Road Trip Part 2: Is this heaven? It's Iowa.

So if there's one thing I have been DYING to do since we started dating, it was go to Field of Dreams.  Most people know I love baseball, and Field of Dreams, well, just, I've always wanted to go.  Unfortunately, we're usually there in December, and as Adam bluntly put it before my first trip to Iowa, corn fields in the winter are literally dead and there is nothing.  We did go to Iowa in September a couple of years ago, and Denise was so excited to take me to Field of Dreams, but what she didn't know was that the reason we were there was for a surprise party for her and Mark - so didn't get there that trip.  But this time, this was a week without plans in Iowa during the summer, and we were determined to get there.  Denise looked into it, and there was a celebrity softball game on the Sunday of Labor Day weekend.  She got tickets for the four of us, and we headed out on Sunday to Dyersville, Iowa.

Adam watched this movie called Spinning Plates a few years ago.  It focuses on three different restaurants, from three very different places - a small Mexican restaurant in New Mexico (that has since closed), Alinea (literally one of the best restaurants in the world, located in Chicago), and Breitbachs, a local restaurant in Iowa that has been around for 100 years, burned down twice, and been rebuilt twice.  Breitbachs is only 30 minutes from Field of Dreams, and is somewhere we've been wanting to check out, so we stopped there for lunch before baseball (softball).  Going back to previous posts where I talked about eating the state food in each state - for Iowa, it was specifically a pork tenderloin sandwich from Breitbachs.  Adam and Denise both got that, Mark and I both got the buffet, and we were all sufficiently full by the time we left.

State food for Iowa - pork tenderloin sandwich from Breitbachs.

View from Breitbach's - more hills than you expect for Iowa.

Field of Dreams is exactly what you expect.  The house, the field, the cornfields - it's all so familiar and homey.  This is something they do every year, and it was very well planned out and organized, down to autograph times and prices and lines (we chose not to do that).  They did run out of water at the concession sales for a time, but they still had beer.  We got to the field around 2:00pm, and spent the afternoon listening to interviews with the players, taking pictures, and watching A League of Their Own (they set up a screen and projector and played the movie around 4:30pm.  It was pretty cool just lying in the outfield grass watching a baseball movie).  At around 7:00pm, they started the player introductions, with players coming out of the cornfields, and the game started around 8:00pm or so.

Walking out of the cornfields.

Finally made it!  I have so many pictures from our day here, it's ridiculous.

Cornfield selfie.

The athletes (all former MLBers except for Hope Solo) were:  Ferguson Jenkins, Jack Morris, Andre Dawson, Ozzie Smith, Tim Raines, Reggie Jackson, Wade Boggs, Mark Grace, Frank Thomas, Rod Carew, Steve Carlton, Hope Solo.

Sunset as the Black Sox-ers came out of the cornfields.

The actors were: Charlie Sheen, Tom Berenger, Corbin Bernsen, and Tony Todd (completely unknown actor who even took a dig at himself, saying the only reason he was there was because he's been a good friend of Charlie Sheen since childhood).  Apparently it was Charlie Sheen's birthday that day, and in a cringeworthy moment, they had him speak.  I wish I had recorded it, with him talking about the hot chick Jules standing by the bleachers.

The cast of Major League - Roger Dorn, Ricky Vaughn, and Jake Taylor

The game was actually pretty good, although I will say that Ozzie Smith was the only one who could actually still play - he was defensively responsible for 4 of the 6 outs in the first two innings.  After the game, they played Field of Dreams on the projector (didn't stay for much of it, only the first couple minutes).

I mean, he could probably still play in MLB.

Mr. October.

Wade Boggs may have been drunk.  So may have Jack Morris and Mark Grace.

The rest of the week was very laid back and relaxing.  I ate my way through local Iowa places - Maid-Rite loose meat sandwiches, ice cream from Whiteys, pie from Village Inn.  We cooked our awesome roasted chili brisket for everyone, got to Iowa City to see my cousin Brian and his family, and even got to see Adam's sister Lauren at the end of the week since she was in town for a wedding.  We had a cook-out for Denise's birthday on Friday where we got to see friends and family, and headed out on Saturday morning for a long day of driving to Denver!

Whitey's Ice Cream for dessert.

Maid-Rite for sandwiches.

A really poor attempt to go kite-flying.