Iowa… is a flat state. Part of that long strip down the
country that is not really good for entertainment but is great for growing
crops, like corn. We have driven past so much corn on this road trip (I’m sure
we’ll see plenty more too), and once again we saw plenty of those familiar big
ol’ grains. We left from Chicago in the morning and so crossed into Iowa around
noon. Des Moines was the town we were aiming for, which sits right in the
middle of the state. This meant that we had a good four to five hours of
driving after crossing into the state, especially since we hardly ever stay on
the interstate.
You see interstates are created to get people to places as
fast as possible. They cut through the environment rather than wrap around it.
The state highways don’t have near as much funding though, so blasting through
the environment is avoided in favor of just wrapping around the hills and
rising and falling with them. It makes the drive slightly more exciting than
just making sure the wheels stay straight. Not to mention you can find random
places to take a break from the drive as well.
In this case both of our stops along the way were by lakes.
Sadly enough I have forgotten the names of both of them. I know that the first
one we stopped at had a beach called Sandy Beach that was all set up for
swimming and had a dock for boats as well. There were even bathrooms. All of
this might make you think that it would be a great place to take a dip, but of
all the lakes we had visited up to that point, and even since, I think that
this was the worst possible one to go swimming in. Partly because the water was
super murky, partly because the mud seemed especially sticky, but mostly
because we found a decaying pelican caught in the buoys that marked out the
border of the swimming area.
Sadly enough we did not discover this little “treasure”
until after we had already got in the water. I got out pretty quick after that
though. After air drying we continued on down the road, not pulling off again
until we reached another smaller lake as the sun was dipping below the horizon.
This was where we pulled off to make some dinner. The water was better here,
but the mosquitoes were thicker as well, not to mention taking a dip in water
while the temperature is dropping for the night is not the most appetizing of
ideas. Still dinner was great, and the water was warm, surprisingly. Still not
even Eric ended up getting in for a swim, and he is usually the first one into
the water.
On we pressed until we hit Des Moines. I’m still not
entirely sure what possessed us to decide that we should go see Des Moines.
Maybe it was because we had just gotten done touring around a city and had been
rather shocked as to how much fun we had there. Or maybe because there were no
national forests or grasslands to be seen in the state and so we had to come up
with something. There is always the possibility that it was just a “sight to see”
close to the place we had set up to sleep at (in all likelihood it was probably
this final fashion, funny how life ends up revolving around where one can find
a place to sleep when one has no home to return to each night). Whatever the
case I’m rather happy that we got to see Des Moines that night.
After spending two full days in the city of Chicago Des
Moines felt like a ghost town, especially since most of the city was entirely
deserted at 10 o’clock on a Sunday night. Even downtown Colorado Springs
usually has a bit more happening at that time. The deserted aspect added its
own bit of romanticism to it though. It was like all the lights and buildings
in the city had been put up and given a spit shine just for us, at least all of
those parts of the city that were not currently under construction, which was
about half of it. I don’t know exactly what is going on there, but it seems to
be some kind of downtown overhaul project that will eventually interconnect all
of the downtown buildings with sky bridges. It looked nifty, but we weren’t
able to get inside to test out any of the completed sky bridges ourselves. What
we did get to see was the skyline, some beautiful bridges, and the very nice
river walk that goes right down the middle of downtown Des Moines. Now as far
as the social scene in Des Moines goes I can’t offer any critique, but if you
are just looking for a city that is great to wander around in at night by
yourself without feeling worried about your safety and while enjoying some
beautiful scenery then I would suggest going to check out Des Moines.
After we completed our aimless wanderings we drifted into
Ames where Tweedy had managed to find us a yard to pitch our tent in. You read
that correctly, a yard we were pitching our tent in. It gets even better
though. The person whose home we pitched our tent in lived in a student trailer
park, which means there really wasn’t much in the way of individual yards. On
top of it the home owner was not even awake when we set up our tent at around
midnight, maybe even pushing one in the morning. All of this probably sounds
completely ridiculous, but it gets even better. Tweedy did not even know the
person whose yard we were sleeping in. She was actually the cousin of a friend
of his from college who was just willing to surrender up a corner of her yard
to three guys on a cross-country road trip. Thank you random stranger out there
somewhere who I never even got the chance to meet!
The next night we had Tweedy’s uncle to go see in lower Wisconsin.
That meant another day with a lot of driving. We tried to stop by a house that
Frank Lloyd Wright built on the way, but it was closed on Mondays and Tuesdays.
Instead of checking out the house built by the water we ended up just
getting in the river ourselves at a little park downstream that had showers and
restrooms with actual running water (and there was no fee for day use at this park!). After
all the driving from the day before and several hours left for the rest of the
day we decided to set up our tent and take a little post-lunch nap before
continuing on our way. That was one of the best low-energy afternoons of the
trip yet.
After the short reprieve it was back on the road and we
rolled on into lower Wisconsin around 7:00. We had officially seen Iowa. I have
to say it really still puts Kansas to shame, even with all the corn.
