Day 9: Council Bluffs to Chariton

We headed out of the motel and pulled in at the adjacent gas station to full up as is our morning routine. All the pumps except diesel were out of order. We thought that was funny, but continued on I-29 where we passed by a refinery and number of BP petroleum silos. We turned off the interstate at Glenwood to head east on highway 34. The Glenwood gas station did not have regular gasoline either. Wondering how hurricane Ike got to Iowa, we continued east to Red Oak where we found gasoline at Chubby's with no problem. The strange thing was that super unleaded gas cost 10 cents more per gallon than regular unleaded. It fooled Jim because the super unleaded price is posted on top of the unleaded price. Our son later told us that super unleaded has ethonol -- from Iowa corn.

We travelled through land which was formed by windblown glacial silt deposits called the Loess (pronounced luss) Hills. This natural geoligic formation is found in only two places on earth. Iowa and China. Iowa farmers have terraced their fields on these hills. Seems to me the Chinese do that too.

Unlike the plains, this is a land with green rolling hills, picturesque farmhouses and barns, brick houses and lots of corn fields. There are more trees here than in the plains, but they are still midgits compared to the trees in the Pacific Northwest. Jim calls the trees here "trees cleaverly disquised as bushes."

You know that show, "When Animals Attack"? Well, I think they should have a similar show called, "When Farm Implements Attack." We passed several trucks hauling farm implements which seemed to take up more than half of the road. And in Montana and North Dakota we were threatened by trucks carrying large round hay bails.

The weather is georgous again. Nine days of sun in a row. This is getting spooky. I don't know if we are exceptionally lucky or if the rest of the US just has better weather than we do. Probably a combination of both.

We arrived in Chariton, checked into the local motel and went to visit our son and his wife. We will be here for a couple of days.