Looking for oddities and adventure

Monday, July 13, we’d spent the night in Freeport, Illinois.  One of the draws for this city is Little Cubs Field although we didn’t know that before we got here.  It’s a detailed replica of Wrigley Field.  They say grown-ups can be kids and kids can be grown-ups?  What?  I wouldn’t know about that because when we visited there was a lot of standing water from the previous night’s downpour.

Taking photos of signs helps me remember what I've seen and where I've been.



While the field was wet, you could see it's a class-A field for folks to play ball on.

The field shares some interesting features with Wrigley:  the ivy-covered brick for the outfield walls were grown from actual Wrigley Field ivy cuttings; there’s a hand-painted crowd scene mural below the scoreboard; there are authentic dugouts, inside and out; there are traditional green doors.     

Yep, the things of tradition.

A tribute to Harry Caray, a sportscaster who covered four major league baseball teams, and spent his last 16 years announcing for the Chicago Cubs.

It’s the only replica of its size I the world and you could even have a wedding there if you chose.  Woo hoo.

I preferred to try out the pitcher's mound.

From there we wandered along the Mississippi River toward Le Claire, Iowa. 

We do like to take photos of barns, especially old ones with some color.

We also like to photograph bridges.  This was a metal grate one, the kind I like to cross  You could hear the car tires whine as they drove from one end to the other.

We also saw our first snake.  Dead, and good that way.  Google is my friend.  It told me this was a plains garter snake.  Eeewwwwhhhhh.

Le Claire is the home of one of the American Pickers stores, the Antique Archeology guys, Mike and Frank, and their gal of superior trades, Danielle.

These guys do an awesome tv show.

I've watched them unearth finds like this.

I wonder if Frank and Mike noticed that DaviDson is misspelled.

I've also seen Frank and Mike chase after Vespas, and other types of bikes.

I'm not sure what this was, but it sure fits the description of the things they look for.

 I was really hoping one of the show stars would be around, but alas, no.  Still we had a great time wandering around through some of their finds, and I’m sure that something I’ve seen them pick on the show was in this store. 

The next best thing is having some guy photo bomb my photo.  Hey, ladies, whatcha doing?

Then it was lunch time.  A friend who used to live in Alaska was somewhere close by.  I sent a message to Pam, the Airstream Queen (she loves them and renovates and goes camping in them), to see if she could join us.  Yep.  She was there in 15 minutes and we spent a half hour or better reminiscing and talking about current and future happenings.  It was time well spent since it had been 15 years and we've only followed each other on Facebook.

Pam and me.

But it was time to get back on the road, and head somewhere.

Or maybe just to photograph another bridge.