Rain Again?!?

Rain again?!?

Our drive to Iowa started with getting the trailer hooked up in the rain- of course!  It would have gone a lot faster if the neighbors on each side of us hadn’t wanted to come out and chat- in the rain!  They were very nice, and it’s fun to meet new people, so we stood under the trailer overhang and visited- one was from Iowa and loved that Kyle had moved there to go to school and didn’t leave, and the other was going where we had just come from, so we shared information. 

On the way to Iowa we drove over the Mississippi River:

And into Iowa:

Iowa is covered with agriculture- mostly corn (for feed and ethanol) and soy beans.  They plant wherever they can and you will see billboards in the middle of fields:

Also, note the bare spots in the corn field- those are to capture runoff to prevent erosion and also prevent nitrates from getting into streams and lakes.  The farming here is very different than in Cali, where it is flat- here the land is rolling hills (not as extreme as Tennessee- much gentler!), so they often don’t plant in straight lines, but go with the topography, and even do some terracing with grasses growing in the non-crop strips- another thing that helps prevent erosion.  So smart!

We drove past the Iowa 80, which bills itself as the world’s largest truckstop, with over 900 parking spaces!  I am not sure it is that big, and we didn’t stop, but it was big.

And then, of course, we got more rain, but we made it to our Campground near Kyle.