Oh I know all I owe, I owe Ioway.........

My brain has this weird little short in its connectors that manifests itself in the following manner: Some receptacle in my brain contains a multitude of songs from old-time musicals, and whenever I see or hear the name of a City or State about which there is a song in one of said musicals, it pops to the forefront and I have to start singing it. Thus, the "Ioway" song from the musical "State Fair" is running through my brain right now, as we cross Iowa ("I owe Ioway all I know and I know why").  Another place/song that comes up often is "Gary, Indiana". Can't you just see adorable little Ronnie Howard in the movie version of The Music Man singing "if you'd like to have a logical ekthplanathion...how I happened on thith elegant thyncopathion...there ith jutht one plathe that can light my fathe, like Gary Indiana..."?  Then of course, there's "Everything's up to date in Kansas City. They've gone about as fur as they can go..." from Rodgers and & Hammerstein's "Oklahoma".  And the ever popular "Meet me in St. Louis, Louis..." from the musical/movie of the same name starring Judy Garland.  I can't control these impulses, they just happen. Kinda weird, huh...?

We spent the night in Council Bluffs, Iowa, just across the Missouri River from Omaha, Nebraska. When we exited I-80 for the night in Council Bluffs, we saw this scary sight, only in the dark, and were appropriately frightened:

What the HECK is that?

There are four of them protruding from the four "corners" of the overpass at the junction of I-80 and 29

The quadfecta. Anybody wanna enlighten us?

Here are two of them, whatever they are...

The clerk at the truck stop told me that they are sculptures which cost $3,000,000 and are supposed to represent four "stages" of some "journey"???

Very early this morning, we crossed the river into Omaha to deliver our load and I just felt that 6:00 a.m. was too early to call Warren Buffet, so it'll have to wait till our next Omaha run. 

Then back to Iowa to pick up some kinda meat which we're now taking to Pennsylvania over the next couple days. Iowa is very dusty! Here's a farmer harvesting some dust

Oh no, wait. I think that's corn

I had a really great shot of a car driving down a dirt road with a long cloud of dust behind it, but that got lost somewhere between the camera and the laptop. I never realized that corn is harvested AFTER it's all dried to crap, but apparently that's how it's done for making corn syrup and cornmeal and stuff like that. There's a LOT of corn in Iowa. Note the terraced surface of the field behind this piece of machinery.

Speaking of Navajo...oh wait! We weren't? Well, let me change the subject then...

Navajo Trucking Company truck

I've been dying to take a close up picture of one of these trucks since I first saw them last summer, and this morning I finally got my chance. Does anybody else find anything humorous about the picture? How many Navajo do you know (or any Native American for that matter) with bright blue eyes?

Here are a couple of potholders from the Iowa 80 truckstop gift shop that I felt really summed up a couple of my mottoes in life

I'm so disillusioned now

Definitely!

There's not nearly as much fall color in Iowa as there was in Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Indiana. We just pulled off the highway for lunch at "Pizza Ranch". Hmmmm. Interesting name. Mr. Trucker's having a hard time finding parking, though, so we may have to get back on the highway and look for something else. Better go.

Today's silly sounding place name:  Minooka, Illinois.