Minnesota/Iowa - 6/7/2015

After northern Minnesota, we had a relatively quiet two days in terms of travel. We drove directly to the Apple River in Wisconsin (right over the Minnesota border) on the 3rd. Basically, a ton of people gather there and take tubes down the river to meet people along the way. From what we heard, it was the perfect place to spend the Fourth to celebrate America’s birthday! It was a lot of fun and we met some really cool people. Unfortunately, I don’t have any pictures from there since we left our phones and cameras behind so they wouldn’t get destroyed in the river.

Once we finished that, we made our way to a local sports bar in Wisconsin because Felipe’s team (Chile) was in the Copa America final. Good thing we stopped, because THEY WON! It was a very exciting game and we (especially Felipe) were really happy to have been able to watch it live.

Once Felipe calmed down from the high of his team winning, we made our way to Minneapolis. Of course, we stopped at the Vikings stadium. It’s currently under construction (they tore the Metrodome down) but we still took a picture with the future stadium! Right now, its on schedule to be open for the 2016 season. The Vikings are playing at the University of Minnesota until it’s ready.

Since we were in Minneapolis, we had to stop at the Mall of America. It is HUGE! There is essentially an amusement park in the middle of it. It also has any store you could possibly think of.

We didn’t do much shopping, but it was a nice stop on the trip! Since it was still the Fourth of July, we decided that we had to find some fireworks to watch. We opted out of the fireworks downtown (since parking would probably be a nightmare) and made our way to Apple Valley. Apple Valley is about 20 minutes outside of Minneapolis and hosted an AMAZING show! There is a video of it if you scroll down through my recent posts. Here are some pictures as well!

The next morning, we drove to a little town called Wayzata (thanks for the recommendation, Dad!). It was a really cute lake town that is definitely worth a stop for anyone in the Minneapolis/St. Paul area. It was also right on the way to Darwin, Minnesota. Darwin is home to the largest twine ball made by one man. There isn’t too much to say about this, as it is exactly what you would expect it to be!

Since nothing can top the biggest ball of yarn made by one man, we drove south to Iowa!

Admittedly, I was not expecting much out of Iowa. Whenever I think of Iowa, all I really think about is corn fields. While there definitely are a lot of corn fields, there is also a lot to see. Our first stop was the plane crash site of The Day the Music Died. It was here that the plane carrying Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and Big Bopper crashed only 6 miles after taking off. Unfortunately, there were no survivors. The site contains a memorial for all three men and attracts a lot of visitors who want to pay their respect. We were only there for about a half hour and 4 different groups showed up within that time. We were surprised since it really is in the middle of no where, but just shows what popular guys those men were!

After making our way back to the RV, we drove directly to Des Moines. We heard a lot about the famous Zombie Burger so we made a point to stop and have dinner there. The decor was really fun - they had zombie mannequins everywhere you looked and even had movie posters that were tweaked to look like horror films.

For me, the scariest thing in the place was the burger we had. We ordered the most popular item on the menu - a patty that was surrounded by grilled cheese instead of a bun with special zombie sauce. It was delicious but I could only really stomach a few bites. Felipe got a little eager and ate the rest of it quite fast (we shared one burger) and was out of commission for the next hour. When I drove us to the Holiday Inn, the hotel we were staying in that night, he even laid in the RV bed as we drove because he couldn’t hold himself up next to me.

As I mentioned before, we stayed at the Holiday Inn in Des Moines that night. It was great to lay in a comfortable king bed with air conditioning and take showers with excellent water pressure (those are a luxury for us these days!).

We were even lucky enough to get breakfast vouchers from the front desk so we got a delicious free breakfast in the morning.

After we were nice and filled up, we decided to go to one of the main attractions in Des Moines - their sculpture park downtown. This was unlike anything I have seen in another city. It’s a huge park devoted to all of this art work that was totally free; you can walk around and take it all in for as long as you want! There were a ton of different pieces to look at, but here were some of our favorites.

The other really cool thing about Des Moines was the capitol building. It was beautiful! Definitely one of the more impressive capitol buildings I have seen so far on this trip.

Des Moines really exceeded our expectations. It was a beautiful city with a lot to see. I hope to be back one day! Unfortunately, as always, we had to move on. We had a bit of a drive to our next destination so we decided to make a small pit stop at Bass Pro Shop right off the highway. Felipe ended up getting a little too excited about the camo outfits they had for sale and put them on. The pictures were too funny not to share with everyone!

After our fun break, we hit the road again and stopped at the Matchstick Museum. To be honest, Felipe told me ahead of time that we were going to be stopping here and I was not enthusiastic. What could possibly be cool about a museum of matchsticks?

Boy was I very wrong!! The museum was a showcase for Pat Acton’s work. He creates scale models of just about anything (everything from the Capitol Building in DC to Hogwarts!) entirely from matchsticks. It was very impressive to see. Each piece, depending on the size, can take up to one year for him to make and can contain over one million matchsticks. He even has a deal with Ripley’s Believe it or Not - they purchase some of his work to show in their museums all over the country. I can see why, the detail is incredible and he is a very talented guy!

The last photo of the train is actually a piece that will only be in the Matchstick Museum for another few weeks. After that, it will be transferred to New York City to Ripley’s Believe it or Not!

Our next stop was a bit out of the ordinary. I am a huge “The Bachelor” fan (the tv show on ABC). Now, the last bachelor was a farmer from Iowa, Chris Soules. Felipe and I always joked about how it would be funny to go meet him (Felipe knows who he is since I make him watch the show with me - he claims to make fun of it but it’s clear he likes it). Since we were close to his hometown, we decided to look on his Instagram to see if he was in Iowa. Lo and behold, he was at a charity golf tournament very close to where we were! We decided we had to stop - we arrived late and were assuming we would miss him. However, we were lucky enough to run into him! He always came across as a very nice person on the show but I was really blown away by how gracious he was with us. He took the time to chat, to take pictures, and answer some questions. He even commented on the Facebook picture we posted!

Our last stop in Iowa was to see the baseball diamond from the movie Field of Dreams. While we weren’t able to snap a picture of any ghosts or Kevin Costner, we did get to see the actual field they used in the movie as well as the original house.

That’s all for now - will be back in a few days to tell you all about Wisconsin! Until next time!