Our incredible Heartland is still there and it’s still beautiful

Recently I wrote of my journey by Greyhound from Bloomington, Indiana to Minneapolis on June 8 to pick up a new used truck. This column is about the trip back from Minneapolis.

The second half of my journey began on June 9 at the Minneapolis airport. I went south to Albert Lea, Minnesota, on to Clear Lake, Iowa, then to Cedar Rapids where I spent a night. Next morning I crossed the Mississippi above the Quad Cities on I-80, then drove across Illinois via Peoria to Crawfordsville, Indiana then back home.

I don’t get the opportunity to take my first drive in a new vehicle very often, and almost never for a road trip. It’s my first 4wd vehicle, so it took a little getting used to. It kept pace with traffic but felt slow because I was sitting higher above the road than I was used to. Like riding the Greyhound it never seemed like we were going very fast, but no one was passing us all the way to Minneapolis.

I really wanted this trip to be leisurely, but it wasn’t to be this time because I needed to get home. I love the countryside and small burgs and mom-and-pop diners, but I took the direct route and stayed on interstate and US highways between Albert Lea and Crawfordsville.

Minnesota has always seemed like a distant world to me. Growing up it was a very northern place and that appealed to me because of my love of snow. Back in the day the coldest spot in the lower 48 states (and when there were only 48 states) was usually International Falls or Hibbing, Minnesota. It was my idea of entertainment to hear the temperature from one of those stations and imagine being out in fifty or sixty degrees of frost. With 10,000 lakes and all that hunting and fishing it seemed like an ideal place for a boy to be living. It was part of the reason I set Freeman Farm up there. I wanted to live in real north woods winters between the covers of that book.

So heading south from the Minneapolis airport late in the morning I didn’t know quite what to expect, having never taken that route before. The countryside rolls a bit with woods and farms scattered about, but otherwise looks like northern Iowa. The interstate keeps its distance from the “big cities” like Rochester and Albert Lea, and that suited me as it always does. I wasn’t in a town of over 50,000 souls all the way home.

Having always loved Iowa and its agricultural reputation, crossing the state line to is a good feeling. It was the first week of June, but a cold front had passed during the night and there were westerly prairie winds buffeting me when I had Iowa in view on both sides. As I crossed the state line I began to see a big wind power array off to the east. There were perhaps thirty or forty windmills I could see, but I was surprised that on a windy day like this none of them were turning. Anyplace I’ve seen windmills there seem to be some turning and some still. Some are turned different directions and some turn faster than others. Further south toward Cedar Rapids there were some with arms in motion, but all of these were motionless, frozen in place.

Just twenty-six miles south of the state line lies Clear Lake. It’s the home of the Surf Ballroom, famous for being the place where Buddy Holly, Richie Valens, and the Big Bopper played their final show on February 2, 1959. That’s the day the music died in Don McLean’s song American Pie. I usually stop there when I’m passing through, taking a moment to remember Holly and to wonder what might have been had he lived past that night.

It’s another 50 miles south to US 20, a long-distance highway running east and west across the country. Taking it was my indulgence for the day, allowing a closer look at the farms and small towns along the way. That afternoon with blue skies and puffy cumulus clouds was a visual delight. Never has Iowa been quite so beautiful as it was that spring day. Favorable planting weather had allowed nearly every farmer to get the corn and beans planted, if a little late. Crops had sprouted and were well established, waiting for the hot days that were coming to make their spectacular race to mature height with bloom and tassel, pods and silk. It reminded me of a Grant Wood painting in the museum at Cedar Rapids with every stalk of corn growing in linear perfection.

US 20 led me around Waterloo to drop down on to I-380 which runs southeast to Cedar Rapids. I wasn’t going to make it home so I looked for a motel on the south edge of town. The air was still fresh and strong from the northwest but the room was quiet so I slept well.

I’m a morning person, so I was up and gone just as it was getting light, looking for breakfast at a little diner. I kept going, crossing the Mississippi into Illinois north of the Quad Cities before gliding onto I-74 going south to Galesburg. It was a brilliant morning with clear skies and an orange sunrise greeting me through a little haze. I finally found breakfast at Galesburg, but not at a diner as I had hoped. I had to settle for my favorite corporate breakfast at the arches. The sweet tea helped.  Galesburg was the site of the fifth Lincoln-Douglas debate in 1858 at Knox College. Lincoln lost that senate race, but people still go there to stand on the spot where Lincoln stood to make his case in front of 10,000 listeners.

From Galesburg I-74 angles southeastward for 34 miles to Peoria. It’s an impressive city along the banks of the Illinois River, now a barge canal connecting to Chicago, but a bypass kept me out in the countryside. It’s another thirty miles to Normal and Bloomington, home of the old teacher’s college, then forty more to Champaign/Urbana, home of the University of Illinois. Downstate Illinois is an agricultural powerhouse with perfect crops and tidy farmhouses and barns scattered everywhere. It’s always comforting to drive across the Corn Belt where there is so much abundance because I was born in a Corn Belt county. This is how the world is supposed to look on a summer day.

Then it’s 36 miles to Danville, Illinois and just five more to the Indiana line. Thirty miles brought me to Crawfordsville and the happy prospect of wheat fields beginning to turn from green to gold. Spring rains had delayed the first cutting of hay, but here it was. There a song every Hoosier knows about that heavenly scent. They sing it at the Speedway every Memorial Day.

I dropped down along US 231 to Greencastle where there’s an actual V-1 buzz bomb on a stand on the courthouse square. Further south is the old National Road, US 40, and I’m back in familiar territory where I know many of the back roads.

The vast Heartland is beautiful any time of year, but this spring of ’25 was memorable as I rode the cool Canadian air across the Iowa and Illinois prairies to my Indiana home. We are richly blessed to be able to live and work and play in it on days such as these.

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