Well, first of all it’s ‘Many Congratulations’ to William and Kate on the birth of their baby son and our future King!!

Wetting the baby’s head!

Dyersveille home to ‘Field of Dreams’

Donny Lansing

Me and Donny discussing corn!

Field of Dreams

Babe Barrett!

And she makes Home Plate

Field of Dreams

On the bleachers at The Field of Dreams

Who’s that coming out of the corn?

Field of Dreams

Si at Antique Archaeology

Miss River Lily

Miss River Lily

Iowa scene

An Iowa road!

It was actually Cindy, who I met in Forks (big Twilight fan), who emailed me and said Kate had gone into hospital and then it was my bro who texted me during lunch to say that ‘it was a boy’.  Being a big Royalist I’m very sorry that I was not at home for this big occasion but ‘here’s to the next time’.

Today has been another movie buff’s day!

It’s been a really exciting day all round really, first of all with the Royal birth and secondly, the fact that I realised a dream today in visiting the baseball field from the film ‘Field of Dreams’.  In fact, I’m so excited that I’m finding it hard to sit here and type this.

It was exiting enough to just go there but then we were in for a really exciting event. As  Si was taking photos of the field and the house, a man approached us and asked if we would like a photo taken together, which he did. After that he introduced himself as Donny Lansing!! Well, most of you are not going to know who he is but I knew because I’d been reading about him this very morning. He’s the man who owned the farm house next to the baseball field in Field of Dreams and he even had a role in the film!! Well, to say I was flabbergasted is an understatement.

He was the most loveliest person and we spent ages talking to him about his home, the field and the film. He was in three scenes in the film but two of them were cut out but at the end of the film when all the cars drive down at night to the baseball field, well he’s driving the lead car.

We were talking to Donny about corn. The whole of Iowa appears to be one huge corn field and it got us to thinking about how much corn must Iowa produce.  Well, Donny couldn’t remember the exact amount but he said it ran into billions of bushels. After further investigation, this is what I’ve found. The 2013 projections indicate 2.45 billion bushels of corn on 13.97 million acres of land. I hear you asking “well how much is a bushel?” Well, one bushel equals approximately 35.24 litres or a measure of capacity equal to 64 pints  used for dry goods. Or in layman’s terms ………………. rather a lot!

Everything is still as it was when the film was made with one exception, there is now a gift shop. Well of course there had to be one!

Do any of you know the American TV show, American pickers? Well, Si and I watch it all the time back home and here in Le Claire is where the show is based and partly filmed. The name of the shop is actually Antique Archaeology and is owned by Mike Wolfe, one of the pickers.  It’s always surprising how small these places are compared with how they look on TV. Sadly, Mike, Frank (the other picker) or Danielle (she takes care of things while they are both out picking) were not there today but it was exciting to see the place anyway.

You remember I told you yesterday that we staying by the Mississippi River, well below is a photo of a flower that we saw on the river this morning.

Tomorrow we leave Iowa and travel to Columbus, Ohio. One thing we will not miss about Iowa are the dusty roads. Apart from the highways most of the roads are gravel, dusty roads. Beast 3 is already needing a wash!!