Down the Missouri Valley

Gi's anxious to get home as quickly as possible, and when we got up this morning the weather in the central plains was relatively quiet, so we decided to head straight down the Missouri Valley through Sioux Falls, Sioux City, Council Bluffs, hang a left at Kansas City, and spend the night in Columbia, MO. It's a long ride -- about eight and a half hours -- but it sets us up to be home on Monday afternoon. (Sorry Bruce, a stop by Indy will have to wait until I come up to Lafayette in October.) There was a large thunderstorm complex in central Nebraska when we hit the road, but we were able to slip past catching just a few sprinkles on the leading edge of the rain.

The scenery was standard Midwest farm country -- big red barns amid seas of corn -- but this was my first trip north to south through this area and it helped me better appreciate how the rich soils had developed. The area between Brookings and Sioux Falls marks the boundary of the terminal moraines from the last glaciation, and in the cornfields near where we started we saw scattered piles of the rounded boulders that farmers had plowed up in their fields, but further south as we dropped into the Sioux River Basin we could see 50-60 ft cross-sections of the loess soils exposed by erosion from the river. These soils, comprised mainly of rock flour and dust from the glaciers, makes for incredibly rich soils which run hundreds of feet deep in some places.

Further south the bluffs along the river rise higher, but are covered with desne forest so that the geology only peeks through here and there. The temperature and humidity was pleasant through Iowa due to the cloud cover, but the skies cleared when we hit Missouri, and gusty winds from the northeast bounced Gi around quite a bit. Around St. Joseph someone turned on the humidity machine, and we knew we were finally back in the South. There has been a lot of rain through this area in recent weeks, which was easy to see from the rivers, as well as from the general mugginess.

The last couple of shots are for certain members of this audience. Crossing the Missouri River at Kansas City Gi caught a quick shot of the Showboat Casino, which I seem to recall was a place where Jan and Bob took me for an evening of gambling quite a few years ago. the other picture is of a car show that Gi spotted being held In a Bass Pro Shops parking lot just east of KC. Can anyone spot the Mopar entries?

From KC to Columbia we ran in and out of the edges of rain showers, but we were lucky and didn't hit any heavy rains. We later learned that those showers turned into heavy thunderstorms south of the interstate, so indeed it was a matter of lucky timing for us.

Dinner tonight was pretty good. A contemporary Italian place in Columbia called Sophie's. We'll see if we can beat it tomorrow night in Nashville.