I drive 307 miles on Interstate 80 to get across Iowa, the nation’s No. 1 corn grower. A few big cities tower over breaks in the fields. Otherwise, only random trees and farms rise above the rustling ocean of vegetation. Leaves wave in a slight breeze. The Interstate is nearly empty of the long-haul trucks that owned the roads in Nebraska and Wyoming. “It’s field corn,” my stepmother, who grew up in Iowa, tells me over the phone. “Pigs eat it.” I never see any pigs, unless I count a curly-tailed, smiling swine painted on the side of a silo near De Moines. “They don’t keep them near the road,” she said. “They stink.”
I do not smell anything bad in Iowa, at least not from the Interstate, and I don’t have time to go off the main road and explore. The corn mesmerizes me. I don’t remember time ticking by, even though I sail the corn sea for at least six hours.
Click here to link to my multimedia “Sway” presentation on Iowa
This short video from YouTube tells a lot about the Land of Endless Corn
Road Trip Whee! 