Crusin' the Prairies

Your correspondent is covering new...or almost new...territory as he cruises eastward across the prairies of the Midwest.  As far as southwestern Minnesota, my last trip here was 40 years ago...beyond that it has all been new territory.  The scenery doesn't change nearly as rapidly as it does in the West, but it does vary from west to east.  Here, in South Dakota west of the Missouri River, the plains are mostly treeless.  The main crops are hay, rolled into thousands of loaves, and sunflowers.

The Missouri River from Chamberlain, South Dakota.  In 1971 I went down to the river and obtained a bottle of water, such was the exoticism of the legendary Missouri in my mind.  Nothing like that this time, but the river is still impressive.  For one thing, it served as Lewis and Clark's highway to the west 200 years ago.  The river is very wide at this point as it is dammed downstream...and upstream, multiple times.

In 1971 we bypassed the corn palace in Mitchell, SD.  Not this time!  East of the Missouri, the predominant crop is corn...all the way to Lake Michigan. 

The Corn Palace gets its name from the murals on its side, which are made of...corn!  Blow up the pic and you'll see the intricate detail.  I was unsure whether the entire structure was made of corn...this seemed impractical, and indeed, it's basically steel and stone.  But the murals are all corn, of varying colors.

The corn empire reaches its apex in Iowa.  This was my first visit to the Hawkeye State, and corn is everywhere!  Most structures you pass are tidy farms with silos, and acres and acres of corn, with a few soybeans mixed in, plus a large elongated structure that I assume is a hog barn...Iowa leads the nation in corn and hog production.  The land here smells good.  It's aromatic with the scent of erupting life, in the humid air.  Fecundity run wild!  There is a lushness here that is not found in the west, except possibly in the Willamette Valley.