If you build it...

"Is this Heaven?"  "No, this is Iowa."

 Shockingly, Jon and I had 2 days in a row off from work, at the same time!! So, we took advantage and took mini-road trip.  First off, great friends!  How can you go wrong with a little light saber battle?  We had a great evening/morning and then off we went to the Field of Dreams.

 One of Jon's most favorite movies was filmed right here in Iowa.  Of course, that meant we just had to go see it.  While we never made it there during law school, we couldn't pass up the opportunity this weekend.

 You can't go in the house, but the corn, and ball field are open to visitors.  It was pretty fun.  And awesome weather.  The week before the temp pushed 100 degrees but yesterday was cool and breezy and perfect. 

 The corn was really tall, we had to venture in!

 The ghosts of baseball emerge!

 I've seen plenty of corn fields in my day, but this was really healthy corn, I was impressed :). 

 We ran the bases a few times and watched others play a little ball.

 Next up, the National Farm Toy Museum. Who knew Dyersville had so many treasures?  This was actually pretty cool.  My brothers would dig it.  They had toys from every generation, it seemed like.

 The John Deere plant is in Waterloo, we may have to visit that sometime, I hear they do tours...

 This is one of the finished toys next to all the parts it takes to build it.

 This display shows how the scale works.  They make tractor toys in 1/16, 1/32, etc.  This is the number of tractors end to end to a scaled life-size tractor.  It was pretty awesome.

 Corn!

 After Dyersville, we headed over to Dubuque.  It was a pretty cool city, right on the banks of the Mississippi.  This is their courthouse, they had a ton of really pretty architecture.

 This is the cable car we rode up the bluff.  Apparently, back in the 1800's, Mr. Feneton wanted to go home for lunch and take a nap when the city shut down for an hour and half at lunch time.  However, to ride his horse and cart around the bluff took all his time.  So, he built himself a cable car and just rode up the bluff for lunch.  Others paid him to ride it, too and they've kept it in good repair and still give rides on it now.  It was pretty fun, and very, very steep!

 The view from the top was amazing.  The river, Iowa, Illinois, and Wisconsin.  Talk about a birds' eye view!

 Turns out, Mason is a little spooked by heights.  Who knew?

We had a great day! After the cable car, we drove over the Mississippi into Illinois and circled around to Wisconsin and back over the river.  It was really fun and the kids thought it was so crazy that we kept changing states.  We had such a fun day, we can't wait to do it again!  Someday, I won't work every weekend and we can go exploring :).