What we have had, though, was a stiff and steady crosswind
along Interstate 80 that kept Val busy at the wheel. Not only did he have to
keep the RV and car from being nudged to the right side all the way, but he
also had to manage the rush of air every time a semi truck went by, which was
often on this well-traveled interstate corridor.
The geography along the greatest part of our route today has
been rolling hills and large tracts of agricultural land. I love seeing the
farm homesteads at the edges of the fields, ringed with trees planted as
windbreaks, where a cosy house stands next to a big barn and tall silo, and a
pickup truck sits in the driveway. Sometimes you can see chickens strutting
around, or a horse or two, and in the yard there’s a child’s bicycle or swing
set. It looks so peaceful and wholesome,
and evokes 1950s TV show feelings where mother is baking pies in the kitchen
and Lassie romps on the lawn with a tousle-haired boy in denim overalls.
In all likelihood, Mom is at the office and the kid is
playing video games, but that’s another story.
We passed through Cedar Falls first, and then Cedar Rapids a
bit later on. The latter was a large indus-trial centre with a big Quaker Oats
factory, among others, and multiple railroad lines passing through. Shortly
after passing through Iowa City, we saw the signs for the Herbert Hoover
Presidential Library in a town called West Branch. It might have been
interesting to stop there and compare it to the Eisenhower Presidential Library
we’d seen in Abilene, but we recalled our frequent mantra: you can’t see
everything.
We’re now settled in our hotel in Davenport, and were
pleased to find a Red Lobster restaurant right next door where we enjoyed a
nice seafood dinner. I looked up some
Davenport trivia and learned that this is where the first chiropractic
adjustment was ever done; Palmer Chiropractic College was established here in
1867. There is a three-part railroad bridge here that sees about a dozen
crashes every year by semi trucks. The trucks, apparently, are usually pretty
badly wrecked, but the bridges seldom incur much damage at all.
The town is vulnerable to flooding from the Mississippi
River, which we will be crossing tomorrow on our way out, but town planners did
not want to obscure the river’s beauty with levees or dykes. Instead, there are
ordinances for building construction to ensure minimal damage by floods. The flooding
issue makes quite a contrast to the drought problems in states we’ve visited in
recent weeks. Unlike the southwest, around here are plenty of ponds and lakes,
and the soil looks dark and rich with moisture.
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