Is This Heaven? No, It's Iowa.

U.S Road Trip 2013

Part Sixteen

We stopped in Mitchell, South Dakota to see their famed Corn Palace which is a basketball arena decorated with huge corncob mosaics. Each year since the first Corn Palace display in 1892, a theme has been chosen, artists have submitted their proposals, and then a year has been spent planning the displays.

This is one of those things you need to see with your own eyes to believe. These photos are a small glimpse. 

Dan had come here as a child on a cross-country road trip--we spotted the photo of the view of the Corn Palace as he saw in person.

And then the drive through the middle of the country began from southeastern South Dakota all the way across Iowa. In every town I looked for its blue water tower. The buttes of South Dakota gave way to the rolling hills of Iowa.

 Iowa wins the prize for the best rest stops, and their western most welcome center has the friendliest rest stop employee.  She told us all about Iowa and excitedly informed us that the Iowa state fair had just opened that day in Des Moines. (We had to pass this year.) 

Just like Route 66 was frequently mentioned on the southwestern route we took, informational signs made reference to Lewis and Clark along the path we took home. I thought about their legacy. Their journals and diagrams were quoted and pictured all through the north-central states.

 Like South Dakota, Iowa is strikingly beautiful. It mostly looks like this.

 And this. It never got old. More windmills than we had seen on our entire trip seemed to have sprouted through Iowa fields all along the way. Gently rolling fields of corn spread out to our right and to our left. Dan and I agreed that it was therapeutic to drive through this for hours on end.

 Late one night we made it into Illinois. Dan set up his tent in the dark. Again.