[Thursday: 3.4, Friday: none, Today: none]
Yesterday I drove with my daughter from northeast Mississippi to central Iowa. Our route took us north into the western end of Tennessee (avoiding Memphis), across the Mississippi river into Missouri, then north around St. Louis. We went through Hannibal then up through eastern Iowa to Mount Pleasant and WNW on 63/163 to Des Moines.
The corn is high in Iowa. I was struck by the rolling landscape and the contrast with the manicured look of the fields: rows of corn or beans, mowed ditches, neat homesteads.
Having grown up in Iowa, the land in Mississippi looks lazy, like it is not doing anything. I guess that’s not really true since you’ll often see rows of pine trees planted like a crop just like a corn field. And the people in Mississippi have the excuse of a more vigorous flora: if you stand still long enough some kudzu will start to twine around your leg.
We stopped at Eldon, IA to see the American Gothic house. There’s a sign on 163 which points the way and I have been by there a number of times. But this time we drove the 5-6 miles into town and saw the house. It was smaller than I imagined but the gothic window itself was bigger. Imagine that.
