Driving Through Flyover Country

 From northern Minnesota, we headed south on a highway that carefully skirts the 1,000 lakes so well that you rarely catch a glimpse of water . . . though there are one or two lakes that appear briefly, including one with a great name: Hole in the Day Lake, which I think I mentioned in a blog post last year. Hole in the Day was the name of an Indian chief; the lake is named after him. I was also bemused by Upper and Lower Hay Lake, and Upper and Lower Whitefish Lake—like Upper Egypt, which was south of Lower Egypt, the upper lakes are lower on the map than the lower lakes. I think it’s more about drainage than geography.

There’s a lotta lakes in the Land O’ Lakes

When the Lakes highway, Minnesota 371 on the map, came to an end we took U.S. 10 for awhile, and then Minnesota 15, with a stop in New Ulm, where we stayed at Flandrau State Park. We were amused that it was almost but not quite Flanders. A very nice park, but we did get a rather fierce rainstorm not long after we got set up, so we ate dinner inside the camper. It was a great dinner, though—steak and shrimp and broccoli and salad and breadsticks.

The entrance to Flandrau State Park
in New Ulm, Minnesota

The next morning dawned very foggy; we hadn’t seen fog since we left Depoe Bay. But it burned out and we were back on the road again, to Decorah, Iowa. There were a couple of campgrounds there, and we came across the city park, Pulpit Rock Campground, right off the highway we were on. They had two spaces left, so we snapped up one of them, which was right on the far edge of the park. I discovered that Pulpit Rock had a long geological history, though it was only recently discovered to be so long. An amateur geologist who worked with students at nearby Martin Luther College (yep, we’re in Lutheran territory) had determined that there was a large meteorite crater under many layers of rock and sediment in the area—the crater is approximately 465 million years old, and is about the size of two football fields. It’s all buried, except for one protrusion—Pulpit Rock. There are also many fossils in the area, including one of a sea scorpion that was six feet in length and was most likely an apex predator in those prehistoric seas.

Mike’s sciatica is not getting much better, and it’s painful for him to sit for very long, plus I start to fall asleep if I drive for too long, so we stop a lot. We didn’t get too far on our third day heading back to Ohio before our first stop at Effigy Mounds National Monument, on the Iowa side of the Mississippi River across from Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin. We try to stop to see mounds whenever we come across them—there are a lot of them either extant or sort of “reconstructed,” but very few effigy mounds. There are a number of mounds generally in the shape of bears here, including one whole section they refer to as the marching bears, with a whole lot of little bear effigy mounds.

Mike, bothered by sciatica, perusing
one of the effigy mounds

The only problem is the mounds are all up on the bluffs overlooking the river, and it’s a bit of a hike to go see them. Mike figured walking would help his sciatica, and I was game for a hike of a couple of miles or so. However, it turned out most of the walk was VERY STEEP uphill. We made it to the lookout point (and back), and saw one of the bear mounds, several sort of stick-shaped mounds, and some of the small round ones called fire mounds. Plus there were some awesome vistas of the wide and island-filled upper Mississippi. But the walk was more than we bargained for. We got back to the camper and took a nap while parked in the National Monument parking lot.

An expansive view of the channels and islands
in the Upper Mississippi from the bluffs we
climbed to see some of the effigy mounds

Then we hit the road again, but we didn’t go far. We crossed over into Wisconsin and headed south, crossing back into Iowa at Dubuque. We tried for a campsite, but the Friday before Labor Day, they were all packed to the gills with holiday campers. So we stayed at a motel in Maquoketa, Iowa. And I learned that Maquoketa is a Native American word that means “there are bears here.” We did not see any ursine critters around, however, except for the effigy mounds. (Which probably means there were bears there, at one time in the past.)

On the way to Maquoketa, we drove through Key West, Iowa. It did not look much like the other Key West, but our friend who is a part-time resident of that other Key West asked us if we had eaten at Jimmy’s Buffet. Someone is missing a bet not opening that restaurant, but a little Google research unearthed the fact that Key West, Iowa, has nothing to do with Margaritaville. Key West is an unincorporated area west of Dubuque, which is known as the Key City because it was the first settlement in Iowa and was the “key to the West.” Hence, Key West.

A long day mostly on boring interstate highway brought us to Champaign-Urbana, Illinois. We have been here often, and I know I can get the rest of the way to Cincinnati in one day’s drive because I have done it many times—both of my sisters and their families lived in Champaign-Urbana at different times (and the adults all worked at the University of Illinois when they lived here). We found a motel without any problem, because I’m sure the campgrounds were all filled with holiday makers this Labor Day weekend.

There’s a lot to see in “flyover country,” and I heartily recommend taking a drive to enjoy all the interesting places and beautiful scenery in the middle of the continent. From giant fiberglas statues and fields of sunflowers to magnificent river and lake views to prairie sunsets—among the most beautiful sunsets I’ve seen—the variety of badlands, grasslands, crop fields, rivers, streams, and lakes is ever-changing and intriguing.