Eight Down....Four to Go

Crossing Into Nebraska - Siouxland Veterans Bridge

Today we crossed the Missouri River and passed out of Iowa and into Nebraska. Eight states down. Four to go.

As a good friend pointed out earlier today, the “instant gratification” states are over. As we look west across Nebraska, Wyoming, Idaho, and Oregon, the distances are truly massive. Believe it or not, we still haven’t quite crossed the halfway point in terms of distance.

This is a big country, and this journey has proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that the people who live here are big hearted, open, generous, and kind. We’ve met people from all walks of life, and the interactions have been welcome and inspiring. This big country is populated with big people who will lend a hand, a word of encouragement, and do the right thing. Though it’s a big place, the distances between us are not nearly as far apart as some might have you believe.

As a special treat, Dad was able to join in crossing from Iowa into Nebraska, and he’s walked the entire distance covered in the Cornhusker State so far. It was good to have him along for the journey again.

I hope you all had a great Tuesday. Be sure to celebrate your own milestones and continue being the great folks that you have proven yourselves to be. Thank you all for your ongoing support and encouragement!

Cow Spa

The day dawned crisp and cool, and we were up and about to see it. We broke camp at Little Sioux Park in Correctionville, Iowa and pressed westward.

We were a little bit skeptical on our way into Correctionville, to be perfectly honest. Was it a prison town? Did they still put people in the stocks in the town square to make an example of them? Was caning not only legal but condoned?

It turns out none of these theories about the origin of the city with the most letters in a single name in Iowa were true. Correctionville is the location that land surveyors made a correction in the north-south county road  alignment during the settlement period. The reason for the necessary “jog” in the main street of the town was to make parcels of land approximately equal in area. Surveyors at the time were using straight line optical instruments, and since the earth is a sphere, eventually a correction in the north-south grid lines defining property boundaries must be made to keep the parcels of land approximately equal in size.

The people in Correctionville were warm and welcoming as the people we’ve met throughout the entire journey. They shared the history of the town with us, and there’s quite a lot of pride in both the length of the name and the reason they have it.

We moved on toward the border of Iowa and Nebraska, but we didn’t quite make that line of demarcation today. Hopefully, soon.

Cow Spa - Woodbury County, Iowa

Along the way, we happened upon a herd of cows splashing around in what they must think of as their own personal spa. Now don’t get me wrong, I don’t begrudge the cows their fun, but I’m glad that we don’t wash our own feet in our drinking water. 

As we passed, the herd noticed and galloped alongside the fence. I suppose they’ve learned that people on foot must mean food. Whatever the reason, they jogged along with us for about a half a mile. It was just the sort of simple thing to put a smile on your face as you took one more step forward.

Hope your Monday was as good as the one those cows seemed to be having!

Order from Chaos

Apparently before this land was extensively settled, much of it was covered by relatively unruly hardwood forests. The idea of this untamed wilderness appeals to my more nomadic nature. I call it nomadic, but it’s probably just a bad case of undiagnosed attention deficit disorder.

Order from Chaos - Woodbury County, Iowa

Sometime along the way, pioneers set out from areas in the east to make their fortune beyond the Mississippi. Some of these pioneers got to Iowa, and, their drive for nomadism expended, they settled the land and started to bring the wildness under control.

Fields were cleared, stumps blasted out with dynamite or pulled out by draft horses, and small scale cultivation commenced. Settlement continued, the resistance to the entropy of the forests continued, and now over a century later, the order and the neatness of the land that these herculean efforts produced is widely evident.

The hills have been shaped by cultivation and time. The rows of corn run straight and true to maximize the capability and yield of the harvest machinery, section lines delineate the labors of one farmer from the next, and hay is stacked in anticipation of winter in neat and orderly rows and columns.

There is a real beauty in this order and neatness, and imagining the sweat and toil it has taken to achieve this result boggles the imagination.

Still….as a nomad, I have a tickle of longing for a bit of untamed disorder, and so we continue west.