Roadtripping to Des Moines Part 2: This Town is Ready for a Political Candidate, a Zombie Apocalypse or Both

Just so you know, there's more to Des Moines than covered bridges and shearing sheep. Like this, for example...

Yes, politicians will pause for an interview with CNN in the middle of an Iowa cornfield. I give Iowans a lot of credit for not letting it go to their heads.

But also, the Downtown Farmer's Market, where you can eat your way through, starting with a gooner at 9 AM and ending with a papusa and a train ride.

Oh...What is a gooner, you ask? It is like a crab rangoon, filled with sweet and savory options. You can get 4 for $5 and that's 2 more than you can really eat all by yourself, especially if you want to save room for the gourmet doughnut booth on your way back through.

But about that barrel train ride...

I think it was about $2 and around and around he went for several minutes. It's the perfect kid-friendly activity for parents who just want to eat their gooners in peace.

Plus, there are other things to see at the Saturday market...

like the World's Furriest Hawkeye fan. I'm pretty sure if I started drinking at the beginning of a football game, I would think this was Sean Connery by the 4th quarter.

Also, belly dancers because...why not?

And all manner of unique, handcrafted goodies at every turn. I bought a pair of mitten gloves from the very hands that knitted them.

If you happen to be visiting Des Moines in the fall, you can also have your pick of fall festivals hosted by the local farms. They usually include a petting area, apple cider doughnuts, train rides, sliding down a half-pipe on a potato sack, bounce pillows...

and, of course, the infamous corn pool.

To be honest, I couldn't remember which farm we visited so I thought I would just Google "Des Moines farm festival corn pool" and get my answer. But, no. As it turns out, there is more than one farm offering a pool o' corn for kids to stomp and swim in freely for the entire month of October. But getcha some of this. It's entirely worth the bra full of corn you'll have to dump out that night. And it's significantly better than that one time in Kansas when I dumped all of Blue's sand out of his sand table, bought a 20 pound bag of feed corn at the farm and tractor store and dumped that in his sand table. The squirrels loved us and the neighbors had corn stuck in their tires for weeks.

If the fall festival is worth two cents, it will have other activities, like the Flying Houndz Frizbee Trick Dog Show, where pups leap and twirl to the oohs and ahhs of folks like us.

And the racing pigs. There's always racing pigs. I don't know why this entertains me so.

When your belly is full of apple slushie and freshly baked pumpkin bread, head back over to the covered bridges to check out what you missed last time.

Maybe stop to do a handstand

and pick up some astroturf flip-flops.

Then swing by Zombie Burger + Shake Lab (don't worry, they have multiple locations in Des Moines but we hit up the one downtown) and grab the Trailer Trash Zombie burger with a Chocolate Nutella Marshmallow shake on the side. Make it boozy for a little extra.

Bonus points if you can manage to not look like a tourist in here. I failed miserably.

If, after all of this, you are down for a little more adventure, drive 3 hours northeast to Dyersville, Iowa...otherwise known as The Home of The Field of Dreams. We actually drove like six hours from Kansas to Dyersville and then swung through Des Moines on our way home. When we left Kansas City, it was a balmy spring day in May, with temperatures reaching in the mid-70's. But someone forgot to tell Dyersville that winter was over. It was freaking freezing. And we were utterly unprepared. We stopped at the Target in Dyersville and I bought a scarf while Shana found the very last rain coat in the store because they had already made room for the bikinis and floppy hats. I promised Blue I would wrap him in the picnic blanket from the trunk. We drove with the heat on and then leaped out to see the baseball field surrounded by, naturally, rows and rows of corn.

How can you spot 2 city girls at the Field of Dreams baseball field? They are looking for corn. In May. And this is how we came to learn the snappy farmer's rhyme: knee-high by July. There is no rhyme about May.

Do we look cold? We took one selfie as Blue ran in the opposite direction in total defiance. He is not up for our shenanigans on a good day, never mind when he's getting chapped by the wind while we take a thousand pictures of a house and a corn-less field. Apparently, even if you don't grow it, they will still come.

But I loved the movie and we enjoyed the 20 minutes we spent wandering the grounds. Next time, though, we'll plan our trip around a Ghost Sunday baseball game. I'll gladly pay my $90 to reserve a seat on the swing on the front porch of the farmhouse, just as Ray would want us to.

This is all we could squeeze into 48 hours in Des Moines, but rest assured my DSM bucket list grows by the day. In addition to touring Fort Des Moines, I would also like to swing through in February for the Blue Ribbon Bacon Festival, stop back by Fong's Pizza (yes, the crab rangoon pizza is everything you think it is) and play a few games at Up-Down, an arcade featuring our favorite video games from the 80's and 90's (I could hold my own with some Mario Brothers).

We had a blast living in the Midwest and would have no qualms about retiring there...if it weren't so far away from an ocean in every single direction. But Midwesterners are some of my favorite people, ever. They are hard-working, honest, generous and kind. They take pride and joy in their homes and towns, which shines through in everything they do. I'm looking forward to the next time I get to land in this "fly-over" state!