Silage and Mileage – Granny Basketball – Fantasy Baseball – August 25, 2020

It rained last night, but it did not make the temperature any cooler. This morning we hopped onto the Cass Street Bridge to cross the river back into Minnesota. From there, we turned south on route 16 south. The route turns into a series of county and state two-lane roads that wind their way south along and across the Mississippi River. We went back-and-forth from Minnesota-to-Wisconsin-to-Iowa-to-Illinois, etc. throughout the day.

 This is a quite scenic way to visit the region. The roads follow the rolling terrain and fields that line the river.

 

Silos are everywhere. In fact, the silos outnumbered the miles we put on the car today. Karen explained that Iowans claim to have perfected the design of present-day silos, which feature concrete or tiled towers and metal roofs.

 

In New Albin, IA we pulled into the City Meat Market and Grocery. The smell of smoked meat caught us as soon as we got out of the car. Inside, workers in the back room were making fresh smoked sausages on long strings. We ordered some large smoked meat sandwiches for the road (we had them for both breakfast and dinner tonight). We snapped a photo of the vintage firehouse, then continued south.

 

Down the river, we passed through the town of Lansing, IA. True to the city’s motto, we saw eagles in the area. Lansing is also the birthplace of ‘Granny Basketball’. It seems that several years ago, a local resident, feeling nostalgic for the good old days of women’s basketball, decided to organize a game. Long story short, the game caught on and now there are regional games and a national tournament (last played in 2019 in Lawrence, KS) with players from all over the country. Players must be women over the age of 50, who wear period-correct 1920’s bloomers. Technical fouls can be called for exposing too much flesh, and physical contact with other players is prohibited (sounds like a good game for current times). Underhand shots are worth 3 points, other shots are worth 2 points, and foul shots are 1 point. The granny teams also play boys and men’s teams as charity exhibitions, but the other teams must adhere to the granny rules.

 

Further down the road, we stopped at a road-side honey stand. As we've often found during our travels, Californians can be found anywhere. It turns out that the woman running the stand had lived in Studio City, CA back in the 1960's before returning to her home in Iowa.

 

The Iowa Scenic By-Way (Highway 52) took us south through rolling fields of corn as the Mississippi River turned southeast. Before long, we came to a railroad crossroads in Dyersville, IA and saw a sign pointing to the ‘Field of Dreams Movie Site’ just 3 miles off the road. They built it, so we had to come. Major League Baseball had planned to play a regular-season game (White Sox vs Yankees) this summer, but that game’s been postponed until 2021. There is a professional-grade field on-site, but it was off-limits for our visit.

 We took enough time to do some ‘corn-ball’ stunts on the movie-set field.

 

After another long day on the road, we crossed the river again for our hotel in Fulton, IL, where we ate the rest of our sandwiches and washed them down with some Potosi, WI beer.

 

Next: Ft. Wayne, IN