The First Day Is the Longest

Yesterday the journey finally began! It seemed almost odd to be backing out of the driveway at last. We committed to this trip in July 07, and we've been planning it since last winter. So here we go!

Yesterday was a long day. We drove from Knoxville to Des Moines, Iowa, about 860 miles, in about 14 hours. This was our "escape day"—we left the Southeast behind and are now well on our way to the upper Midwest.

One of the joys of driving is to watch the landscape change. We didn't notice much until we were well into Kentucky. Then the sky began to enlarge. Gradually the land began to flatten out and the horizon receded farther and farther away.

There are oddities in the interstate system. We drove out of Kentucky, into Indiana, into Ohio, and back into Indiana. Yes, that was the direct route!

Indiana is quite a farm state. The landscape was flatter and almost without pause, on either side of the road, there were corn fields, interrupted by soy beans. The corn was quite beautiful! Each tall green stalk was tasseled out in a golden brown. In the soy bean fields there were solitary stalks of corn, not very tall, not tasseled, but proclaiming that these farmers do indeed rotate their crops. You can tell from all this detail that there wasn't a lot to look at!

On to Illinois. We noticed that we were entering what would have been the prairie. Low rolling hills stretched out in all directions around us and for as far as we could see. These are not the rolling hills of Tennessee, but lower and larger. Again, we were surrounded by fields of corn, with occasional soy bean fields. We saw enough corn to surely field or fuel the world! Here and there would be small groves of trees, often sheltering a house. Silos and water towers became a more important part of the horizon. If you closed your eyes and imagined away all the farms and substituted the tall prairie grasses, you would be engulfed and surrounded; like being at sea. I understood why the western pioneers called their wagons prairie schooners!

Surely if your ambition was to grow corn, this is the place to do it.

We stopped and ate in Bloomington, hope of State Farm Insurance, where Dad has done some training. Vast campus, huge office cubes, impressive parking garages—about 5 million square feet, according to Dad.

In Illinois, the sky is huge and the horizon far away. There was a long and most beautiful sunset, filling the sky for miles and miles, lasting even longer as we were driving west.

Not many RVs on the road. We only saw 9 all day.

We rolled into Des Moines, tired but feeling accomplished. I had intended to post this, but didn't have the password and was too tired to get it.

I'm writing this in the car, as we continue to traverse Iowa. Iowa is a very wide state! Since I'm writing in the car, I absolve myself of all errors and bad edits!

I sign off now, still in Iowa, and facing a big yellow water tower with a big smiley face painted on it! We're having fun and smiling too.