I have queued for Disney’s Space Mountain in July heat no Englishman should tolerate, driven the Pacific Coast Highway with the roof down, and stood in Times Square feeling less than impressed by all the fuss. Over forty years of visiting the USA, and I thought I had the measure of the place. Then I stood on a baseball diamond cut into a cornfield outside a town of less than a few thousand souls, watched the evening light drop gold behind the tree line, and felt this was an experience not even Walt could manage.
This is the Field of Dreams site in Dyersville, Iowa, and if you were anywhere near a cinema in 1989, you will remember it. Kevin Costner, a voice in the corn, a baseball diamond built on faith rather than sense. It was never really a film about the game — it was about fathers, sons, and second chances, which is presumably why so many of us who saw it in our twenties or thirties never quite forgot it.
This summer Major League Baseball returned to the field for a match between the Minnesota Twins and the Philadelphia Phillies, and I was there. You do not need to know an ERA or an RBI to feel it. You just need to have once believed a field could be magic. When the players and officials emerged through the corn, as per the film, coupled with the haunting music, that was very easy.
In the small town centre nearby, the ‘If You Build It’ museum lets you try on a uniform and relive the film’s best moments — a nice touch for anyone travelling with a friend or partner who has never quite understood the fuss. It also details the involvement of the Dyersville Community.
But that moment came at the end of a week I hadn’t expected to fall for quite so thoroughly, so let me rewind.
We landed from London on a direct flight into Minneapolis, picked up a car, and gave ourselves one evening of orientation at the Mall of America before Iowa proper began the next morning in Mason City. The city is a major attraction for architecture lovers, particularly the historic Rock Crest–Rock Glen district, laid out by Frank Lloyd Wright associate Walter Burley Griffin, and the restored Historic Park Inn.
Not as popular in the UK as in the USA, but ‘The Music Man’ show, written by Meredith Wilson’, who grew up in Mason City, modelled the fictional story around River City directly on his hometown. A walk through the real Rock Crest–Rock Glen streets doubles as a stroll through the setting that inspired “Seventy-Six Trombones” and the immortal quote ‘yeah we got trouble right down here in River City with a capital T…’
Next it was Winterset and The Bridges of Madison County; they are not grand structures, six humble covered wooden crossings scattered across quiet farmland, but they carry an outsized romance, thanks to the book and, probably more importantly, the heart-breaking love story told in the Clint Eastwood and Meryl Streep 1995 film of the same name. Walking through the wooden lattice with nothing but birdsong for company, this is America stripped of spectacle, offered instead as quiet, rural beauty. (PS: Winterset is also the birthplace of Marion Morrison, aka John Wayne).
The Bridges of Madison County
Lunch afterwards at the Covered Bridge Winery with a glass of Iowa-grown red in hand gave way to an evening at The Lost Table. This is a foraged, four-course farm-to-table dinner across Speckled Hen Farm and Lone Oaks Barn, complete with beehives, a guided prairie walk for wild blackberries and garlic plus plates thrown from clay dug on the property itself.
Watching the sun set over the barn was the culinary heart of the whole week and reason enough to cross the Atlantic. This was more than farm to table; this was forage to fork.
Pella surprised me next. This is a genuinely Dutch town founded in 1847 by Dutch immigrants, complete with a Goedemorgen welcome. I got to see the tallest working windmill in North America, a trundling lengthy trolley tour followed by a “Dutch Lunch” of spiced beef and apple cake.
Top Tip – As an afternoon treat, pop into the Jaarsma Bakery for one of their delightful indulgent delights.
I spent a couple of days in Cedar Rapids, a place I could barely have placed on a map beforehand but had an awful lot to offer. A morning’s round at Ellis Golf Club, a municipal course of high quality opened in 1919 and threaded along the Cedar River, needed nothing more than a warm handshake and a set of rental clubs.
I joined a backstage VIP tour of Paramount Theatre, a lavishly restored 1928 movie and Vaudeville Palace and got to stand on the stage beneath the magnificent Wurlitzer organ as it thundered up through the auditorium. This was the very instrument that accompanied silent films and the touring Vaudeville acts working the circuit through the Midwest. It’s still a proper working house today – Broadway tours, big-name concerts, comedy, Orchestra Iowa – the sort of unshowy, full-throated live entertainment venue that reminds you why America does show business better than anywhere else.
Paramount Theatre, Iowa
Dinner was at Cobble Hill headed by a James Beard-nominated chef (a USA award that recognises exceptional culinary talent). This turned out to be the best restaurant meal of the trip.
A morning in the Czech Village (settled by Bohemian, Moravian, and Slovak immigrants in 1852 who came to work in local packing plants), breakfast at Czech Town Station, and the Grant Wood stained glass at the Veterans Memorial Building rounded off a city that punches well above its reputation and its name.
And then, as the sun dropped over Dyersville and the Twins took the field once more, I was back where I’d started — except I understood why they built it in this state.
For British travellers of a certain age who assume they have already seen America, Iowa is the quiet rebuttal — unhurried, unpretentious, and, at Dyersville, unexpectedly touching.
GET THERE: Delta Airlines offer daily flights to Minneapolis from LHR and Dublin, where Aer Lingus also offer a daily service.
STAY: The Radisson Blue at the Mall of America, jus a few minute’s from the International Airport have double rooms from £160 per night
PARK: Graham’s car parking was organised by APH