Cedar Rapids, Iowa

August 24- September 1, 2018

Next up is Iowa. Our 21st state!

Why Iowa? Because it has the world’s largest truck stop that why! Seriously, this place is huge! It has a church, theater and four fast food counters.

We stayed at Squaw Creek Campground, 4305 Squaw Lane in Marion, right outside Cedar Rapids.

This has been one of our favorite camp sites on this adventure. It was HUGE! We had a couple of pretty sunsets this week. We were also fortunate to see a beautiful super moon rise in our backyard.

There was a great playground and biking trail.

14 years ago Chris and I visited the filming location of the movie Field of Dreams with some friends/coworkers from GreatAmerica on an annual trip out here. It hasn’t changed much; they still have the baseball field available for anyone to take pictures and play catch. What’s more American than playing baseball with strangers in the middle of a corn field. BTW- Iowa is the number one producer of corn in the country.

Field of Dreams was an hour away from our RV park in Dyersville, IA. They are open from 9am-8pm.

Since we volunteered with SHP (Sleep in Heavenly Peace) back in Twin Falls, Idaho, I looked for other chapters across the country on our route. I was excited to see that the Cedar Rapids-Marion area had just started a chapter. I contacted them via Facebook and luckily they needed help delivering beds. Unfortunately they needed help on Saturday morning when we were to be driving from Chicago to here. We decided to leave early Friday and arrive Friday night so we could help out. Boy are we glad we did. We were met some amazing people and blessed a family with 5 beds.

The headquarters for the company Chris works for, GreatAmerica Financial Corp, is located in Cedar Rapids so he was able to go into the office everyday this week. Because he knows several people in the office, he invited some folks over for smores one night. This was the first time in a year that we were able to host friends, we were so excited! I’m so thankful for this wonderful evening.

GreatAmerica has an annual company gathering at the local minor league baseball team’s stadium and it happened to fall on the first day we were in town and Abby’s birthday. The team is called the Cedar Rapids Kernels- yes Corn Kernels! How perfect huh?

I arranged to have a Happy 12th Birthday greeting up on the jumbo tron which I think she enjoyed even though she acted embarrassed.

We also had the opportunity to run the bases and get autographs on the baseball cards they gave Abby because of her birthday.

We went out for our traditional Mexican birthday dinner. It happened to be the 2 year anniversary of this restaurants opening so they had birthday cake in the back for the celebration so Abby got a piece of that!

We came home and opened gifts. The girls played Xbox most of the evening.

Morning celebration… turnovers for breakfast for turning a new age:)

Sharing a car is for the birds! We drove Chris into work each morning and picked him up every evening. One day, after our dentists appointments at Dental Center on Mt. Vernon Rd, Chris took us on a tour of his office building. The GreatAmerican building sits on the bank of the Cedar River. The first floor is the best because of the shuffle board and putt putt. We also enjoyed a Starbucks treat in the cafe on the first floor. It was the anniversary of them opening so they were serving birthday cake to all their customers- bonus! That’s twice this week.

We loved having the RV to ourselves all week to do school work at the table inside while it rained.

Chris played golf after work one day with Stan at the Cedar Rapids Country Club.

The girls had their eye doctor appointments this week. No one needs glasses yet Mackenzie want’s them.

We ate Captain Crunch for breakfast this week because the Quaker company has a coral mill here that makes them; you can smell them throughout the city.

We visited the Czech village and the National Czech and Slovak museum and library. Both celebrate the city’s large Czech and Slovak immigrant population in the Cedar Rapids area. In 1974, several second and third-generation Czech Americans in the Cedar Rapids area founded the Czech Fine Arts Foundation to preserve their Czech heritage and culture and built the museum and library. In1995, the building was dedicated by U.S. President Bill Clinton, CzechPresident Václav Havel, and Slovakian President Michal Kováč.

We went down to the Nobo (New Bohemian) Market for a treat and stumbled across a little free library. We shared a brick oven pizza for a snack and shopped a little at the booths. The girls bought a few little sculpted rocks.