diamond and cornfields that were featured in the 1989 movie with Kevin Costner.  In the movie, Terrance Mann tells Ray that there will be lines of people who will come to see his field and pay $20 to visit it.  That's what they ask for now as a donation to enter there.  There were quite a few people at the field, including teams who were gathering for a baseball tournament that will be played this Fourth of July weekend.  We had re-watched the movie shortly before coming here so that Emma would know where we were going.  She did not think much of the movie and didn't like the character that Kevin Costner played at all.   Scott loved strolling around here.  There was a line of guys who wanted to hit a ball on the field and lots of others playing catch nearby.  Since Scott wasn't going to be able to jog around the bases with Abby, he decided to have a couple of hotdogs there for his dinner instead.  He walked out to the cornfield line in the outfield.  There is a green mesh fence in front of the corn now, and he said that it would keep the ghosts from coming out of the corn, but Emma corrected him and said it was more about keeping the tourists from going in.  We sat on the bleachers there and watched everyone else while Abby played in the stones underneath.  We could see the stadium on the adjacent property where they now have an annual MLB game.  Scott bought the "official program" about the making of the movie.  By the way, the "Is this heaven?" line is used all over the place- on brochures and knick-knacks, t-shirts and posters.  We actually heard several people call out the question as they were arriving here, and of course, they always got the same answer- "No, this is Iowa!"  It's a great quote ,but it's getting a little played out.

     Our hotel tonight is in Cedar Rapids, so we had to drive another hour and a half or so to get here.  Once we arrived here, we stopped at a nearby Best Buy.  Before the trip, Scott had packed a bunch of DVDs to keep Abby entertained as we were driving, including some Peppa Pig and Blaze that he had bought just for this trip.  Unfortunately, we apparently left the DVD player on the dining room table at home, so we invested in a new one tonight.  Emma, Julie and Abby got dinner at the Subway next door.  Then, after we got moved into our room, Scott, Julie and Abby went down to the pool for a swim.  All in all, it has been a very relaxing and enjoyable day.

Thursday, June 30, 2022- Chicago

    We started today with an intentionally slow pace, to try to make up for our hectic early rise yesterday.  We took the morning slowly, and eventually left the hotel to go to Navy Pier in Chicago.  It's a good thing we did go slow because most of the shops and restaurants there didn't even open until 11:00 and were still closed when we arrived at about 10:30.  

     In front of Navy Pier is the Polk Brothers Park, which has a big fountain that invites kids to come splash in and cool off.  We knew that Abby would like getting wet here, and went there first while we waited for the rest of the place to open.  There were many other kids there, most only slightly older than Abby.  She did love it, but she didn't pay much attention to the spurting water of the fountains.  She was very content to just splash in the puddle that collected in the flat area in front of them.  Of course, she has learned from Peppa how much fun it is to jump up and down in puddles, muddy or not.  It was a bright, hot day already, and the water felt good.

     The shops and restaurants of Navy Pier opened, so we started to look through the stores.  We especially like the Chicago themed things.  In the windows of Harry Caray's Tavern were Cubs uniforms, of course, but also Bill Murray's outfits from Ghostbusters and Groundhog's Day.  There were many Chicago-style restaurants to choose from for lunch, but Julie had a hankerin' for the nachos from Margaritaville.  She first had them here with some teaching colleagues when they had come to Chicago together for a special education conference, and she wanted them again.  We didn't expect that it was going to take so long, though.  We thought we were ahead of the lunch-rush, but we had to wait for probably 45 minutes before the nachos came out.  Emma then went to a different place for some gelato.  She thinks she got something with raspberry, but the menu was all in Italian, while Julie and Abby split a strawberry one.

     We had originally talked about going to the Children's Museum or even the Ferris Wheel, both of which are at Navy Pier, but when we were finally there, we weren't up to doing either of them.  Scott had liked the idea of a quick boat ride on the Water Taxi, since Abby has liked similar boat rides in Buffalo.  He thought it would be cheap and cool.  It was neither.  The Water Taxis aren't really meant for that.  It cost $30 for all of us to go one-way, and then we had to disembark and go up a flight of stairs at Michigan Avenue in order to buy another set of one-way tickets to return.  And the sun was beating down hard the whole way.  The girls rode inside the boat for most of the ride, but Scott sat out in the sun.  There were interesting buildings and Chicago-style draw bridges as we went up (down?) the Chicago River, of course, but when we decided to take the Michigan Avenue taxi instead of the one to the museums, we hadn't taken into account that much of the view would be dominated by a building with a big ugly name emblazoned on it. You know the name.  It starts with T and rhymes with "My Rump."  But Scott managed to take video of the scenes without letting that name into the view at all.  Still, it was probably a mistake to try to take the taxis.  Chicago is like New York and London.  It is filled with things to do, but it is expensive.  When we got back to Navy Pier, we had a $37 parking bill to pay too.

     Julie has long been a fan of the Chicago shows on NBC- Chicago Fire, Chicago Med and Chicago PD.  We knew that these programs were really filmed in and around Chicago and a sharp viewer can pick out landmarks in many of the scenes. We learned of the location of two important sites from Chicago Fire and had it on our itinerary to visit them today.  First there is the Chicago Fire Station itself.  We left the Loop and followed the GPS as it took us a little south and east to 1360 S Blue Island Avenue.  The station for the Chicago Fire Department Engine 18 is the real life setting for the show's fictional Firehouse 51.  The three big red garage doors were closed today, but we were able to park in front and stand in the drive way.  As we looked around, we could not only recognize the fire station, but also many of the surrounding buildings and the view of the Willis (aka Sears) Tower.

     After a few moments at Firehouse 51, we drove on to the site of "Molly's Bar."  On the shows, this place is a bar that a group of firefighters bought together and many of the characters frequent.  In real life, it is Lottie's Tavern, at 1924 W Cortland Street.  The outside of the tavern is recognizable, but so too is the inside.  The white lights that hang from the ceiling on the show are there in real life too. Apparently, they only filmed here on site for the first two seasons and then they moved to a sound stage for the later seasons.  Even so, they had to copy the place they had already established here when they built the new sets.  We ended up having dinner at "Molly's" and enjoyed the food.  Scott had a "Molly's By Day IPA" to drink, and Julie ordered a "Chicago PD Burger."  

     We finished the day by going back to the Woodfield Mall.  Julie wanted to get some shorts at JC Penney and   Then, we discovered that the unthinkable, but perhaps inevitable, had happened.  Bunny has gone to whatever place that much-loved-but-lost toys go.   Bunny, also known as Uh-Oh the Bunny, Bun Bun, and lately just "Money," disappeared somewhere in the mall.  Perhaps he didn't know when the game of hide and seek was supposed to end while Abby was in the clothes racks at JC Penney.  All we know is that we looked up and down the mall for him even as the doors were closing, but we were unable to find him.   He has been Abby's nearly constant companion for more than two years.  [In truth, the doctor had advised us to "throw him out" and break Abby of him, but we had wanted to wait until after the trip to do that, and wanted to do it in our own way and on our own time.  Now, it will happen much sooner.]  Abby bounced back pretty quickly when we took her to the hotel pool.  She's in pretty good spirits, but every once in a while, she notices that he's missing and cries out for him.