The World’s Biggest Truck Stop

Two years ago we met Ron and his Ford F150 camper van in San Carlos, Sonora. We met him again last year and we traveled with him on and off down the Pacific Coast of Mexico. 

He lives in Iowa in a tight knit mid western family but he is a traveler by inclination and he takes off at the drop of a hat. He also invites us to visit him in his home near Kalona about as central to the center of Iowa as you can get. 

Some excellent cheddar cheese and some Belizeans trotting by in a horse and buggy as though we were back in Spanish Prospect last winter. Life in Kalona. 

We got to sleep in an actual Iowa soy bean field. Ron’s parents are as sweet and patient as you might imagine but Ron’s capacity for mezcal has not diminished. We went to bed after setting the world to rights. (Layne and Rusty gave up early). 

There was some consternation between Kalona and Richmond as live music was not heard Tuesday night at the Bridge. It turns out excessive heat was to blame, Iowans wilt in one hundred degrees (as do we in point of fact).  

It’s as though you walked into a Hollywood set, the river flowing and the cicadas creaking and Clint Eastwood either as a thwarted lover or as a steely eyed lawman could have popped out of the shrubbery. 

I am sorry to say not all of Iowa is lyrical, pastoral and dreamy. There is a hard reality underpinning it all and that starts with Interstate 80 the great connector and truck route a couple of dozen miles from Kalona. 

We stopped in Iowa city for cheap gas at Costco, thirty five cents less than the average $3:69 price around the state. I notice no difference with fifteen percent ethanol but the subsidized price (thank you fellow tax payers) is pretty low in some gas stations. 

Iowa 80 bills itself as the biggest truck stop in the world. 

Upstairs there is a barber a chiropractor and a tooth cleaner among other services. It’s a pity this place isn’t in Nevada because god knows what else might be on offer to make it really interesting.  

Rusty probably wished this place was a long way west and out of his life. 

He got as long a walk as he wanted but he paid for it later. We are going moochdocking in Chicago so this seemed just the spot for smelly dog:

And it’s right next to the truck wash though all Rusty wanted to do was escape as he waited while we rummaged for a five dollar bill in the van, as the credit card machine wasn’t working. It was a slow execution for our water phobic dog. 

Seven minutes later he was fine scampering and shaking off the moisture the hair dryer (!) failed to remove. We put him aboard GANNET2, turned on the roof top air and went for a walk. 

I know I sound like an idiot but it was your average truck stop writ large. I don’t know what I expected. 

We got an Orange Julius for old times’ sake and wandered around looking at truck parts, and $3,000 in-cab refrigerators and microwaves sold as a kit for self sufficient truckers. 

The bored trucker can check out 1953 Internationals and 1979 Petersons on sale where a conventional market might offer news of the weird. 

We got some cleaning supplies and pressed on. 

The parking lot was a vast burning desert with the car half of the lot  packed,

while the truck half was…

…half empty at lunch time. 

Been there, done that. Got the dashboard cleaner to prove it. Oh and the ice cream headache from the giant Orange Julius! 

The Hawkeye State

Iowa is shorthand for all that is boring in the middle of the country, not exactly a negative stereotype but a place taken for granted as worthy but not really cool. At election time the presidential caucus is dismissed as not representative and rather too white to represent modern America. And yet…

Call me sentimental but I really quite like Iowa. We were on our way to meet Ron and his parents for lunch literally among the corn in a family compound. We met them last winter when they were camping on the beach in Mexico. Ron persuaded his parents they would enjoy it more than Arizona, their normal snowbird hangout and indeed they did. 

Iowa isn’t flat. There’s that stereotype to knock down.  Driving the Interstate is stressful because this is an industrious land and truck traffic is plentiful and traveling at speed.

Driving the back roads reveals a state filled with neat homesteads, and tidy fields bulging with crops.

We stopped to buy corn snd tomatoes and when eventually we cooked the corn I ate mine without butter or salt or anything so sweet and plump was the cob. The farmer said summer was over and he was shutting his roadside stand the next day to begin the farm work of autumn.

Layne was born in Iowa because, she is fond of pointing out, there was no suitable hospital across the river where her family lived in Rock Island, Illinois. She never lived in Iowa but her birth certificate has this odd salt of the earth look with her birthplace listing. Especially as she grew up in whacky California. 

We put Ron’s address into the phone and Google maps put a wiggly blue line across the corn fields. Oddly enough many of the roads are gravel a slightly old fashioned touch. We also saw evidence of Amish farmers. 

Over lunch we got a lesson in grades of Amish life. Ron’s parents got a deal on their house as the Amish owners who built the place had got too friendly with the “English” ( you and me) and were banished. No Amish could buy the place as it was now unclean. So when Ron’s parents decided to move from Oregon, his fathers home, back to Iowa where his mother is from, they found a solid house that needed electrical wiring.

That, it turns out was a job of some difficulty as the Amish home was solidly built and not ducted for modern conveniences. Apparently time has passed for some Amish too who now allow the use of electric bicycles and flip phones (but not smart phones) all charged, not off the grid but by solar panels. 

When I mentioned to Ron I had seen an Amish tractor driver his comment was a question: Did he have rubber tires? I must have looked puzzled as I hadn’t noticed. The harder core Amish have tractors but they run them on iron wheels. One gets the feeling the 21st century is not making life choices easy for these 19th century hold outs. 

It seems an odd set of choices but I’d be sorry to see them disappear. I like electricity, my van is full of it, and pneumatic tires seem essential to me but I’m glad there is room for these eccentrics in our consumer driven world. As long as they get to farm their way there will be room I hope for nomads like me to live our way. Amish photos by my always observant navigator  and her Lumix ZS200 camera. 

Lunch was spiced with conversation and reminiscence but after we finished our hamburgers and ice cream and cookies in the serenity of Ron’s corn field we had at some point to leave for more appointments. I’d have loved to take them up on their offer of an overnight spot. There is something profoundly reassuring about the Iowa farm life and I’d have liked to be immersed in it for one night. To the world outside, America is Hollywood or Manhattan but for me continuity is assured here where the food gets grown.  I don’t belong here but I’d like to get a feel for it. 

We wound our way back to Highway 22 through the farmland. 

Taking the time to enjoy the unusual street signs…

…while letting Rusty enjoy his own Iowa experience. 

We happened upon the town of Riverside:

Which announced with some considerable  pride it was the future home of the birthplace of Captain Kirk of Star Trek fame and they were about to let passersby forget it. 

An unremarkable country town making the most of what it’s got. Back in the metropolis, in this case Davenport on the border with Illinois we stopped for cheap gas. It was my first encounter with 15% ethanol, unleaded 88, and I had to check the manual to make sure it was okay for the Promaster. 

Apparently Iowa gets its income from registration fees while Illinois prefers to tax gas so as we crossed the Mississippi the cost of a gallon was going to go up a buck. I noticed no difference burning high ethanol gas.

We met friends who used to live in the Keys and came home to fulfill their family obligations in Illinois. We ate catfish on the banks of the Rock River and talked until darkness and insect bites cut us short. 

A diner at a table next to us on the terrace remarked on Rusty’s good behavior curled up next to me. “Is he a service dog?” He asked. He could be I said. He’s just my buddy.

We left Nan and Jan at their tropical turquoise accented home all of us brimming with memories of our time in turquoise tropical waters. We had some miles to go to reach Chicago. We had a rest stop to find for the night.

The Road To Iowa

“Ya know you can’t spend the night here? Are you moving on?” The flat upper Midwest vowels grated on my ears as much as the contempt in the tone. I said nothing . 

She went back to weed whacking with a glare at me the idler, so I stopped sipping tea, got Rusty back in the van and put his leash away. I looked around. 

It’s true: we had been here when Mz Personality showed up for work and yes we had overstayed the three hour limit by probably nine hours but there seemed no pressing need to vacate the space. Even the night before the place was mostly empty. 

We only ended up in the rest area by accident. I had tried to book a campsite at Vermillion Lake State Park off I-90 but the website didn’t allow me to complete the transaction. South Dakota strikes again! I have some experience using websites and I know online idiocy when I see it… so rather than risk not finding a site by the lake where I had been yearning for a swim we stopped at the rest area to sleep. Which we did, and apparently lingered too long and broke all sorts of obscure rules by excessive resting. 

Our drive across South Dakota was marked by our crossing of the Missouri River which splits the state roughly in two. It took us a moment to figure it out but the river marks the time zone change and in this modern era the van clock and our cellphone clocks all switch automatically. It seemed unnaturally  late to us at one point and we had to glance at the microwave clock which is set to ship’s time and sure enough it was on Mountain Time while our electronic impedimenta were marching to Central Time, an hour later.

Round the back of the supermarket in Chamberlain I found the parking lot filled with powerful four wheel drive trucks. Winter struggles only hinted at. 

The Missouri also marked a decided change in scenery. Gone was the ranch land of endless dry yellow grass. Now we found ourselves on the edge of the cornfields of Midwest fame. It was Iowa before Iowa. 

I had not been looking forward to droning across the Great Plains so the plan was to try to split up the drive into feasible segments, to pull over and rest and try to stop and check stuff out. We did well with the Badlands and the corn palace. Now we were looking for a pleasant rest stop, a break from driving  and not in a rest area as they are too stressful in this state.

We entered the park and paused to salute this fine Midwest institution, below, free use of a sewer dump and a water hose. Often found in rest areas it helps make cruising in an RV very simple. Florida and the western states haven’t yet figured this out. 

We had found Union Grove, a state park with a campground and a day use picnic area. I confidently stepped up to the unstaffed automatic payment machine with my credit card. No dice. The machine was broken of course. I pressed the green button yet no message appeared on the screen. I stood staring at it idiotically. 

The spot was lovely and quiet. There was a park ranger’s residence up the street but no sign of other users or rangers or anyone.

So we had lunch. We were scofflaws but I couldn’t see how we could pay the stupid eight dollar day pass. No cash accepted, credit card only and total electronic failure on their part. 

Rusty was okay with it. I wasn’t; I don’t like taking advantage. 

We drove on out of South Dakota, the difficult state.