Iowa Adventure

So yesterday I went on an adventure through Iowa. My friend Melina and I spent 10 hours traveling around and looking at the fun, interestingness, and hidden beauty in that Midwestern State called Iowa.

We were shocked when we started getting to northern Iowa at the beauty of the hills and trees. Our first stop was in Strawberry Point. Home of the World’s Largest Strawberry. We got out took out needed pictures of us “holding” the strawberry up and decided we wanted to go buy some strawberry gifts. Turns out they don’t have a tourist shop. But we did find some good postcard finds in the gas station. Then we were hungry so we picked the most local and unique sounding restaurant there. Back Home Country Cookin. Boy did we make a GOOD choice. The place was packed with locals and all the waiters knew people by name and customers jokes with each other across the room. It really was a friendly and homey feeling. Plus the food was DELISH.

We then left there to drive another 20 mins to the Taylorsville Cemetery where we were on a mission for my mom to locate some relatives. We did find a few and we are afraid that a few more may have been grown over because we had to pull up some grass in order to see the dates on the stone of my great great grandfather. We tried to find hidden graves in the random empty area around the Family stone by listening for a different sound when we hit the grass and trying to dig a few inches down here and there. Needless to say I’m sure there were hundreds of spirits laughing at us yesterday.

We then headed off to the Maquoketa Caves State Park, however, we had a pit stop in Dyersville along the way. Whats in little Dyersville you ask? Only the filming location for the Universal Studios film Field of Dreams. This is where the baseball field is. Unlike most places like this where you cant do anything but look at it for about $10 and then maybe grab a souvenir shirt, the site was completely free to visit and you could even play baseball on the field. While we were there a dad and his son were having some batting practice on the famous field. How awesome is that?

When we finally arrived at the park we were shocked to find there was only a shitty map of the place on a sign and none for us to take and people were REALLY muddy. We went through one cave and it was awesome then we headed out to find the Ice Cave. We think we might have found the opening but didnt go in it because it looked like a hole that led to nowhere. So we kept walking. After about an hour of random paths, uneven stone stairs, steep as hell wooden stairs we get to the top of a hill at this little pagoda and the path ends. We did however find cell service. We were so disappointed that we never found the cave (because we didnt think the random hole was it) but it was getting dark and a storm was brewing so we left with plans to return. Only after we got home did we learn that the caves were being closed due to some fungus humans causing in the caves that are making the bats sick. Soooo sad we’ll never be able to find the ice cave.