California, here I come! Pt. 1 - Adventures in the Midwest

Yes, this picture of the sunset was taken while driving. I was on a deadline.

I sometimes long for an office somewhere with a calendar on the wall, a rotating cast of coffee mugs and, you know, co-worker friends. There is one massive advantage to working from home, though, and that's the fact that "home" can be anywhere. I've illustrated this point to myself pretty clearly this summer by embarking on my first adventure west of the Mississippi River. After begging to cover Comic-Con in San Diego, California, and eventually having my assignment confirmed I made a major decision: Why fly when I could drive?
In retrospect, a sane person and more experienced road-tripper would have allotted a little more time to get from Ohio to California. I, however, decided I could absolutely do the 34 hour drive in two days. And I almost did, too.

Except I got a little caught up in Colorado. It's hard to not.

Before reaching Colorado, I drove though a snippet of Indiana and Illinois (nothing new there). Then it was on through Iowa... home of Hawkeyes and best friends. Iowa is quite pretty. No matter how you picture it, you're probably spot on. If you've ever lived in or drove through the Midwest, you already know what Iowa looks like. It's nothing spectacular... but it was road I'd never traveled surrounded by the green of farms.

The previously mentioned best friend once told me how grain silos have a tendency to explode. I just barely passed Physics a million and a half years ago, but it has something to do with the silos being poorly ventilated. The dust particles in the air inside the silo then latch onto any sort of ignition and end up making one big bang. Apparently this happened quite a bit in Iowa when my friend was growing up so I spent nearly all of my time in Iowa looking into the distance hoping to catch a 'sploding silo. No such luck.

I still thoroughly enjoyed the drive, though, and felt only slight regret when I crossed the border from Iowa into Nebraska... another state I'd never visited.

Right on the border of Iowa and Nebraska, is Council Bluffs and it's there that I discovered the most interesting display of agricultural landscaping I'd ever seen. Large ridges were cut from the earth, creating fields that looked like wide, curving and elongated staircases. In my infinite ignorance, I also decided they must be why the area was called Council Bluffs. These were "the council bluffs." To my defense, I had an absolutely awful geography teacher in seventh grade. I imagine that when she was giving us the definition of a bluff, I was most likely writing a note to my best friend April giving a very detailed recounting of a daydream I had about our most favorite band in the world: Hanson.  That's the only excuse I have for thinking that bluffs were nothing more than recurring two foot drops in the earth's surface.

I've looked it up, though. It's actually a system of "terraced farming." You'll see it a lot in the rice fields in Asia. The terraces allow for better irrigation. The water runoff moves slower. That not only helps the fields to use as much of the water as possible and no doubt pull more nutrients from it, but it also helps to counteract erosion caused by said runoff. This is according to the Department of Agriculture, of course. So it must be true.

Technically, this picture was taken in Colorado. Close enough.

I stopped for the night at rest stop just west of Fort Kearney. It was the kind of purposefully poor lit place that welcomed the likes of, well, me. It hosted multiple cars and trucks full of weary travelers. I pulled my tiny, bright yellow Fiat into a space two down from a comfortably resting Jeep, crawled over into the passenger's seat and dreamed of sleeping soundly in a hotel bed in California.

During my hours at the rest stop, my much-needed sleep was interrupted numerous times.

First, I accidentally kicked my horn and no doubt woke-up all of my fellow travelers.

Later, a humongous diesel pick-up pulled into a spot directly beside me and almost took out my car. There was so much wrong with that occurrence, I had to sit there or a while and seethe. First, there were a million other parking spaces that weren't directly beside me... or anyone else. Second, have you ever seen a Fiat in the wild? They're miniscule. You could fit two in one parking space. If you're pulling into an adjacent spot and can't manage to avoid almost collecting a yellow streak down the side of your manhood-defender, you shouldn't have a license... much less insist on driving something so massive.  The driver, his bimbo and their equally huge dog weren't staying the night but just stopping for pit stop. After 10 minutes of fuming to myself and another five of trying to calm down and go back to sleep, I had to sit up, again, and watch(/glare) as they backed out and, again, almost ran over my car.

Then, a semi pulled in on the other side of the median. I watched for 10 minutes as he rocked between forward and reverse until he fit his 18-wheeler between two other rumbling, slumbering trucks. Despite all the minutes wasted while people-watching though my sleep-crusted eyelids, I woke up at 6 a.m. ready for  brand new day. And another new state.

The Colorado border was just a little ways up the road and I was on a mission.

(To be continued...)