A Detour into Iowa

We took down in the rain this morning, never a great experience.  To be honest though, considering how many times we have set up and taken down the trailer on this adventure, we cannot complain.

In an attempt to avoid Interstate 90 today, we went slightly south before heading east.  It took us into a new State for us, Iowa.  My preconceived idea was that we would see a lot of corn…it did not disappoint.  We spent most of the day within about 10 miles of the Minnesota border.  This region of Iowa grows 2 crops, corn and soybeans.  We are not sure how they get away with a 2 crop rotation but they do.  The black soil grows fantastic looking crops, probably better than anywhere else we have been.  Of course, thousands of acres of corn and soybeans come with the customary elevator systems, some extremely large.  We also saw lots of pig barns today, again more than anywhere else we have traveled.  One of the unique things we saw today was 2 different ethanol plants.  We are not sure what they were burning to produce ethanol from the corn, but the smokestacks were spewing out some nasty looking stuff.

We are in the Albert Lea KOA in Minnesota.  We are surrounded by corn fields and soybean fields.  Unfortunately, Interstate 90 is on our 4th side.  This seems to be a trend for the location of many of these parks!

Distance Traveled = 328 km.  Wildlife Sightings = Chipping Sparrow, White Pelican, Tundra Swan, Kingfisher, Eastern Kingbird, Eurasian-collared Dove, Red-tailed Hawk, Kestrel, Turkey Vulture, House Sparrow, Red-winged Blackbird, Robin.


One of the hundreds of butterflies today


Corn


Soybeans


State Line Cooperative Elevators


Windmills...Like Ontario these things are wasting good agricultural land and are way too close to peoples houses!!!

Comments

  1. Janish Waters20 September 2021 at 05:45

    Hello There. I found your blog the usage of msn. This is an extremely smartly written article. I’ll be sure to bookmark it and come back to read more of your helpful info. Thanks for the post. I’ll definitely return. driftwood decor australia


    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Some Final Thoughts

Image
I have always found it difficult to write the final blog.   This one is no different.   As we pulled into our yard last evening, reality hit…this adventure had come to an end.   But we have so many memories. Being on the road for 3 ½ months, we traveled 22,742 km through 23 States and 1 Province.   We know that we will be asked, “What was your favourite place that you visited?”   That is impossible to answer.   We saw and experienced so many things.   The variety of landscapes in the United States is simply ‘mind boggling’!   It has so many beautiful National Parks and we had the pleasure of visiting quite a few of them. It is time to wrap this up.   We would like to thank all the people who have taken the time to follow our travels.   It has been fun to share our experiences with you once again. We would also like to thank all of our friends and family who shared in and made our adventure possible.   Without your help...
Read more

Up One Side and Down the Other

Image
We drove north today to South Dakota’s capital City, Pierre.   It is pronounced ‘Peer’…only the Americans can pronounce a clearly French word in such a manner.   Pierre has a population of only 14,000.   It is the 2 nd smallest US State Capital.   There is also nothing there.   If you wanted to tour their capital buildings, you had to give them 48 hours notice…not sure what that was about.   Didn’t matter, we probably would not have anyway! What we did get to do today though, was drive up one side of the ‘Mighty Mo’ (The Missouri River) and down the other.   The river is a big one.   In places it is 2 miles wide.   It has a large water shed and this is the river that caused a lot of the flooding problems in the late Spring and early Summer.   It is still running far higher than usual for this time of year.   It dumps into the Mississippi.   We can only imagine how bad things must have gotten down in Louisiana after we ...
Read more

A Day to Do Nothing

Image
Once again it rained all night and most of the morning.   We are glad we did not have to take down the tent trailer.   Again, things are wet.   Today we truly did nothing.   The most exciting thing was having breakfast in a Norwegian Restaurant in the town of Hayward.   We will be back on the trail east tomorrow. Distance Traveled = 29 km.   Wildlife Sightings = Red-breasted Nuthatch, Sandhill Crane, Robin, Black-capped Chickadee, Chipping Sparrow. Rather interesting campsite...surprisingly private! Only in Wisconsin...can you tell it was a slow day?
Read more