If You Build It, They Will Come...and we did!

On the way to Dubuque, is the small town of Dyersville, Iowa.  This is where the movie, Field of Dreams was filmed.  The field is still kept up and is a major tourist attraction.  It looked just like it did in the movie!

 The house in the movie

 The field, surrounded by corn fields

 The house and the one set of bleachers

On the way out of town, we stopped at the Basilica of St Francis Xavier for a quick visit. What a beautiful place!  

 Basilica of St Francis Xavier

Inside the Basilica

 The Mississippi River Bridge between Iowa and Illinois

We rode the Fenelon Place Elevator in Dubuque.  It is the shortest and steepest elevator in the world.  It is 296 feet long and angles up at 106 degrees with a vertical elevation of 98 feet.  It was built for J.K. Graves who was a local banker, former mayor and former state senator in 1882.  Businesses had 1-1/2 hours for lunch and it took Mr Graves 30 minutes to take his horse and buggy home, 30 minutes for lunch and 30 minutes to return to work. That didn't give Mr Graves time for the 30 minute nap he liked so he had someone build the elevator.  It burned twice and was rebuilt both times.  The car was made a little bigger so his neighbors could also ride and he charged them 5 cents a ride.  We had to pay $3.00 each for a round trip!

 The elevator tracks

 The elevator car

We stopped at the Shot Tower.  The tower was built in 1856 to provide lead shot for the military. The invention of the shot tower enabled economical production of many nearly perfect lead spheres of the right size to fit in a musket. To make the shot, molten lead was poured through a grate at the top of the tower. The droplets that fell from the grate were of relatively uniform size, and the fall provided enough time for the liquid-metal droplet to form into a sphere before landing in the water below. The water cooled the lead to its solid state, retaining the spherical shape.

 The Shot Tower

On across the Mississippi River is Galena, Illinois.  It reminded us of Eureka Springs, Arkansas with all the small, old houses with just a sidewalk separating it from the street and all the hills.  It was a quaint town but had lots of interesting houses and churches.  

Belvedere Mansion, Galena, IL

Built in 1857 and has 22 rooms

We also took a tour of President Ulysses S Grant's house in Galena, IL.  It was a very interesting tour (and FREE!)  

So, this is the end of Iowa.  I may show some of the barns and other sites along the way later.  Iowa is a beautiful state.  The central part of the state has had a lot of rain this spring and summer and everything was so lush and green.  The crops were doing well.  We mostly saw corn with a few soy bean fields here and there.  

Heading on to Chicago next!