WESTERN MIDWEST BASEBALL

Des Moines, Iowa

We make our one Big Dumb Drive from Wichita to Des Moines, stopping to eat lunch in a vault before sampling the landmarks of Iowa’s capital city.

No matter how much you plan — no matter how long you look at spreadsheets and maps and alternate routes — a road trip that covers 20 ballparks in 21 days across seven states is likely to require at least one Big Dumb Drive.

The Big Dumb Drive is a brute-force band-aid applied to an otherwise elegant travel plan that must be employed to connect one nice string of ballparks to another, making the grand journey possible. If you’re lucky — if the scheduling gods allow it — you only need to do one Big Dumb Drive on a road trip like ours. It’s not a time for dawdling, stopping for attractions, or taking side roads to get off the interstate and see more of the country. It is function over form. It just needs to get done.

The day of our Big Dumb Drive had come.

Dad and I left our hotel in Wichita at 7:30 a.m. and headed onto Interstate 35 for a five-hour drive northeast to our designated lunch spot in Osceola, Iowa, about 45 minutes south of Des Moines. We began in gorgeous morning sunlight cast across a cloudless sky — the first day of the road trip in which we didn’t need to worry about rain. We traveled through bright-green farmland scattered with just a few small towns here and there, all the way to Kansas City.

As we continued through rural northern Missouri, the air turned hazy. The second-worst wildfire season in Canadian history was in full swing, particularly in the Prairie provinces north of us, Saskatchewan and Manitoba. The residual smoke and ash would hover above us for the next week, sending the Air Quality Index into “unhealthy” and “very unhealthy” territories.

We crossed into Iowa and found rolling hills and stands of oaks, Iowa’s state tree. Previous road trips in the Eastern Midwest and across Pennsylvania had passed through endless cornfields, and we expected to be sailing through an ocean of corn in Iowa. But there was no corn to be found! We soon realized it was much earlier in the season, and most fields had just been planted for the fall harvest.

Lunch in Osceola, Iowa

We stopped in Osceola (population around 5,500) for lunch at Keller’s, a bakery and deli near the center of town.

Keller’s is mostly a take-out place, but there are a few chairs and tables scattered around its spartan adjoining rooms. One table stood out, however, and so we ate our sandwiches — a pastrami Reuben for me, corned beef for Dad — in a vault.

Around Des Moines

We arrived in Des Moines in the early afternoon with a plan to drive through town from the west.

We stopped first at Salisbury House and Gardens. Built in the 1920s for pharmaceutical and cosmetics entrepreneur Carl Weeks and his wife Edith, the 42-room, 22,000-square-foot home was modeled after The King’s House in Salisbury, using Tudor, Gothic, and Carolean architectural styles. Weeks filled it with his collection of art, fine furniture, and cultural artifacts gathered from around the world.

Salisbury House is typically open for guided and self-guided tours, but it was closed for an event. I stepped quietly into the gardens — fronting one of the largest private woodlands in the Des Moines area — and snapped some quick photos before we moved on.

Terrace Hill is the official residence of the governor of Iowa. Constructed just after the Civil War, it was originally home to Iowa’s first millionaire, Benjamin Franklin Allen, a banker and real estate investor. Allen’s inheritance came from his uncle, Captain James Allen, the man who established Fort Des Moines in 1843.

The National Historic Landmark spans about 18,000 square feet and was built in the Victorian “Second Empire” style, sporting ornate cornices and a “mansard” roof — four-sided, with slopes flowing down each side. It also featured rare luxuries for its time: hot and cold running water, indoor restrooms, gas lighting, and an elevator.

Pappajohn Sculpture Park

We continued east and pulled over next to Pappajohn Sculpture Park, which currently displays 28 works scattered on a long strip of lawn approaching downtown Des Moines. I took a stroll through the diverse collection of contemporary, whimsical sculptures.

We curled through downtown circuitously and crossed the Des Moines River, looking upstream toward the Iowa Women of Achievement Bridge.

Originally known as the Center Street Bridge, it’s actually an elliptical loop of two bridges. Color-changing LEDs light a middle connecting path at night, where a plaque honors prominent women in Iowa history.

Iowa State Capitol

We drove around to the back of the Iowa State Capitol for a good view of its gilded central dome surrounded by four smaller domes. Completed in 1886, the Renaissance Revival building rises 275 feet and is one of the few state capitols in the United States topped with a true gold dome — touched up last in 1999.

Just opposite is the World War II Memorial Plaza. Many other monuments stood nearby — including the Iowa Statue of Liberty; the Soldiers and Sailors Monument; the Abraham Lincoln and Tad Statue; the Japanese Bell of Peace and Friendship, and the Korean War Memorial — but preparations for the next day’s Red Bull Soapbox Race had clogged the grounds with people, trucks, and temporary structures. We inched through one-way streets away from the crowd and toward our hotel.

The time for Dad’s afternoon nap had arrived. He found easy slumber while I made preparations for our first Triple-A game of the trip.

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