Forging the Mississippi River

We rode into the Great Plains, leaving the Northeast, the Appalachains, my home and familiar region behind. Crossing the Mississippi was for sure, one of the most memorable landmarks so far. Good-bye IL, hello MO. We all stopped and put our feet in water and washed our faces in the River (an symbol indicating that we would one day return to the river's bank).

Some interesting observations of the Midwest - a region in which, prior, I had never set foot:

People here are proud of their connection to the great 16th president of the US. KY was the birthplace of Lincoln, Indiana boasts that it's "Lincoln's boyhood home" and Illinois is the "Land of Lincoln". The churches where we stayed likewise were proud that they had some of the wooden shelves bought by the President's nephew's sister's daughter's cousin's best friend.

Why do I feel like I'm in the Midwest when I've never been here?
Of course there's acres and acres of corn, but also an equal acrage of soybean (I feel like everyone always thinks of corn, but there's just as much of the smaller soybean plant).
But overall, I'd say it's the way the sky looks. There is simply so much sky! It's huge and expansive and the colors of the clouds are like nothing else I've ever seen. They are full of color. Purple, gray, dark blue. We see great sunrises and sunsets and the clouds are giant and fluffy. And from this majestic sky, blows a strong strong wind.

Another interesting asepct of biking across the Midwest is that you become very talented at guessing the milage between where you are and the water tower you spy in the very distance. With the other cyclists, we making guessing games on how far the next water tower is. Sometimes the closest one is 5 miles away, sometimes, it's 15. And you can also guess that where ever you see the closest water tower, is where there is the closest town. So make sure you have enough water with you before you start off cycling!

And speaking of water, we must cross over dozens and dozens of rivers. These rivers are highly irrigated and thus their course is heavily altered by the farmers. It looks like the river banks have been dug such that the river follows are particular direction. They are brown and muddy and usually not too wide. Most of the fields that we've passed, however, have been quite flooded. There has been a lot of rain out here this spring and summer so the corn is small (too wet) and the fields are just swamped. That leaves lots of frog, snake and turtle roadkill to swerve around.