A lot of Bull

We are in the outskirts of Sioux City, Iowa. It’s funny growing up in rural CT, I thought I was in the middle of nowhere. Then I went to M’s home, north of the Adirondack park, and I thought…no, now I am in the middle of nowhere. THEN we moved to Oneonta NY and I thought, okay this is the middle of nowhere. … I was wrrrrong. But I am ahead of myself.

M. said I should have started this log last night, when we officially began our first ‘leg’ of the journey. When we were driving down I-91 being passed by this weaving car, the driver of which was brushing his teeth! I honestly don’t know what’s weirder - that he was driving down the interstate at 80 mph brushing his teeth or that he was doing this basically at 4:30 in the afternoon…

Anyway, we made it to the airport without incident and even got a few hours sleep, rising this morning before the sun. We were at the airport before sun up. There was a surprising amount of people because apparently Chicago had horrible weather and lots of people got stranded. I, as always, was nervous (missed planes, missed connections, what if the online tickets are lying?) Of course, when we got to the ticket desk, the number didn’t work. But a very, very nice older gentlemen figuratively held my hand thru the process and, of course, it worked FINE when he did it. There was a slight delay when TSA had to check my hair barrette, but fortunately they recognized I was just too tired to think of removing it.

Also, again I sing the praises of “space bags.“ (Thank you P.!) They are amazing, Again we have packed 17 days worth of life in a backpack and a carry-on. They are as wonderful an invention as Sham Wows and yellow banana bags. So, with no checked luggage and assistance we made it onto plane one as the sun was coming up. Into the last row… if you don’t know, the last row is the one place on the plane you feel the worst turbulence. It wasn’t awful though and the fellow passengers got better as it went on. The plane ran on time and thanks to the tram and an almost two hour lay over we made it thru the Minneapolis airport with time to spare. Of course we DID arrive and depart from the two opposite ends of the airport. Nothing like an airport to make you realize just how out of shape you are.

That did not stop me from having A&W hot dog and root beer for ‘breakfast around 10 am, however. But hey, I’d been up for hours by then. It was lunch in my internal clock. The second plane was smaller, but the hop shorter, and the Des Moines airport is significantly smaller than …well, any air port I’ve ever been in aside from Wichita KS (that one had 2 gates.) Des Moines probably has 6 gates? You can see from one end to the other. No mall. No subways. No buses. I liked it.

Now, despite the fact that we had now been up about 9 hours, we decided we were okay and we should go with the plan… So we got in the car and headed west on the Interstate for … an hour or so… I was surprised it was not as flat as I anticipated, which is not to say it was not flat. It is flat. But there was some undulation to the landscape and big sky. It there was an ocean nearby C. you should worry. I’d want to stay here. BUT there is no ocean. There is no lake. We saw a couple of man made ponds… but… an ocean of corn is not the same as water.

We saw a lot of corn. A lot of soybeans. And a lot of wind farms. We’ve seen them before in WI, but there are a lot more here. They are just as scary however. At first we wondered if this was just a generational thing, and perhaps it is, but they remind us both of alien space ships. Or aliens themselves I suppose.
About an hour in we turned north on the local “highway”. Highway… this is a misnomer. What was highway here is road back home. Two lanes, one in each direction, and flat. It was here that the undulating ‘hills’ ceased to non existent and it became the flat that I expected. Flat. Farmland. There was an occasional tractor store… some times a ‘town’ most of which were kind of sad with the town hall and library decked out, store fronts abandoned, a bar and / or coffee shop and that was about it.

An hour or so in to this, we reached our destination: Audubon, IA - home of Albert the world’s largest bull. A 30 foot cement biologically accurate statue. Right down the road from the USDA. What can I say, I had a steak in visiting this. (Bu-dum-cha) But he was cool. He was also the only thing around. He lives in the town park and there’s a nice kiosk where you can press a button and hear a loud moo and hear his story. He came out of Operation T-Bone - which is exactly what you are thinking. Unfortunately there was no steak or stake in this, and we continued our path north in to rural America. Another hour or so later we reached Pomeroy IA. I’d come up with this one because I’d read online (nothing on the internet is false, right?) that there was person here who made kaleidoscopes.

Further research had suggested that Pomeroy was a gem of a town with an arts community and a Grateful Dead bar and grill. That sounded promising. Granted the website for the man who made kaleidoscopes also said one should email him to set up an appt before arriving and if he wasn’t in the shop to check down the road at the bar. It said the barkeep would probably know where he was, and since he didn’t have landline calling was pointless.

Still, we were willing to try the adventure.

So around 3 pm, 12 hours after we arose, we arrived in Pomeroy.

It WAS true the bar was a Grateful Dead bar, as evidenced by the dancing bears on the sign that read: Bar. And there was a man in tie dye coming out of it. We did not go in. I actually kind of have a rule that I don’t go into bars that have no windows… not even in the door. Down the road from this, amidst the empty story fronts there was a kaleidoscope shop. It too was closed. But apparently earlier the town had some kind of party. People were about, some floats remained. The town police pick up truck was parked in front of a shop window that had a pistol-range target (you know the kind shaped like a person). And in front of the kaleidoscope store, the “fat cowboys” still had a table set up. We considered this.

But while we are adventuresome, we are also antisocial. And well, we’d been up a long time… we didn’t stop. Instead, we were thankful for Albert and headed west again on local highway - past more corn, soybeans and wind farms.

The county we were driving through however has a barn quilt project going on. Participants paint a large quilt square on their barn. We got to see dozens of them. This was worth the out of the way ride through no where. No, really, no where - more than half the crossroads were unpaved. We’d see pick up trucks turning down them and clouds of dust would billow after them. I thought that was only something you read about. “Footloose” will never be the same.

As we continued west the terrain got hilly again. It’s odd to have small, long hills and big sky. At some point, we have to take a night ride. The sky is bigger than ocean sky.
And a few hours later, we arrived here “in town”. Though we have yet to actually see a town, but I’m pretty sure there is one here. At any rate, we’re a bit tired. I’m not actually sure right now how long we’ve been up, only that my mind is going “wooana” and my desire to visit an amusement park is sated. We have decided to do the ’smart’ thing - rather than our typical thing and commit to staying here tomorrow - getting some rest, organize and head out for our next long drive Monday morning. (Plus we know there IS motel and food here, who knows what we find next?) So, given that - picture (and rpol guys - posting) will come tomorrow when the room stops feeling like a boat.