Day 3 - Bloomington to Quad Cities

Day 3 began in Minnesota and ended in Iowa, traveling through Wisconsin and crossing the border into Illinois, briefly. After leaving Bloomington, the first major city we hit was La Crosse, Wisconsin. La Crosse seems to be a self-sufficient community on the banks of the Mississippi, randomly situated about 2 hours from anything else noteworthy. The weather was grey and chilly, so when we drove up 600 feet to Grandad Bluff, the view was good, but the photos weren't spectacular. This photo is part of the historic part of La Crosse.
La Crosse features City Brewery, which produces and distributes beer throughout the Midwest. The brewery tanks are painted to look like beer cans, thereby making the tanks the "World's Largest Six-Pack." Since we arrived on a Sunday, the brewery tours were not being offered. Instead, we managed to locate a lunch spot that served beer from City Brewery. Pretty good beer!
I don't know if this is the Wal-Mart that Ryan used to work at, but it's the only one we saw while driving in La Crosse. It looks like pretty much every other Wal-Mart out there.
Driving to and through Iowa, we saw many patriotic Americans. Flags everywhere, including from the flatbeds of pickup trucks. Surprisingly, this vehicle did not have a gun rack.

Iowa is a pretty state. But much of inland Iowa is a one-trick pony. It's hills, fields, and farms. That's it.

Lots of fields.

And even more fields. It would have been nice to see corn stalks or something, but obviously crops were just planted, and there's little to sow just yet.

Toward the end of the day, we made it to the actual Field of Dreams movie site. It seems that there is a bit of a dispute between both of the owners of the land containing the baseball field. One family owns the infield, right field, and the big white house. Another owns left field and center field. Neither seems to like the other all that much. There are two separate driveways leading to the field, two souvenir stands, and two sets of historical descriptions explaining why one is official, and the other is not. With vast expanses of land, property lines give even Iowans something to fight about!

One other stop was in Dubuque, Iowa's 8th largest city. We went to a great museum & aquarium about the river, which included some well-produced short movies and tanks filled with river creatures. In the museum's outdoor area, signs warned of our entering a nesting area for birds that "could be" hostile. "Could be" equals "sure are." This is the one that attacked me. I took its photo, walked over to Brian, and it swarmed around my head until I ran away cowering.