If you plan it they will come... day three

Sunday September 29th.

Sunday morning dawned cool and crisp after a night of rain. As we were planning the trip from the comfort of home we had decided that 7:30 would be a great time to hit the road. We have quickly learned that 8:30 is much more realistic! 

Almost ready to hit the road

Today is to be another long day of driving with only one tourist type stop. That stop is the Field of Dreams movie site just outside of Dyersville IA. But before we reached Dyersville we took a break at the Top of Iowa Visitor Center just across the state line near Northwood. It's very clean and well maintained and the staff we met were very knowledgeable.
 

At the Top of Iowa Visitor Center near Northwood IA

If you've followed our past road trips you may remember this map with the yellow states being ones we've been in or through...

... as you can see we missed Iowa. So we've now added it to the list of states we've visited while driving a Festiva. That brings the count up to twenty-six! Now, back to the movies...
 
Field of Dreams was released in 1989 stars Kevin Costner as an Iowa corn farmer who hears voices, interprets them as a command to build a baseball diamond in his fields; he does, and the 1919 Chicago White Sox come. 

A damp day for driving...

...through the mist....

... but we made it!

One of the famous lines in the movie is "if you build it, he will come" which inspired the name of this road trip! We were already well into planning this trip when we mentioned it to Phyllis and Andrew and they said they'd like to join us! So we planned it and they came.

Sharon and me and the corn!

Phyllis, Sharon and me on the field.

They built it, we came...

On a side note.... there will be a Major League Baseball game held at this site on August 13th 2020 featuring the Chicago White Sox and New York Yankees!!! Read all about it here. 

We spent about an hour here before getting back on the road towards our overnight stop. We crossed into Illinois at Dubuque and decided to make a pit stop on the west side of Chicago to stock up on groceries and to grab a bite to eat. This stretch was to be our first experience on a major toll road, which wasn't quite what we were expecting. The drive through Chicago itself was an eye-opener to say the least. We were blown away by the amount of traffic, especially considering it was around 9:00 o'clock on a Sunday night. We all commented that weekday traffic must be horrendous! We were very pleased to make it out of there and across the state line into Indiana. The Knute Rockne Plaza is about an hour east of Chicago on I-80 and this is where we had decided to stop for the night. We'd been driving through rain and fog most of the day so it was nice to get out and not look at the world through windshield wipers. The service plazas on the tollways are quite something. This one had a Starbucks and a couple of other fast food places. It was very clean and bright too.

Our approximate route for today's drive.

This brings us to the end of another long day of driving. We settled down for the night to rest up for a day of adventure on the turnpikes of Indiana, Ohio and Pennsylvania.