Murdo, SD to Grinnell, Iowa: August 5, 2008 - Day 30

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What's hot: Farmland in full abundance.

What's not: Being the only female in a car with three men for 30 days.

Travel lesson of the day: Who needs ‘em?

from Kathy:

Gray day over South Dakota. Odometer reading is 6,429. We try to wake early but the boys are somnolent. Finally, JJ moves from bed to a long, long shower. Scott complains that his brother takes such long showers in these hotel rooms that he won’t have any time for his long, long shower. Teenagers and long showers go together like toddlers and cookies—the big difference is that once a boy is in the shower, I can’t take it away from him. All I can do is keep knocking on the door.

For instance:

Kathy: “Your brother is still waiting to take a shower.”

Kid 1: “Wwwwhhhaaat? I can’t hear you.” (That adds ten minutes to the event automatically.)

Kathy: “Long showers are bad for the environment.”

Kid 2: What ARE you talking about? I’m taking a shower! Can’t people take showers? @***!!!

You get the idea. Eventually, the Floonian Roadster rolls again and at Chamberlain, SD, we see gas prices dropping. We find a fill-up at $3.79, the lowest we’ve seen so far on the trip.

For once, we drive 2.5 hours with both kids sound asleep, just like when they were babies.

We have loved Route 90, a true national treasure. But then we reached Sioux Falls, SD, and it was time to turn south.

Sioux Falls is one of those all-new Western cities—shiny and bright. Unfortunately, new Western cities (and most other American cities, too) seem to leave out Main Street in favor of Sign Street. You know that street—the one where dogs and dice and chickens and smiling balloons and cartoon characters and snappy automobiles and cuddly-looking bears and you-name-it characters cavort 50 feet in the air on yellow or red signs planted along a one mile stretch of four-lane commercial access road. The signs poke up at different heights and in different shapes against the sky of blue.

I wonder if towns will someday re-engineer their circa-2000 construction to bring back Main Street? It’s such a warm and cuddly place by comparison.

At 12:25 p.m., we turn south on Route 29. We are aiming for Route 70, which will deliver us to Pittsburgh in time for Grandma’s 80th birthday party.

Then the abundant hills of eastern South Dakota stretched out, soft with mature corn, and the yellow energy of sunflowers in full bloom, and swaying wheat.

Ahhh ….. beauty.

At first, my thoughts turned to how far I’ve ridden with no more than scenery to occupy my mind, and everyday scenes like the non-Main-Street described above, or scribbling in my note pad, and having an occasional conversation with the driver of this roadster—a guy who imagines himself to be King of a sometimes-island called Floonia. For the most part, it has been than enough to keep me humming peacefully inside.

But subject to human perversity as I am, even the natural beauty of this abundant countryside sometimes triggers a downturn in mood, a case of the TRAVEL COOTIES.

Okay, I’ll say it.

Paul has driven the entire way so far; I have not touched the steering wheel. I am tired of not being allowed to drive.

The conversation goes something like this:

Paul: “You can drive if you want to. I like to drive, but it’s fine if you want to drive. Really, it’s fine. Here, do you want me to pull over at the next exit?”

Kathy: “I don’t care if I drive. I just want you to ask for help if you’re getting too tired.”

Paul: “I’m fine. Driving doesn’t bother me.”

Kathy: “You look tired to me.”

I know that if I drive, he will sit next to me looking nervous and suggesting places where he can take over again.

“If you get tired,” he’ll say. “You can just let me know.”

He has great difficulty relinquishing the wheel.

For my part, I’d rather he just admit that he needs a break once in a while for safety’s sake. Instead, he and the boys make a teasing game of questioning my competence to point this rolling tour box east on the superhighway with cruise control at 75 mph.

That’s when I realized I am also tired of the endless teasing.

And I am tired of the kids’ gross language. The longer we’ve been together the less guarded they have all become in their talk (all three of them!).

The conversation goes something like this:

Kathy: “I don’t want to hear you use that word again.”

Kid 1: “Mom, it’s just a word. It doesn’t mean what it used to mean. That was in your day.”

Kid 2: “Yeah, It doesn’t mean anything now.”

I am tired of my husband agreeing with them.

Could it be that I, finally, am tired of being the only female in a carful of men?

And could it be that my sons are not babies anymore? And that we’re past the stage where I can tell them how to talk and what to say?

Toto, we’re not in early childhood anymore.

But we are in Iowa and I’m mad. The travel cooties are loose all over the car—I’m not speaking to these dweebs anymore! Forget it, buddies! I can’t stand you guys!

In fact, there’s plenty to do in Iowa besides talk with these guys. Just think about this:

Council Bluffs, Iowa—now that’s an interesting name, and I figure it has something to do with a summit between Native Americans and the US government. So, in my new determination to do ANYTHING but interact with these three-who-shall-not-be-named, I look it up in one of our tour books. Bingo! I learn that Council Bluffs was Kanesville until it served as a meeting place between explorers William Clark and Meriwether Lewis and the Oto and Missouri Indians in 1804. Then it was renamed.

Aha! So there!

I also observe that, as in South Dakota, Iowa gas stations sell super unleaded gasoline for 10 cents less per gallon than regular.

And then there is the observation that Iowa redefines the phrase “flat as a pancake.” I live in Connecticut, which I consider relatively flat but I have never seen such flat terrain as what’s before the windshield in Iowa.

I visualize myself getting out at the next roadside stop and walking away from the Roadster. Just walking and walking across the fields. For 75 miles, until THEY can’t see me anymore. A new life here in Iowa. Hey, I’ve got a credit card … You start by getting the local newspaper and then …

On this trip, we’ve seen a number of ways to view 75 miles (give or take a few) from where we stand. First, there are mountaintops and, then, being at sea. Then, there are vistas from the sides of highways that have been carved into mountains.

Here in Iowa, I am reasonably certain I’m seeing that far just because it’s so flat. Where the mountain states kept delivering surprises around every bend and over the crests of hills, this area delivers its surprise in the form of unbroken visibility.

And just when I’ve finished digesting that little factoid, we turn south on 680, and the landscape changes one more time. Now, rolling almost-hills are plowed in perfect fluid rows that follow the shapes of the landscape. They create semi-circles that look like amphitheatres, parallelogram patches, and conical plots. The hues of soybeans, corn, mown hay or wheat, and other plants I can’t identify look like a crazy quilt.

Agriculture in any form can be stunningly beautiful—I am susceptible to the beauty of gardens and farms in all forms. But this is the Grand Canyon of agriculture. Scale, color, size, intensity.

Slow down, poet! Agriculture is an activity of human beings—and it has its price. For instance, the prairie that once covered this entire region is all but gone. A display at the Illinois border shows the story: loss of 8” of natural topsoil in 150 years and still going.

And agriculture is a business. The business of agriculture has, like any business, its agenda. We have seen signs like these from Wisconsin to Montana and will continue to see them into Indiana:

“Energy from Corn, It’s American Born”

This is just one example of farmers or farm corporations promoting biofuels. The jingles are many and we also see billboard references to Web sites promoting soybeans and corn for fuel, and the value of reduced dependence on foreign oil. Many of them have a tone that sounds a bit too much like saber-rattling for me.

O, purple mountains majesty above the fruited plains …

I am also taken by a quote from Dumas Malone, a Thomas Jefferson biographer, who said: "The greatness of this country was rooted in the fact that a single farmer could produce an abundance of food the likes of which the world had never seen or imagined and so free the energies of countless others to do other things. So much of recorded history is about the struggles of individuals and families to feed themselves. That changed dramatically in this country."

By nighttime, I am speaking to Them again. We close this day at Grinnell, Iowa. The odometer reads 6963. We have driven 534 miles.

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Photos

Good Farming, Clear Thinking, Right Living
See the story for the full quote.

Going, Going ... Gone?
This display shows the disappearance of the natural topsoils--and the decline of the natural prairie vegetation.

Prairie Restoration?
Ironic to see this tiny patch of prairie restoration at a rest stop when the farm fields stretch for miles beyond!

While They Play at the Rest Stop
I imagine myself walking across the plains of Iowa. Would they even notice that I'm gone?