Iowa

There’s an old Bob Segar song with words like “on a long lonely highway east of Omaha”, we can see where he got his inspiration from, having just driven that way, then when we finally reached the city itself, all we can say about that is the main highlight was seeing the head office building of PayPal and that was pretty exciting.... come on, who can say they’ve seen that!
But then we heard their head office is actually in San Jose, California so that was a let down, now we’ve no idea what the imposter PayPal building was all about.

So then we drove around hoping to find more attractions like possibly Walmart’s almost head office building but without any luck, but then leaving the city and going into Iowa we crossed the Missouri River which is the border for the two states.

We don’t know why they pretend to have stuff like international headquarters of various corporations or show a block of land with a lame horse and two chooks to keep it company and are claiming that, that is the spot that NASA almost purchased to launched their Apollo 12 space mission to the moon when they have a river like the Missouri running straight through the guts of the place.

The Missouri River is impressive and it’s stuff like this along with the Grand Canyon, Sequoia Forests and the Great Lakes that really define this place, it gives Americans a good excuse for their ostentatiousness, arrogance and flag waving attitude, their country is spectacular, that’s why we keep coming back, just have to ignore the other side of that, all the damage and destruction, the crumbling parts of the country.

We’re headed for the Mississippi and this will be a welcome sight because for three days and three states we have driven through nothing but corn fields.
We’ve heard before of how much corn they grow here but you need to see it, your imagination can’t.

We past a town called Kellogg probably named after old Mr Kellogg of corn flakes fame.
You can just imagine years ago old Harvey sitting out on the stoop looking from horizon to horizon, from state to state, thinking s#*! what the hell we gunna do with all this here corn.

So then Harvey stops whittling, gets outa his rocking chair and heads out into the barn.
Mrs Kellogg doesn’t see him for three days and keeps yelling out “Harvey what’s y’all doing out in that there barn, y’all come and get some breakfast now ya hear!”
Another three days go by and she yells out again”. Harvey don’t ya want no breakfast ?“. “no dear” says Harvey “I done make me own and eyes done a heap for y’all too”

So finally Harvey comes in and they both sit down to a big bowl of Harvey’s concoction, take one mouthful and spit it out.
“that tastes disgusting, what’re ya gonna do with it now?”
“guess we’ll just add a ton of sugar, box it all purrdy like and sell it at the local store. The rest is history.

(This history lesson sponsored by R&R’s “True Facts” It’s head office is in Omaha, Nebraska.)Read more