Looking back at a baseball vacation taken 13 years ago...
Wednesday, August 9, 1995
I napped.
The only vehicles we passed in Iowa were 18-wheelers.
I began driving again at Cedar Rapids, where we left the interstate for 70 miles of two-lane highways. We finally arrived at 4:45 a.m. and slept in my truck outside the "Field of Dreams" until the sun peered over Iowa's endless miles of cornfields.
The movie site didn't open until 9 a.m., so we ate breakfast at Hardee's and waited.
We arrived at the "Field of Dreams" promptly at 9 a.m., itching to play. The baseball diamond, which was carved from a cornfield, and two-story house were just as they looked in the Academy Award-nominated movie.
There were a handful of guys taking batting practice. We immediately joined them. After an hour and a half, there were about 60 tourists at the field.
"We have anywhere from a couple of hundred to a thousand visitors a day," said Rita Ameskamp, who owns the left side of the "Field of Dreams" with her husband, Al.
Another farmer owns the house and the right side of the diamond.
Both owners operate souvenir stands on their respective sides of the diamond, and there's obviously enough business for each to be successful.
Around 11:30 a.m., we hit the road in order to reach Minneapolis in time to see the Minnesota Twins play Oakland.
We were running on 30-plus hours without any "real" sleep, and it was another five to six hours to Minneapolis.
I half-heartedly mentioned camping again, but Michael balked. "I don't know about you, but I'm sleeping in a bed tonight," he said.
We showered at the hotel, then drove to the Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome. Maybe I'm a traditionalist, but baseball in a dome stadium just didn't seem right. I liked it for one reason only -- air conditioning.
Oakland beat the Twins, 6-3, in 10 innings. After the game, we crashed at the hotel.
Coming tomorrow: Remembering Day 5 of the trip
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