First, did I say I am not really fond of iPad’s…I wish I could have brought my desktop with me…LOL…such a computer snob and maybe one that is hesitant to try something new and get to know it better…like an iPad. I know people that the iPad is the ONLY thing they use….guess I need to find out from them what I am missing about the joys of using an iPad.
Oh well on to Day 3 and for sure I will add pictures to this when we are back home. When we started to plan this little Fall adventure, I thought…IOWA…how close are we to the Field of Dreams!! We have often driven through Iowa but never it seemed close to Dyersville (Field of Dreams location) at all. So when I checked the map, we would only be about 30 miles away once we got to Dubuque. So we added it to our itinerary.
But first, we went to L&D #11 which we had planned to see on Day 2, but it got late so we decided to do that the morning of Day 3. We times things just right because we saw a barge outside the hotel room window as we were heading to check out. And luckily it was going to the north which we also had to head to pick up #11. It was a shorter barge, but was fun to see one of the tops open so we could see what they were traveling with…looked like small white rocks, like landscape type rocks. We had never seen a barge that was open like that so it was a great view. Although rain was coming but I guess that did not matter with this load. We stayed about an hour watching it lock through and then left to go west to Dyersville and Field of Dreams
It was somewhat as expected because it was out in the middle of corn fields….maybe a little smaller overall than what I expected. The house looked still like in the movie, they still kept the same bleachers that were used for filming and you could go out into the rows of corn and pretend you were old time baseball players walking out of there. It was just a fun experience to be there and I will add lots of pictures. I even have a picture of me and Kevin Costner…like to say he was hiding out in the corn fields, but the magic of photoshop or AI can do anything. :-). Of course they added a gift shop and yikes were things expensive in there. I had planned to at least get a sweatshirt but there were not any I really liked especially at that price. So instead I got a refrigerator magnet to put on the frig at home.
Then it was one to L&D 12 in Bellevue Iowa. Again our timing was great in that we got to see a passenger river boat come through, although they had no passengers. We talked to the “captain” for a while as they were locking through and I asked if I could take his picture and he said fine as long as I posted it on Facebook. I don’t post a lot of FB but since he requested I did so and for the first time I used a hashtag on the post thinking he might get notice that picture was posted. And he did because he commented himself on what a great looking captain that was up there! LOL. The boat was named the Celebration Belle, so I could watch it on my Marine Traffic app and saw it progress down river. He said they were heading to Moline to take out another group on the river.
Locks 13 and 14 were nothing really to write home about. But Lock 15 we had been excited to see what that experience was going to be like. This lock is on a military base, US Army Rock Island Arsenal, so we had to have a quick security check before we could enter the base to drive to the L&D. We finally got to the L&D and found that the Visitor Center was closed!!!! CLOSED on a Saturday!!!! And that was the only way to get in to the observation deck. The sign indicated they were only open Tuesday-Friday…not even on the weekends. That was such a disappointment so all of our pictures are through a chain link fence. But we did get a little surprise….here came the Celebration Belle locking through with a boat full of passengers! Different captain…this guy looked a little more experienced! :-). Not only did the boat have to go through the lock, but just out of the lock there was a railroad swing bridge that had to open so the boat could go through there. That was a cool experience to see and we were surprised that it actually rotated through at 180 degrees. Cars drive on the lower level and trains travel above. We did see a train pass over that had to wait until the boat go through to cross the bridge. Although we had to see all of this through a chain link fence it was quite the experience!
Lock 16 we got to have a good conversation with one of the tow boat captains. When we got to the lock a tow and barges had just come through. Once they locked up, here came a tow boat in the lock alone and he parked right in front of us by the observation deck. He was traveling empty but was on his way down river to pick up some barges. He was very talkative…interesting character, pony tail older gentleman. We talked a lot about the other L&Ds and how many he has travelled through. There was another barge waiting on the outside for him to get his little tow through so once the doors opened just a little he was off. We did stay to watch that barge go through. #17 was a real dud…and it took us on a 3 mile bumpy, pot holed filled road to get us there and it had no user friendly places to watch anything. So we traversed back that awful road to #18 and there we were treated with a long tow and barge that had to split in half to get through. The sun was setting as this one locked through which made for some great sunset pictures over looking the water.
We stayed in Burlington and ate at a restaurant, sitting outside over looking the river. Very busy….Saturday night we should have known…but was fun to watch all the activity in this downtown area…and we got to see a barge all lite up on the river!!
We were excited to see #19 the next day because that tow boat captain told us it was really a big long…longer than the normal 600 feet. But I think there was more hype than it deserved…LOL…more in the next one.
Stay cool out there!!
