A Road Trip

I am a farm boy. Okay, I’m not half the farm boy that some of my high school classmates are, but I have operated farm machinery, shoveled manure, and thrown a hay bale or two thousand.

So, when I found out that my wife not only didn’t know how they made the giant round hay bales, but also had no idea how a combine worked, I decided we had to take a field trip into the countryside.

longRoad

For some reason, whenever we take a field trip into the countryside, no matter where I turn off, we eventually end up on this road, with this little graveyard in the distance.

We meandered around the gravel roads, while I explained the internal workings of the modern combine harvester. We were lucky enough to see two such creatures in operation on our trip. One was even emptying its kernels into a gravity-box wagon.

Then we found this historic bridge, though there was not a sign to tell us why it was historic, nor was it very interesting, and the bank had just been re-graded and was nothing but waste concrete and gravel. So here’s a picture of the opposite bank:

bench

You may notice the streaks of sunlight in this shot. I lost the battery charger to my good camera with all my fancy filters and its awesome zoom lens, and I had to use my cell phone. I did not get the best shots.

Finally, we ended up at the Anamosa State Penitentiary grave yard, which I also will not show you a picture of. Here is the view of what was across the road.

sunHills

Again, I’m shooting into the Sun. I was hoping to get a shot like this, however. So many times I hear people say Iowa is flat, or that when Grant Wood painted rolling hills in Iowa, he was making it all up.  But no, really. We have stuff that looks like this.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *