17th September
I’m packed and on the road at 0945, heading towards Madison, in Wisconsin. I’ll not arrive there until tomorrow, so I just asked Bettie to find a route via minor roads – I’ll stop when it feels right…
The problem with giving Bettie instructions like this on one side of a city is that she’ll route you through minor roads across the city – which is how I ended up in downtown Des Moines, an area dominated by the hideously over-gilded Capitol building…
…after some time, and crossing to the ‘wrong side of the tracks’, I’m approached by a scantily-clad black girl whilst waiting at a red light. She asks me for a date – I’m a little non-plussed, then suggest the 4th July, just as the lights change to green – there was just time for her to tell me to off before I left…
I’m soon out in the rolling countryside which typifies eastern Iowa…
…turning left at Toledo, where they have a very picturesque bronze cow & calf sculpture, celebrating the role of dairy farming in the area. Along with the cornfields which line the ruler straight roads…
…dairy farming is the main industry. Many of the fields have a series of markers planted at the end of various rows of corn…
…presumably trying out various strains to find the most successful. I come into Postville…
…famous for being the childhood home (not even the birthplace) of someone I’ve never heard of…
Soon I’m crossing the mighty Mississippi – which looks great…
…and entering Wisconsin at Prairie du Chien – Field of the Dog. Never mind – I get a room at a little mom & pop, the Prairie Inn, which has the advantage of backing onto a cinema. After unpacking and abluting, I go and watch ‘Sky Captain & the World of Tomorrow’ – a sort of Biggles meets Indiana Jones in an Art Deco alternative 1940s fantasy robot thing. It has the advantage of Angelina Jolie playing a Navy pilot in a vaguely dominatrix manner – enough to recommend the film to anyone, really…
I’m packed and on the road at 0945, heading towards Madison, in Wisconsin. I’ll not arrive there until tomorrow, so I just asked Bettie to find a route via minor roads – I’ll stop when it feels right…
The problem with giving Bettie instructions like this on one side of a city is that she’ll route you through minor roads across the city – which is how I ended up in downtown Des Moines, an area dominated by the hideously over-gilded Capitol building…
…after some time, and crossing to the ‘wrong side of the tracks’, I’m approached by a scantily-clad black girl whilst waiting at a red light. She asks me for a date – I’m a little non-plussed, then suggest the 4th July, just as the lights change to green – there was just time for her to tell me to off before I left…
I’m soon out in the rolling countryside which typifies eastern Iowa…
…turning left at Toledo, where they have a very picturesque bronze cow & calf sculpture, celebrating the role of dairy farming in the area. Along with the cornfields which line the ruler straight roads…
…dairy farming is the main industry. Many of the fields have a series of markers planted at the end of various rows of corn…
…presumably trying out various strains to find the most successful. I come into Postville…
…famous for being the childhood home (not even the birthplace) of someone I’ve never heard of…
Soon I’m crossing the mighty Mississippi – which looks great…
…and entering Wisconsin at Prairie du Chien – Field of the Dog. Never mind – I get a room at a little mom & pop, the Prairie Inn, which has the advantage of backing onto a cinema. After unpacking and abluting, I go and watch ‘Sky Captain & the World of Tomorrow’ – a sort of Biggles meets Indiana Jones in an Art Deco alternative 1940s fantasy robot thing. It has the advantage of Angelina Jolie playing a Navy pilot in a vaguely dominatrix manner – enough to recommend the film to anyone, really…